What can someone write that will help them gain status and stature in the ever more complicated algorithm driven environment that we have with the Web 2.0 style social networking sites? In general it is a bad thing to try to game the system, but understanding how the back end systems work can go a long way in helping your writing style and skills to appeal to a bigger market, or a broader market than the niche you currently occupy.
There are some steps in the process that you need to be doing, and doing them carefully so that you do not get black listed by the system. In many cases, you need to work with restraint and not submit everything you ever wrote to stumble upon. There are ways though of working through the system to highlight the more brilliant things you write, and that is what this is about.
If you do not use stumble upon, then start using it.
In many cases it can drive traffic to your site, but like all web 2.0 voting systems you get what you give. If you do not have a lot of time to spend on stumble upon, then your rank/ranking and the stumble upon juice that you give/get will not be as high as if you are a stumble power user. Many people can not give up the amount of time, hours each day surfing through the internet to add things to stumble upon.
But wait, maybe you can, how much time do you already spend on line? Use the stumble upon toolbar, and just highlight the things you find interesting. You will find yourself quickly in a silo, but in the longer run, you will gain status in that particular niche. If you are already on line hours a day, then the toolbar makes sense. The drawback, if you load up junk, you won’t make a whole lot of friends who will also stumble you interesting articles.
Never ever always stumble your own stuff, stumble upon’s computer system see’s that and pretty much so drops you into a black hole. You need to have a lot of other things in the queue to make things work, and to gain credibility in the system.
Make friends.
Making friends is always good, make friends in the niche or in the articles that you really like. The friend system there is interesting, and valuable. It is not a good idea to spam out friend requests, find people who are interested in what you are interested in. It is ok to have multiple interests, like video, photography and technology. Find the power users (many articles stumbled) and make them your friends. While the power users are smart to this tactic, about 10% will friend you back, this is a good thing. Especially if they find something interesting in what you are sharing, because they as well might be just as stuck for time as you are.
Write the perfect article and stumble it
Many people have reported that if they stumble their own stuff, they get into trouble. There has been some previous work on reverse engineering the stumble upon network, here and another interesting article here. While much of how stumble upon works is conjecture because the last thing stumble upon is going to do is release their algorithm to the public, it really does look like that you can stumble your own stuff occasionally. By occasionally, we are talking once a month to once a quarter without getting into a whole lot of trouble, getting banned, or otherwise annoying the system. You do not want to annoy the system.
We have seen people ask other people to stumble articles on their web sites, and while this is fairly dubious in our minds, remember that this will happen. You should only stumble things you really like, or ones that make sense for your particular style. If you do video, media, and technology, then suddenly stumble your friends work on HIV that will stand out like a sore thumb.
You should be supporting your new found friends in the system as well. If you stumble what others are stumbling you may go with the crowd or herd (depending on your viewpoint) but you want to be doing this so that they will stumble your stuff as well.
In general you are dealing with a system that is based on friendship, the way that you use the system, the number of friends, stumbled articles, and how often you use the system. Don’t think that logging in once a month will work here, you have to make this a daily habit, and choose from a broad range of other blogs and systems to gain attention. Plus you have to be sociable, which for some of us in a hard pressed not enough time on our hands life we live can be difficult. The hour you spend stumbling every day over coffee is a good way to go, and you have to make it a habit.
This article was inspired by this article on problogger.
great article and thanks for the include =)