Came across this article about building up your blog with StumbleUpon while I was browsing one of my favorite blogging blogs, ProBlogger. (Do you think I used the word blog enough times in that sentence?) :)
The article was written by Skellie, a guest blogger on the site. She has some good points. One of my favorites is near the beginning of the article: "Every blogger should have a StumbleUpon account. Regardless of which social media service you prefer, StumbleUpon is by far the easiest and least time-consuming to use."
This tip by her got me to thinking though:
One tip: make sure your username and profile picture are branded in line with your blog. Use your blogging name for your profile, and a photo or logo your readers will be familiar with.Now, there's not anything wrong with using your logo for your picture. In fact, although you can change your picture as often as you want, if you are stumbling with the goal of building up your site, and if you have a logo, I'd recommend including your logo in any profile picture you use.
Quite by accident, I discovered how important your profile picture is a while back. My son was 2 when I first started Stumbling, and he fell in love with the Pooh picture and the fact that Pooh and Piglet were hugging. Since he loved the picture so much, I kept it as my profile picture, instead of changing it to something more grown-up.
About a year later, since he was three and wasn't making me show him the Pooh picture every time he saw me at the computer, I toyed with the idea of changing my picture. In fact, I even mentioned it here and there, and the fuss I got surprised me. The most repeated point? That people saw my picture and knew it was me without having to look at my name. So anyway, I kept Pooh Bear, and I'll probably be represented by him forever on SU.
I guess the second point from that story is to pick a picture that you like and that you'll be happy with down the road even if you don't have a logo. Eventually, even if you only thumb up pages and never post to a forum or participate any other way on SU, people are going to recognize your "face."
Sooo...what part am I not sure about then? I guess I've seen too many stumblers named GrowTomatoPlantsIndoors or stuff like that, who then have a tendency to spam people's inbox until they get blacklisted as spammers. Now, to be honest, I have seen one or two legitimate businesses who name themselves for their business and thumb up interesting articles related to their business, but I'd say if you use this approach you need to be very careful that every item you thumb up is interesting and that it's labeled correctly (although the SU program is good at labeling most sites, it does mess up on occasion, which is something you really don't want if you're thumbing up your own business site).
What I would recommend if you have a blog you're trying to get revenue from, and what I suspect that Skellie was trying to say, is to use the same name for your SU site that you use for your blog, and use it with Facebook, MySpace, and any other site that you frequent. I do want to emphasize that I only recommend this if you are wanting people to find your other sites, because as a researcher, I know how easy it is to trace someone's information on-line just by searching their username and whatever other information they've included for public view. Even if you're wanting visitors to your external sites though, I would recommend being careful what information you put where others can get hold of it. There are way too many programs that can use just a little information and put someone right on your doorstep.
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