Successful social media campaigns create content that people can’t help but share. This content can be informative, humorous, unusual or just plain fun (think Jib Jab and Dancing Elves). When done well, the content travels across social media platforms and email, reaching thousands or even millions of people in a very short period for very little cost. If done right, the brand is clearly attached or in a format that meets set marketing objectives such as building contact lists or driving traffic to a specific site.

The problem is, no matter how compelling the content, if it can’t be found, it won’t go anywhere. Enter social bookmarking sites. At their most basic level, social bookmarking site such as Digg, Delicious, and StumbleUpon allow users to quickly and easily highlight web content they find interesting and share it with their friends or network.

Once recognized by a social bookmarking site, the traffic begins to feed itself as content links get passed from one user to the next. Hence the term “viral.” Once something takes hold, it can spread quickly and out of control.

As a content provider, you want to make it as easy for your audience to “bookmark” your content on whatever social bookmarking site they prefer. Be sure social bookmarking links are easy to find and use.

On www.socialmarketing20.com, every post has a clear set of social bookmarking tabs directly under the post. In just one click, users can add this very post to Facebook, Digg, or any of a number of other social media sites.

The Great StumbleUpon Experiment

I recently came across a post on ProBlogger that laid out a model for driving traffic with StumbleUpon. According to the post, it only takes 20 people to stumbling a post to drive signification traffic to the post.

Stumble It!

I’d like to test that theory here. Before you leave, I ask you to click the little Santa StumbleUpon button to the right or the StumbleUpon icon under the “Share This” below. If you don’t have a StumbleUpon profile, you will be directed to open a profile. What better time then the present to explore social bookmarking.

In return for your Stumble, I will provide a complete report in a later post on the effectiveness of the StumbleUpon links. And while yes, this may appear as manipulation, I’m sure there are many of you out there who would like to see the effect social bookmarks can have from the back end of the site.

So again, please click on the little Santa StumbleUpon button above or from the list of social bookmarks under the “Share This” below.

Also, as I am just building my own StumbleUpon profile, if you’re on StumbleUpon and bookmark content related to this site, please send me a friend request at http://jlodico.stumbleupon.com/public/.

(Just to be clear. This is a one time experiment using StumbleUpon and not an attempt to manipulate the system. Any help will be appreciated.)

Update:I just realized there was a problem in the code for the Santa Icon above so it has not been recording stumbles. It is working properly now. Sorry ’bout that.