Stumble Upon. Part I

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WHAT IS STUMBLE UPON?

I've been promising some help with Stumble Upon. I can give you a whole bunch of links to articles that explain it much better than I can. But you wouldn't click them would you? Admit it.

So here's Carissa's quick figure out SU.
(You can stumble this post if you want.)

Or any post for that matter, let me show you how!



STEP ONE:

The best advice I got was to DOWNload the Stumble Upon Toolbar for Firefox.

Click here to get that.

You don't have Firefox? Then GET it. I promise you need it.

That's it. Your homework is to JUST get the toolbar up on your browser.

STEP TWO:

Okay, WHAT to do with that toolbar?

For now I'll try to explain Why Stumble at all?

Let's say I just read a great post in a blog I totally love anyway. I visit it like everyday. But THIS post is better than usual. I actually laughed out loud. (No not LOL--the REAL kind).

I can run and tell all my friends on twitter. But that's only a few hundred of you. I can blog about it. But heck, that's probably less than I just told on twitter.

So what to do to help my bloggy friend who seriously wrote something awesome? Because when it's that awesome I want all of you to see it too, right?

I can go to StumbleUpon.com and register. After I have registered, I can go back to my bloggy friend's blog and 'Stumble' that post. Not the whole blog mind you, I click the title of the post I loved and then I click the 'Thumbs Up' button from my brand new Stumble Upon toolbar.

This will take me to a 'review' page. If I am the first one to 'discover' this post? Bonus! For me. Because I get to write the review that people will see when they are searching through The Stumble Upon site (This is called 'Stumbling')

So if you are first it's important that you follow some rules:

1) Leave a short but informative review of the blog. Quote from the post even.

2) Use as many tags as you can think of. Think synonyms here. If it was a post about a little baby on swings with great pictures... you could use:
photography, photos, baby, kids, parenting, family, swings, pictures, cute, and aw shucks.

3) ALWAYS mark YES. For yes it's safe content, unless you are looking at porn again. If you mark no, the blog gets flagged for that and it's apparently hard to lose the flag?

See my Stumble Page {GoodnCrazy username) for examples of reviews and tagging I've used recently. If you aren't the first to stumble a post, great. Just leave a quick review and a couple tags and toggle the 'YES' button and submit. Easy.

Are you still with me? This is getting long. I figure only the die-hards are still sticking around.


But I promise.
This is the fun part.
If you can get enough stumbles on a post of yours, then somehow, magically that post can take on a life of it's own, grow wings or some other bad metaphor. The massive online world now will see reviews of your blog post and just might slip on over to see it. I've heard of Stumble Storms...where a good post gets thousands of hits because multiple people stumbled that post! (Never happened to me btw.)

Which brings me to, Can I Stumble My Own Post? You can, but it's tacky. It's better to ask a friend to stumble a post when you think you've written something amazing. After the friend 'discovers' your post, then you can hit the thumbs up on your post and even write a quick review. I've heard of people going back even to stumble the comments of a post, when the storyline was continuing there.

You can Stumble submit a photo as well. Just right click over the photo (after loading the post url only) and chose stumbleupon photo blog it!

Also, Can I Stumble a Post if I Don't have a Blog? YES. Just follow the steps above.

Is this all clear as mud? Bottom line. Stumble Upon is a way to find new blog content to read. And a way to get your content into a place where a lot more people might see it. Let me know if you have questions?

And....more homework.

Here are the blogs I stumbled into yesterday that were great. Some were totally new to me and some were not. But I stumbled a post from each of them. And not always the first post I read. I tried to find Sponge Worthy posts. (You do know what I mean?) Tell me which post of these blogs YOU found Sponge Worthy?

Memoirs of a Mommy Blog
Feels like Home
Sensational Divas Review
Not a DIY Life
Eyes of Wonder
JiggetyJig
Wanderlustandlipstick.com
4Tunate
MawBooks
Teaching Challenges
Moments Behind The Lens
2 fat girls skinny
Pulsipher Predilections
xbox wife
High Heels and a Sippy Cup



Yes there is more you can do with Stumble Upon.
But let's leave that for Part II.


MORE bloggy tutes

30 comments:

Melissa Ann Browning said...

"Stumble Upon" - I don't know what that is... "Sponge Worthy" - THAT I know! Ha ha ho ho!

Rachel said...

Great explanation -- I had NO idea what "Stumble" was.

And, you get bonus points for a Seinfeld allusion. ;)

Linda S said...

Thanks, Elaine! Great post!

Kristina P. said...

Carissa, was my blog on there or it was a just a blog you happened to come upon.

I like the idea behind this.

jill jill bo bill said...

Come to my house and do this for me. I do good to post a blog and can never keep up at twitter.

I am Arizona; a person, not a place. said...

I love these info-tutes. I love the idea behind Stumble Upon, but you've got to be a serious blog reader to use it! I wish I had time to read more blogs because there are so many great ones out there. Keeping up with the ones I subscribe to is sometimes a challenge.

Jenni said...

Okay...so I finally have to break down and get firefox.

This sounds like a project for Sunday morning with coffee!

Jenni said...

Oh! And thanks for the stumble! Hopefully I will be able to return the favor soon!

Unknown said...

Thanks for the tutorial. I still am no stumble champ but I am learning. Sponge worthy - ha ha. Love that episode of Seinfeld.

Sarah said...

Haha! Xbox mom! I've got to hit the sack, but I'm checking that out tommorrow!

Deb said...

i am in love. thank you for the great explanation! you really could be a teacher. but then we'd all miss your bags too much.

thank you, thank you, thank you!

Jeff said...

That was super helpful. I'm totally stumbling it! I've been tacky and have stumbled myself, and then someone gave me a thumbs down. Maybe I need to start offering to pay for thumbs up. :P

Anonymous said...

I'm always the one with the questions.... LOL! So how do we know if someone stumbles our blog? Do we have to sign up for that to even happen? Sooo confused!!

Carissa(GoodnCrazy) said...

Dear Jeff commenter! You didn't leave an email for me to reply to!
Read my Dear No-Reply tute above to get your email linked!

Fred said...

I'm still figuring out how to find the on/off button.

Kristina P. said...

OK, I finally had time to actually sit down and fully read this, and it makes sense.

But I didn't see which post you Stumbled of mine, so I wasn't sure if I was looking in the right place or not.

Jyl @ MommyGossip said...

Love the tute as usual, Carissa. Very information and fun. Also, thanks for referring me to other blogs. Can't wait to check them out :).

Jyl @ MommyGossip said...

Or informative LOL. Wish they had an edit button ;).

Straight to Your Hart said...

K-as if you didn't already have enough to do..I tagged you..Sorry Well not really cause I love to read your blog everyday...you always have something that I can laugh about..aahh mushy stuff..tehe!!

Penny Ryder said...

Hey Carissa. Thanks for mentioning my blog. I've started to sign up for stumble upon, but when I was installing it I pulled out because I was on my hubby's computer and he can't stand all the extra toolbars and things. Guess I have to go back and try again!

Maggie, Dammit said...

I really wish I'd had this post when I was painfully struggling to figure out Stumble Upon - this is fantastic!

Unknown said...

you have me totally convinced that i need to start stumbling. your tutorial makes it sounds so simple - thanks!

Sorry that it took me so many days to get over here - thanks for linking and stumbling my blog too!

Texasholly said...

Love the sponge worthy reference.

I am so glad you are spreading the word. If we can get more people that like what we like it is so much easier to create a storm!

YEAH.

Anonymous said...

Thank you my dear...your tutorials ROCK! Now I get it, where've I been??

Jenners said...

This was great ... and I totally got the Sponge Worthy. And now I feel even more honored that you stumbled my post. I think I get it ... but I wonder if I have the time and memory to do it. I just discovered Deli.ciou.us and am still trying to get that set up. Thanks for the info.

Matty said...

Thanks for the "tumbs up" on this idea. I now have Stumble on my toolbar.

Great idea!

Barb said...

Good tutorial. I just left the link on one of my blogger groups where we were having a discussion on SU.

the inadvertent farmer said...

Great way of explaining Stumble Upon...thanks, btw, gave you my thumbs up!

Hen Jen said...

very helpful post, thanks. I read kirsty, but haven't tried stumble upon, I'm off to get the toolbar now..thanks, I probably would not have known that I needed the toolbar.

Claremont First Ward said...

This is totally ringing a bell. I've installed the tool bar and I think I'm good to go. THANK YOU.


Oh my heck! I was featured. And it didn't hurt or anything!



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