The Pros and Cons of Bookmarking with StumbleUpon

As we have discussed in previous blog posts, Social Bookmarking is a key part of the whole Social Media Marketing System. They bookmarking sites are a great way to build back links, as well as put your information on the internet for more people to see. Some of these sites help to create traffic tot eh bookmarking site, where people can read your blog posts and follow you there, where as others help direct a lot of traffic directly to your site, which is what most people strive to do. However the amount of traffic is not always a good thing.

StumbleUpon has moved its way up in popularity of most used Social Bookmarking sites, as it is fun and easy to use and it drives mounds of traffic to your site. The downside to this traffic is built into the way StumbleUpon is used. Most people download the Stumble Toolbar, and it allows them to randomly flip through websites based on their favorite topics. So if you are a Business Enthusiast, you can flip through all Business related sites that have been bookmarked within StumbleUpon. Now this is a whole lot of fun, however there is a huge drawback: it drives the bounce rate for the site sky high. The bounce rate of a site is determined by the amount of people who visit a site and leave after only viewing 1 page, or before a specified amount of time.

Take a look at this picture below  from one of the sites was manage. For the month of April, they had 109 visits to their site, however the average time on the site was 1 second, and the bounce rate was over 97%!! This is not quality traffic, this is people who came to the site and did not find it interesting or did not find what they were looking for.

StumbleUpon Stats (click to enlarge)

What most people forget about when driving traffic to their site, is that they should be targeting their traffic to drive in a higher quality of prospects. Sure StumbleUpon can help drive hoards of people to your site, however, you rarely find any business from it. I am sure you can find that one diamond in the rough, and the odds are, the more people you drive to your site, you will find 1 or 2. However, from our experience the only thing you get from StumbleUpon is a sky high Bounce Rate, a lower average viewing time on pages and a lower pages viewed per visit. And if you are like me, and really enjoy reading your analytics reports and finding out the best trends to observe, this StumbleUpon effect throws a blanket over the whole thing, and it becomes very difficult to get an accurate reading.

To learn more about Social Media Marketing and the Importance of Social Bookmarking, click the red button at the top of the page to watch our free video series or give us a call at 877-673-7096.

Thank You, and I encourage you to leave and comments or questions below. To learn more about the video series, Medical Professionals should click here and Entrepreneurs should click here.

Article by Zack Zucker, Manager Client Services, Turbo Social Media

About The Author:  I am known in my circle of friends as the Video Marketing Guru, and I strive to be better than everyone else. My competitive fire stems from years of swimming (including at the collegiate level). I am currently married and enjoying life. I spend my spare time watching TV, owning everyone in Mario Kart, dominating in board games, playing with my 2 dogs (Memphis and Macgyver) and long walks on the beach.

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