Let's Get Ready To Stumble!

Hey guys! Rachel from Shedding It & Getting It here with a guest post!

Sometimes, you follow the "rules" of improving your blog like creating great headlines and writing homerun posts. But then you check your stats and see, Oh…no one's reading them. That can be super disheartening.

When you've got great content that you believe in but don't feel you're reaching as many people as you could, what are you supposed to do?

There are some great ways to market yourself for free — Facebook, Twitter, guest blogging — but what about advertising your blog? Is it worth it? I decided to give it a try and run a StumbleUpon ad campaign.

Matt has already talked about how using Stumble can get your blog more traffic. You might get lucky and have people Stumble a great post and see a nice boost in traffic for a few days. If you get really lucky, one of your blogs could even go viral! But since Stumbling your own material is frowned upon, it can be annoying to sit and hope someone Stumbles you. But StumbleUpon now offers an option to Stumble yourself — for a fee.

I decided to give StumbleUpon Ads a try last month. I had been Stumbled before, and I loved the new readers that it brought me. Here are some of the reasons I liked creating an ad campaign.

• It's cheap. You decide how much you want to spend on Stumbling. You pay five cents per hit, so a daily budget of just $5 can mean you'll get 100 hits that day. As soon as you hit your daily budget (and you can do it for just one day), Stumble stops directing people to your site. I figured I could invest the amount of money in my blog that I invest in a trip to Starbucks.
• If users like you, they'll hit "Stumble" and the hits that come from that are free. Again, this is great if you've got a great post that you really believe in. Once you make that initial investment, then the magic of the internet can take over. When I did it, I paid for 100 hits, but saw a spike of about 500 hits. (And users don't know they are looking at a paid Stumble, by the way.) My numbers stayed higher than average all week too.
• You can select who will see your post by category — and Stumble tells you how many users they have in each. For example, "Food" has more users than "Health," which has more users than "Nutrition." But even though a category like "Eating Disorders" has considerably less users, if that's what your post is about, it's a great idea to reach the exact people who are interested in your material.
• Stumble sends readers directly to your site. They don't have to choose to click through to read your link. You are guaranteed your number of hits.

If you decide to create a Stumble campaign, here's my advice.

• Select a great post. This is obvious, but don't waste your money on a post that's not that great. Think of the post you wrote that got tons of comments and discussion. Maybe it was even controversial. You want it to be the kind of post that people will want to pass on to others. Funny posts, videos, and Top 10 lists are great for a Stumble ad campaign.
• Once Stumble gets you the readers, it's your job to get them to stay there. This is crucial. If you Stumble a post from last week, there's a pretty good chance that readers are going to visit your homepage if they liked it. So that means you should turn it up a notch and plan to run your campaign when you feel like your blog has been on a very good streak.

I've run about five Stumble ad campaigns, and each time, I found I not only got a lot of new hits, but I also got a lot of new comments. The comments often started with, "New reader, I'm not sure how I came across your blog…" People may not even realize how they ended up on your blog, but now they're hooked. And, again, it's your job to keep them there. It's great motivation to keep creating great content and working hard — sometimes it's just so nice to know your hard work is going to be seen by more people.