Marketing, Web Development, PR / MNP Hoppal

Reading any decent blog on social media/marketing/general Internet things, chances are you’ve run into information about many fads raging online such as Twitter, Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. For all the good advice one can hear about optimizing one’s blog for such traffic (write list posts to go viral, content is king, don’t forget to include a next action, whathaveyou), I hear even more bad advice about it, especially pertaining to stumbling.

This is a list of pet peeves which really bother me, both on-blog and on-stumble-profile. A how-not-to guide to successfully generating great traffic through this powerful yet deadly tool.

1. Include an annoying welcome message for stumblers. While not inherently annoying (I have seen some pretty useful welcome messages), the Wordpress plug-in What Would Seth Godin Do? and similar can be used for both good and evil. The one I tend to see on blogs desperate for traffic is “Welcome to [blog]! Don’t forget to give this post the thumbs up if you like it!” Well, that’s great and all, but there are two problems with this: First, I’m not stupid and I’m not new to this. I know to give you the thumbs up if I like it. Stop patronizing me. Second, what if I don’t like it? You’re basically begging me to send you traffic, and yet most of the people who commit this faux pas don’t bother to provide unique, useful, and helpful content which deserves the traffic it’s getting.
2. Stumble your own content — a lot. Again, this is not inherently bad. Unfortunately, many people who do this tend to be spammers who don’t actually use the service for anything other than driving traffic to their own sites. Please use discretion when stumbling your own content. If it’s not genuinely useful, don’t do it. As a rule of thumb, you should stumble at least 5x more of other peoples’ content than your own.
3. Ask me to do things for you without offering to do anything for me. [Person] has added you as a friend! (Add him back) Hey, buddy, this is my shamelessly self-promoting content on my blog. Please like and review, but don’t expect any reciprocation. Sorry, no. If I actually like your content, I’ll probably give it the thumbs up. If it’s useful and review-worthy, I’ll even take some time to write a nice review. Unfortunately, your content meets neither criteria and you’re just a spammer. No.

There are many more crimes committed every day in the world of stumble upon, but these are the three most worth mentioning.

So how about you, fellow stumblers? What really gets your teeth grinding?