So my presentation might not have been earth shattering but it covers some basics, it might also have come over slightly negative. The goal was really to dissuade the bloggers in the room from treating StumbleUpon as purely a marketing tool but to see it from the normal stumblers point of view it's their fun your playing with. Does this mean great content shouldn't be on Stumble? Of course not indeed by not overly promoting and not chasing Stumbles you may find your average number of visits increase.
Warning I used a custom font so slideshare has done it's best to convert but hasn't quite managed it 
Other Notes
Do not Spam, keeping track of categories and tags is pretty important, people actually spend their lives recategorising misplaced stumbles.
Related posts are not always the best idea for the bottom of the page, this is a general tip that real estate at the bottom of the post between the post and comments is a great location to focus their attention on your best posts. To often related posts do not provide any meaningful results.
What would Seth do plugin is interesting if used with referral data (or indeed something like Waynes' socialize me) to provide a means to give stumblers a call to action. However avoid linking directly to the review page, if they want to leave a review or thumb up they can use the toolbar and this will be more useful in the long run.
Stats are ambiguous at best, with StumbleUpon precaching pages, JavaScript stats being unreliable at times any way your stats will be haywire. Also like most social media your bounce rate will not make much sense. If you have an analytics package that will segment stats from a source you will see just how much confusion Stumble causes.
Thumb up content you like, seems obvious but if you like content thumb it up, if you don't like it think carefully about thumbing it down. Of course if it's rubbish then thumb down.
Never use the sendto... or have buttons linking directly to reviews, get them to vote via tool bar.
Try not to stumble your own site or someone else's site continuously you are not doing yourself any favours, likewise if the same person constantly stumbles your site first every time it maybe worth asking them not to. Very politely.
How do I know if my content is good for StumbleUpon you can always test it via a sponsored stumble , these are adverts that are shown to non Pro Member stumblers they can be thumbed up or down as normal but the effect of these thumbing up and down are not felt till after the ads number of stumbles has come to the end. The nice thing about sponsored stumbles is you get pretty good figures as to how many stumblers liked dislike your content. While normally in stats you want a lot of data even 100 visit sample is enough to get an idea of how well the content will do. For the pro blogger who is really aiming at linkbait you can try changing on page conditions using the Google web optimizer to create multivate test though for accurate results you will need more then 100 visits. Also it would take some clever coding to associate the thumb up as your goal but it is possible.
Negative Stumbles, afraid it does happen we discussed some of the dubious tactics to upset a competitors stumble site.
If you are interested I have some articles on Does Social Begging Work?, Second chance for Stumblers, Stumble graveyard and StumbleUpon Maths some of these posts are old but still valuable I think. Don't forget my profile is tnash.stumbleupon.com but really I want people to join StumbleUpon and have fun, its not a tool its just an addiction...
Thanks Tim, I enjoyed your presentation last night (and the whole meetup), and thanks for the tip about using Facebook for locally-targetted advertising
I’m currently reading about your YourMember plugin for a new project I’m working on – ah, the benefits of networking!
Cheers, Jon
Facebook is a fascinating closed wall garden if you can break in you have a captive audience more importantly its so easy to target specific demographics in local areas even the ability to target Women in their 30s in london should hugely increase a London salon conversion rate over a CPC campaign even if the cost per click is significantly higher.
Thanks for the talk Tim I really enjoyed it.
Thanks Jack hopefully see you next month
Hi Tim
Been trying to contact you (without success!) to confirm your places at BarCamp Sheffield. Can you let me know by 3PM today latest whether you will be attending.
Many thanks!
I was probably the first person to rsvp about a minute after the first email
but yes I’m coming
Isn’t the human brain bizarre sometimes? 89% for “Is Stumbleupon addictive” & 2% more for “Are you addicted to Stumbleupon” .. Does this mean that people have learned to enjoy calling themselves addicts? hmmm, just say, “No” ..
Ahh, the marketing tool of the Gods – Manipulative words and the right assessment/analytics of targeted markets.
This was fun and informative Tim. Thanks. I’m STUMBLING IT. lol
Overall perception vs personal perception can tell you a lot about not only a persons view on the subject but how they see themselves within the social group.
In this case many of those questioned knew that under the definition of addicition it would be more or less impossible to be “addicted” and therefore the majority of users would not be addicited. Yet when asked to consider their own behaviour so looking inwards rather then outwards their understanding of the question itself almost changes.
You know your business and I’m not arguing or anything, I have an observation to add.
“In this case many of those questioned KNEW that under the definition of addiction it would be more or less impossible to be “addicted”..”
A misperception actually. In fact, that’s one of the biggest problems with many so called ‘normal’ people. We have a tendency to believe that the word addiction applies to drugs, alcohol, and maybe cake. but addiction is not the subject of abuse, it’s in behaviors. Using drugs, for example, is a ’symptom’ of addiction. It doesnt ‘equal’ addiction. Like gambling. It only becomes an addiction for someone who cant get enough of it. Internet is addictive. Literally. Sex is addictive. Literally. Stumbleupon is addictive, literally.
This is a huge reason we have many uncontrollable problems and relationship issues, and greedy big corp (im pretty much anti co) shoving $ in their pocket at our expense. They know we are a globe of people in denial and they play it to a ‘t’ shoving these things into our noses. They know we will not call it a problem, much less an addiction.
I think there are many people that would answer yes to ‘are you addicted to SU’, because they know it will be giggled with, and attention will be given. People, sadly, in large numbers, enjoy Meisms and attention. Even if their wives are asking them when do they plan to go to bed, they are trying to get in 1 more Tweet, 1 more Stumble, 1 more blah blah..Once again, they are not disputed by fellow net junkies and they find even more time seeking that condolence while he thinks the wife is a nag who just doesnt understand.
When asked ‘is SU addictive, it sounds more serious. Serious excludes denial from the picture, leaving people to ask themselves without the Ha Ha. That may explain the 2% drop. Those 2% saw it as serious and laughed it off saying ‘nah, hahaha, not ME’ the rest of them pondered it a sec and turned it back into a typical addict snicker and a good ‘hell yeah!’
I’ve studied the minds of addicts for years. AS 1 and in many lengthy terms in rehabs, before finally getting clean. They teach the psychology behind addiction, in order to break cycles of addictive thinking and behaviors. I’ve seen people addicted to stalking for heaven sakes. Can you believe that? Too weird, but true.
Man I talk too much. Maybe that’s my addiction? haha..
@Kimberly – in order to be addicted to something does the subject of the addiction have to have some kind of physiological effect from the addictive behaviour? Or, can addiction be learned without any physical effects?
An addicition is a chemical reaction within the human body the reaction can be caused through external stimulants (alchol, cigarettes) but the human brain is perfectly capable of causing the reaction. Indeed we have to have the ability to control the chemical levels within the brain as in this case the chemicals are related to the way humans store and retrieve information in effect addicition is a side effect to our storage mechanism without some level of addictiion we would be unable to achieve repetition of tasks with any great success.
What is interesting is that we have evolved a pain/reward mechansim this mechanism is what causes cravings, in most people these are nothing more then a desire to click a stumble button or put their hand through their hair (releasing endorphins) its only when these cravings go beyond or can’t be stopped do we have problems.
Their is a lot of research linking Addicition, OCD and several other brain related issues to the same chemical group, but its really important to remember regardless of the physical causes you can think yourself into addicition and in many ways these are harder to deal with then an external addicition.
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