StumbleUpon Top Users Interview – RJJ

Posted on 12. Dec, 2007 by DeanHunt in Online Marketing

Today we have another exclusive interview with one of the OFFICIAL top users from StumbeUpon: RJJ

How long have you been an active user of StumbleUpon?
I am using StumbleUpon already for many years but more heavily for just about one year: using its blogging and social networking features and more. Earlier is was for me just a funny surfing tool providing random web pages. Since I started a weblog, last year, I am using SU more seriously.

What makes you use StumbleUpon more than the other social sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us etc…?
I am a frequent del.icio.us user too. But, indeed, SU is currently a prominent part of my web activity. The reason is that it provides a unique combination of surfing, bookmarking, blogging and social networking tools. Other web 2.0 services offer parts of these, but the combination is what makes SU quite unique.

What sort of topics interest you the most?
Privately and professionally a lot, but since SU is integrated mainly with my blogging activities, I reserve it for the topics covered by my logs: science, technology, funny, remarkable news items, design, art, and things like that.

What advice would you give to a brand new user of Stumbleupon?
Explore all its features. As I said, Automatic surfing is funny but theres so much more: review and submit new websites, add other stumblers as friends and contact them, submit funny pictures and videos, maintain a U-blog, take part in discussion groups etc.
Do you ever get thanked by the site owners after you stumble their content?
No, I must confess that I never did. On the other hand I often receive positive reactions from people about stumbling their content. I See it as a kind of publicity.
Has anyone ever tried to bribe you into stumbling their content?
Indeed, that happens. But ‘to stumble or not to stumble’ remains my own decision and your own responsibility.

Do you own a website? And if so, what have been your biggest StumbleUpon successes from your site?
Currently I run the two weblogs mentioned in my SU-homepage: LinkNotes and ClipsToNote. If you define a StumbleUpon successes as a sudden peak in the number of visitors, I can say the such happens occasionally and quite unexpected. I remember the so time ago more than the average daily amount of visitors of my site entered within a few hours, from traffic generated by SU. This, however rarely happens. More important is the long term effect. Content on StumbleUpon generates a substantial part of the traffic of my blogs (for LinkNotes about 12%). Since, however, a lot of this traffic comes from visitors of my SU-blog pages the quality of the latter is crucial.

What are your thoughts on stumbling your own content?
As I said, a page upon StumbleUpon generates some publicity, so it seems attractive to put your content on SU. It is, however, not as simple as that. An SU-blog with just content of your own site does not offer any more than a feed and will attract not many visitors. What is needed, is an attractive SU-blog with many interesting items, funny pictures etc. If you generate some extra publicity by adding some of you own content to it then I think that’s OK. At least that is what I do.

What are your thoughts on Linkbait and people creating content with the sole aim of getting traffic from sites like Stumbleupon?
Finally only quality will survive. Tricks, like including SU-content created with the sole aim to attract traffic this will not work the long term. The site itself should have to offer sufficient interesting content of its own.

Are you influenced by factors like authority of the website, design of the website etc? And if so, what sort of things do you specifically look for?
Sure, when I am looking for new items for my blog, I check it often in several sites and use the most reliable. Often these are also the ones with the best design. There are no simple criteria for that selection, it is matter of experience.

Why do you feel you are in the top 30 most powerful users of StumbleUpon?

Actually I did not know that I was a ‘Top Stumbler’ until somebody asked me how to become such. I am happy, however, to be in the top 30 presently.

What advice would you give to anyone who wanted to get into the top 30?
The most important thing is that SU considers you a valuable member, in the sense that you offer them good content and reliable reviews.
When I find an interesting site or web page I make the decision: bookmark it, blog about it and/or put it on SU. In that way I almost daily add new sites to SU and content to my SU blog. In addition I try to maintain my contacts in the SU-community by giving ‘thumbs up’ to my fellow stumblers if I like their pages.

Thanks for your time, is there anything else you would like to add?

No, it was my pleasure and I am looking forward to what will happen in future with this fascinating site.

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