If you are joining tons of communities and hope to have your blog or website propelled into the limelight, here's another one that should not be missed. Many people have installed the stumbleupon toolbar on their browser, but they never do utilise this great tool to bring traffic to your site.

Most toolbars, just sit in oblivion till the end of time in the browsers of surfers who never realise the full potential of stumbleupon. Many installed stumbleupon thinking that it would automatically divert traffic, but truth be told, that does not happen at all, at least not in the short term. So many literally abandone this entire avenue completely and move on.

The thing is in the world which include virtual world, there is rarely something which you get without giving equivalent amount of time and effort to it. When I say rarely, I mean it, it does happen, but chances are slim.

And so its the same with stumbleupon, it takes time, effort and patience to build a community of friends and following. This is unlike digg, where if you can get 1000 people to digg your entry, u might just have to change your host the next day due it being overwhelmed.

The way to go about it is to :

1. take time to setup your profile properly.
2. setup your interests properly
   
3. stumble regularly and let your presence be known
   
4. stumble only the good stuffs and not every single page
5. remember to leave reviews, someone who shares the same view might just check you out. (write thoughtful reviews and not one which just says: "great site!")
   
6. give proper tags to the webpages that you like
7. explore videos and photos stumbles too.
   

If someone is interested in your stumbles, he might just find out more about you and your website.

The other way is to have your pages stumbled by others, so more can view your pages.

The way to go is to:

1. stumble people you already know or have links to, so that they might stumble you back, but keep it only to good content.
   
2. if they stumble you, befriend them and at the same time send them a thank you message
3. have "stumble it" codes integrated in your post to encourage stumbling with convenience. How? Visit here.
4. join stumble communities to know what trends are going on and their interests.
5. have good content, and more importantly, it must be interesting, or have some humor.
6. have a good and striking site design to catch attention, so people would not by pass your site, stumbling through..

Try not to:

1. stumble your own pages too much. It might not bring in much traffic unless other users stumble it as well.
2. do too much stumble exchange. In a crack down by stumbleupon, many users got their accounts reset. That means all over again.

So if you have account but have not use it properly, fret not, its still not too late. However, if you do not have one, hurry to Stumbleupon to register now.

Many use stumbleupon because it offers refreshing and new content that is of their interests. This is why to keep the spirit, its important not to degrade this great tool to just a promotional device and stumble anything you see. Keep it to the quality and interesting ones. If you are leaving a comment, be sincere. If you are stumbling your own pages, think again, if you are in others' shoes, would you give it a thumbs up.

Maintaining these positive attitudes towards every community or social sites you join would most likely see more people checking you out. If you are successful, you might get hundreds of new visitors from just stumbleupon. You never know. The harder thing is how to keep the visitors coming back. That is another tips for another day..