An Introduction to Photo Stumbling
Photo Stumbling is a feature that is built into StumbleUpon, which allows users to post pictures on the web into their StumbleUpon blog. Not all StumbleUpon users are familiar with this feature, so this little introduction might be also useful for some of you who are new to StumbleUpon.
To stumble a photo you like, you’ll simply need to right click and choose the Stumble Photo Blog It! function, which will then allow you to submit the picture as if you were submitting any other webpage. Take a look at the screenshot below for an example:
If the picture is already submitted, you’ll been taken to the discussion page whereby you can add more tags or leave a comment. After doing so, click on the green ‘Save changes‘ button and you’re done.
Examples of Photo Stumblers
Active StumbleUpon users are very likely to be active photo stumblers as well. A brief review of the stumblers listed on the Top Stumblers List will show that most of them practice photo stumbling regularly. Thousands of other StumbleUpon users do so as well, although some use the feature less frequently than others.
To better understand what type of images are likely to be heavily stumbled you’ll need to first appreciate the different types of StumbleUpon users around. Here are three prototypical examples of StumbleUpon users who practice photo stumbling.
1. The Artistic Stumbler
CherishMe is a classic StumbleUpon user who combines stylistic imagery with unique commentary, which in her case is poetry. Her StumbleUpon blog is a work of art and is immensely popular with many StumbleUpon users. I myself am a fan of her work and there aren’t many like her.
2. The Humor Stumbler
AutoRave is my StumbleUpon username and my SU blog is similar to those of other stumblers, who generally use random pictures from a wide variety of sources. These photo stumbles are usually interspersed with text-only stumbles and they do not generally follow a pattern or theme. Pictures stumbled cover a range of topics from photography, art and web comics to funny pictures.
3. The Photography Stumbler
Mortal-Light is an example of a photography-oriented StumbleUpon user who focuses on stumbling images alone, very rarely including any text. The pictures stumbled are usually themed and in the case of Mortal-Light, her focus is on nature and urban landscapes.
Some of these photo stumblers are purists in the sense that they may not stumble your web page if there isn’t a picture they can incorporate into their blog.
Take a look at each of these StumbleUpon profiles and check out the profiles of other stumblers as well, so you’ll get a rough idea of how stumblers interact with images on webpages.
How to Use and Optimize Pictures for Stumble Upon
The process of optimizing your images and making them stumble-friendly isn’t difficult at all. Here are six steps you can take to prepare your images for StumbleUpon.
1. Allow Hotlinking Access to StumbleUpon
Yes, Photo stumblers are hotlinking your pictures. And yes, it does consume your bandwidth whenever someone photoblogs your image. I personally don’t mind being hotlinked by StumbleUpon users because the benefits outweigh the costs particularly so, when the bandwidth leeched is rather minimal.
The StumbleUpon user blogs/profiles do not see much traffic and only a small amount of bandwidth is used through photoblogging. This differs from traditional high traffic blogs, websites or forums which can steal a lot of bandwidth through the direct use of hotlinked images.
It is important to note that some StumbleUpon users do not practice photoblogging because they believe that hotlinking is in bad form and unfairly affects the website in question. I would recommend reading this detailed discussion on Photo blogging and hotlinking in the StumbleUpon forum as there’s a good deal of balanced information available on this topic.
I’m aware that some of you might run websites with low bandwidth limits or dislike hotlinking in general. Just be aware that if you disable hotlinking completely for your website, StumbleUpon users will not be able to stumble your images.
While this might be so, some StumbleUpon users will still thumbs up and stumble your webpage if they find it interesting enough.
2. Make Your Pictures the Right Size
This is the the most fundamental part of stumble image optimization. If your images are too big, Stumble Upon users will not be able to submit or photo stumble it, which defeats the purpose of using an image to attract stumble traffic.
Here’s an example of what happens when a particular image is too big to be stumbled (An error box will show up saying that the image is too large):
The key point here is to make sure that your images are not wider than 715 pixels.
3. Use Intriguing and Unique Images
Try to use an image that is not only relevant to your content but highly attractive. Flickr is a good place to look for images, as they have a large collection of pictures and also because you can easily embed the image into your webpage. Do remember to credit the image owner if necessary.
Alternatively, you can create your own unique pictures and graphics or make stylistic edits to specific pictures you have. These types of images are usually very well received by StumbleUpon audiences. Webcomics are a good example.
4. Leverage Another Platform: Use Flickr to Host Your Pictures
When your Flickr-hosted images are stumbled, StumbleUpon traffic isn’t directed to Flickr but to your specific webpage, even though your image is hosted on Flickr.
StumbleUpon has a feature called StumbleThru, which allows you to stumble within specific websites, Flickr being one of them. By uploading your images on Flickr and inserting a link back to your website, you are essentially creating another channel which will give your website more exposure to StumbleUpon users.
5. Create a List of Images Around a Theme
This method operates through a simple principle: The more images you have, the more likely you are to be stumbled.
A webpage with a collection of pictures is very likely to receive a lot more potential stumbles because users are able to selectively stumble the images they fancy.
Dismal World has a great example of a webpage that is perfect Stumble bait. Their list of unforgettable world photos has a coherent theme while featuring commentary which explains each picture.
This article was extremely well received by the StumbleUpon audience and received 148 reviews since it was first submitted on Jun 24th.
If you take a look at all the recent stumblers, you would have noticed that most of them stumbled different pictures within the list, once again supporting our theory that picture differentiation and themed images help to encourage more stumbles.
Oddee is another website that has a wildly popular collection of pictures. Titled 15 Unfortunately placed ads, this list of pictures feature a collection of images around the theme of misplaced advertisements.
Only submitted yesterday, it has already received 50+ reviews and reached the Digg frontpage as well. Creating a list of pictures will not only allow you to receive many stumbles; they can easily be cross-promoted on other social websites as well.
6. Add Commentary to Your Pictures
Adding comments on each specific image introduces the value of the images to visitors and personalizes it by making it conceptually unique. This has the possible benefit of encouraging more photo stumbles.
Photo Stumble Optimization Helps Your Website
As most of you will probably know, StumbleUpon can send a tremendous amount of traffic to your website and the consistent use of images fit well with the StumbleUpon audience, particularly because of the built-in photo blogging option.
These optimization methods are nothing devious because there’s really no way to trick a StumbleUpon user into thumbing your website. You can expand your network of StumbleUpon friends as much as you want but you can’t completely game StumbleUpon into giving you more traffic.
You can however, encourage a greater amount of organic, natural stumbles by simply making your website irresistible through optimized usage of attractive images.
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