Social Desire

Written on January 6, 2008 – 7:41 pm | by Shana Albert |

This past Friday Darren Rowse of ProBlogger wrote a post, Using StumbleUpon to Get on the Radar of Other Bloggers . In this post Darren wrote how he had taken notice of me and my work due to my stumbling his posts a few times. He mentioned in this post that he recognized me as a person who had stumbled his work more than once and he landed up taking a closer look at my StumbleUpon profile where he noticed my many sites and even subscribed to this Blog’s feed.

Darren Rowse mentioning me on his blog has got to be a definite high point in my Blogging career so far. However, after taking 24 hours to sit back and just think about how wonderful it was to be mentioned by Darren on ProBlogger….. something occurred to me. What if my StumbleUpon profile was different? What if I hadn’t taken the time to add clickable links on my Profile? If I hadn’t taken the time to make my StumbleUpon profile stand out would this amazing high point in my Blogging career have past me by??!! Jeeze, the thought makes me shudder.

So, I wanted to take a moment and post a few things that I did with my StumbleUpon profile that might have made a difference between Darren taken notice of my work or not.

Why my StumbleUpon Profile Might Have Stood Out to Darren

• Avatar - I chose the same Avatar that I use on all my other Social Networking Sites. This way people would recognize me from one Social Networking Site to the next. I used an image of myself, but many people use other things such as their company’s logo, cartoon characters or any other graphic that makes them stand out. For me, it was just a basic picture of myself.
  
  
• Profile Name - Again, just like with the avatar, I chose the same profile name for my StumbleUpon profile as I use on all of my other Social Networking Sites…. TheNanny612. However, I have to say, TheNanny612 is not a very good Profile Name at all. It has nothing to do with what I do for a living….. It is actually more of an Inside Family Joke that no one would understand unless I explained it to them. But, now that people already recognize me as TheNanny612 it wouldn’t be very prudent for me to change it now. However, this might have worked in my favor as well… I haven’t run into another Profile Name that is even similar. So, it probably does stand out quite well.
  
  
• Profile Details - Choose a well thought out description of yourself. It shouldn’t be very long as readers probably won’t stick around very long. Get right to the point. Write your details well, spell correctly and be descriptive.
  
  
• Clickable Links - Make sure that any website links that you would like to mention on your Profile Details are clickable. Your StumbleUpon profile is a great place to promote your sites. When people of the SU Community arrive to your profile page and want to learn more about you the chances of these readers checking out your website are so much greater if your links are clickable. I’m not sure if Darren of ProBlogger would have copied and pasted my link into a browser had I not made my links clickable. So, this is very, very important.
  
  This is what my StumbleUpon profile page would have looked like had I not made the links clickable:
  
  
  This is what my StumbleUpon profile page appears like now with all the links:
  
  
  It’s really simple to make a link on your StumbleUpon profile clickable. Let’s say you have a site called My Site and it was located at www.MySite.com. This is how you would make that link clickable on your SU profile.
  
  Go to your StumbleUpon’s profile page and Click on the Link that says, "Preferences". Once this page opens up click on the link that says, "Public Profile". This is where you are going to edit your Public Profile. You will see a box below where it says, "Introduce yourself to Everyone".In this box is where you are going to enter your Profile details.
  
  In the spot of your details that you want to be a clickable link you use the following code (changing mysite to your site’s info): <a href="http://www.mysite.com/">my site</a>. (Don’t be alarmed, the StumbleUpon system will automatically add a "No Follow" to the coding.)
  
  Click Save Profile and when others take a look at your profile the phrase "my site" should look like: my site.
  
  There is an area on the edit Public Profile page that you can enter your website…. it will look like this:
  
  
  However, oddly enough, your website’s link does not appear on the first page of your StumbleUpon Profile. Your viewers will have to click on the tab that says "About Her/Him". And, then they will come to a page that they will see the link of your website.
  
  
  This is an extra click that the viewers of StumbleUpon have to make to find your website’s link. This is another reason why I decided to make clickable links on my SU profile page.
  
  
• Multiple Website Links - When I first opened my StumbleUpon account 6 months ago I had 8 Websites that I wanted to list on my StumbleUpon profile page, but not only did it look funny… it looked almost Spammy as well. I had a discussion with Todd Mintz of SEMPortland who suggested that I purchase my name, Shana Albert, as a domain for other reasons than StumbleUpon. His suggestion was a good one for so many reasons. And, having the domain ShanaAlbert.com worked out on my StumbleUpon profile as well. The ShanaAlbert website is a simple static web page with all of my websites and blogs listed on that page. With a simple click on the link on my SU profile page a reader will be sent to my website that has images and links to all of my sites. This way my StumbleUpon profile will not be inundated with outgoing links. I don’t want a reader to feel overwhelmed when they are reading about me….. I just want them to get a sense of what I’m passionate about. And, I believe that Darren got all of that from a simple look at my StumbleUpon profile.

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