I keep on reminding Claire that she should get into Stumbleupon as another extension of her social media networking strategy... and she keeps on telling me that she will once I explain to her how it all works. There's nothing like a challenge to get my creative juices flowing, so I decided to combine an illustration of three approaches to stumbling with my first attempt at creating a video tutorial to show as well as tell you how it works. (Note from Claire: Yeah, in fact, I did sign up for an account a while back, prompted by 2 fab clients - Emma Bird and Claire Chapman - who both 'friended' me or something, but even after joining, I found the whole thing a bit confusing. Having said that, seeing that traffic to this blog usually triples if a post is Stumbled is sufficient motivation to learn more! So, back to Joanna...)
Now when I first stumbled across StumbleUpon it was as a way of finding new sites. I think it must have been in a quiet period when I was looking for new material and discovered that you could jump to new sites in the blink of an eye just by hitting the "Stumble!" button over and over again. And yes some of the sites were relevant and interesting (you set it up by indicating what kind of material you're looking for) - but after a while you find yourself hitting the refresh button over and over with hardly a glance at the sites you're reading, and start to wonder if it isn't time to switch off your PC set and do something more interesting instead.
But that's only one dimension of stumbling. There are loads of other ways that you can use it to make connections, to learn from your readers, to extend your blogging network and develop your online brand.
