Word of mouth is all about making it easy for visitors / users / consumers to tell their network about your product or service. StumbleUpon is the ultimate poster-site for this concept, because they make it easy to let people tell their network about a site. In fact, all a user has to do is click the “thumbs up.” However, if a visitor doesn’t have the StumbleUpon toolbar installed, they can’t recommend the site. So, let’s push a web version of the toolbar to the pages, in hopes of people recommending the site on StumbleUpon. Here’s what it looks like:
1. Create a StumbleUpon link
There are two different URLs that can be used. The simple one doesn’t specify topic, while the complex one does, so I recommend using the complex URL.
simple:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/toolbar/#url=http://daverigotti.com/
complex:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/toolbar/#topic=Marketing&url=http%253A%252F%252Fdaverigotti.com%252F
2. Make it easier to read and use
By creating a hoplink, the link is easier to read and use. Some of the popular ones are tinyurl.com and tr.im. Or, you could also host your own short URL.
3. Use it
Use http://domain.com as link text and http://tinyurl.com/domain as the actual link if possible
Anytime you link to your site where there the link is attributed with “nofollow” and you are not real concerned with branding of the link. This may include:
- Blog comments
- Email signatures
- Permalinks in RSS feeds of blog posts
- Twitter, Facebook, and other social media profiles
