Advertising Music Online: Getting Quality Visitors From StumbleUpon

There are 2 great reasons why StumbleUpon is useful for musicians:

1. For Discovery 

StumbleUpon is a content discovery tool and therefore can help you get discovered. You can save your music videos, web pages, blog posts, streaming links and more to StumbleUpon. Any content that exists on a live webpage can be stumbled. By submitting a page, you are opening up the prospect that thousands or even millions of individuals might come across your content. The better and more viral your content, the more probable it will receive views from StumbleUpon.

One of their metrics they track are “thumbs ups.” Pages with more of these get boosted in their discovery algorithm.

To get a link into StumbleUpon's index of websites, click the ‘thumbs up’ button on the StumbleUpon toolbar allowed on your browser. You can also submit URLs to StumbleUpon if you don't have the toolbar here: http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit

2. To Find Similar Content

StumbleUpon is also excellent method to discover sharable content. Do you ever have difficulty thinking of a something to share on Facebook, Twitter, or your blog? Fear no more! Set your  preferences in StumbleUpon and begin roaming the interest to find some interesting material.

I use StumbleUpon almost daily to come up with fascinating tidbits about music and music broadcast to share with CD Baby artists. (And now you have come to know my secret. Use it!)

Step #1: Turn into a Stumbler

It will be hard to understand how people are directed to your site if you don't learn how the platform works. If this is new to you, “stumbling” means relying on their algorithm to provide you new, interesting websites by clicking the StumbleUpon button on your browser bar.

StumbleUpon will take you to articles, images, videos, and much more based on the pages you've liked and your preferences. As you stumble and like more pages, the better StumbleUpon is able to identify what you love and bring you more of that content.

Step #2: Follow like-minded Stumblers

StumbleUpon is unique in that Stumblers are grouped into particular categories according to their stumbles, preferences, and links.

For instance, you may be an entrepreneur but not have that much in common with everyone who is in that grouping. At first, it may not seem like StumbleUpon is curating content that specific to you. However, after a few stumbles and votes, your profile will get centered of your specific interests within entrepreneurship.

Step #3: Submit exciting web pages – and not just yours.

You can definitely endorse your own content on StumbleUpon, but if that is all you do, then it is not probable that you will generate a strong following since. Like all social platforms, StumbleUpon works better when you are social. That means that you bring other content to the conversation.

Also, StumbleUpon does screen consumer activity and may ban activity if all you do is endorse your own stuff.

The goal of StumbleUpon is to build up content in its collection that increases its value to the community. So, share your music alongside content from your hobbies and inspiration.

Step #4: Design clear web pages

When it comes to improving your site for the StumbleUpon community, there is a one truly significant rule you must keep in mind: the content on your page must be completely clear to anyone who views your page.

Stumblers like to browse simple pages which lend themselves to exploration. Provide the Stumbler enticing visuals and great writing, together with links to other content on your site to encourage deeper exploring.

TED is a great example of this.

When you land on one of its pages, it is understood from the beginning what it is about and where the Stumbler can go to find more.

Step #5: Try StumbleUpon Paid Discovery

Sometimes you may not get the traffic you would like from StumbleUpon. Or maybe you merely do not have the time to wait for natural discovery.

You can speed up the process with Paid Discovery.

Paid Discovery directs traffic straight to your site. It give priority to your page when sharing content to Stumblers. It a bit more direct than something like Facebook Ads because your website is not shown in the side bar or as a tile on another webpage. It is presented with the Stumbler's full attention.

If your site doesn’t infringe any of the content rules of StumbleUpon, then you have three strategies to select from.

The price is determined by how much you wish to spend per guest.

Campaign creation is broken down into 6 steps:

1.    Enter the URL
2.    Choose topics
3.    Choose your audience
4.    Set your budget
5.    Schedule
6.    Add funds

Here are a few tips to aid you in optimizing your Paid Discovery campaigns:

• Group your content in various way to find for what works in the best way. StumbleUpon’s new metric score is an excellent mode to see which groups drive the most stumbles.
• To see which categories are the most popular, you can choose “manual targeting” before you submit your content to Paid Discovery.

Step #6: Use StumbleUpon Badges

One more way to receive targeted traffic is to have your fans submit your page, vote on, and share your content via the StumbleUpon badge.

Placing this badge on your site is simple as it needs no coding, just a simple copy and paste.

If you would like to personalize it, you can use StumbleUpon’s badge API. You will get all the information you require to develop a badge to match your site.

This customization will also offer information about the badge such as if that page has been submitted already, how many stumbles it has received, and the pages thumbnail and metadata on StumbleUpon.