StumbleUpon, without a doubt, is my favorite social networking site. It’s certainly the most innovative among the social media sites and helps users discover and share content through a toolbar.

Like every other tool or network which you use, you can understand more about StumbleUpon if you are actively involved in stumbling articles and trying out its different features.

Today, I’d like to share 5 power tips for all those who are planning to use or have been using this wonderful social media site and we hope that it helps you to further utilize it in a more efficient manner.

1: Stumble Friends’ Favorites

If you are ignoring those who have befriended you on stumble, then you are making a big mistake. Like any other social network, stumbleupon too has a nice and strong community and you can be a part of that only when you take time out and stumble through your friends’ favorites.

Not only this helps you to know about your fellow stumblers’ interests, but also helps you in developing a relationship with them.

2: Stumble Through Tags

The stumble toolbar has lot of options to let you find websites in different fields. But there is also a very nice hidden feature which lets you search through different tags of your choice. It can be done in 2 ways.

First method- Go to Tools in your toolbar and then toolbar options. There make sure the search option with a magnifying glass is enabled. And then you get a small magnifying glass in your toolbar. You can use to stumble through a particular term.

Second method- You could also have the search bar right there in the toolbar. For that you need to go to Tools->Toolbar Options->Configuration (at the top )-> check Show search/tag box.

This enables the search box in your toolbar and you can just type a term in that, lets say ‘ productivity ‘ and you can keep on stumbling through different sites which are related to this term or which have been tagged as productivity by other stumblers.

3: Review Friends’ Profiles

You should also give a thumbs up to your fellow stumblers’ profiles and add a review. Its a nice way to say that you like his/her stumbles and further strengthen the relationship.

4: Analyze Friends

Once in a while you should visit each of your friend’s profile and check their activity. Last time when I did a stumble friends’ analysis, I found that 3 of the friends had been already banned due to some reason and 4 friends were inactive since a long time. Hence I decided to unfriend them.

Similarly you could check to see if you have some inactive friends and if its time to remove them. You can just go to a profile and see when was the last login. If its like 3 weeks or 1 month ago then you can unfriend them.

I think 3 weeks time frame should be good because that gives the time for any vacation which the stumbler might have taken in this period.

5: Get that Wrong Tag Corrected

We know that its very important to use the right categories and tags while submitting articles to stumble. Thats how the article reaches the right audience and gets the attention which it deserves.

But what to do when you encounter a nice article submitted under the wrong category? Well, you can get it changed. The best way to do it would be to send a polite message to the person who submitted that article and ask him to change it to the right category. He can do it from the bottom right portion of the review page.

If you find that he is unwilling to change the category then you could always report it (as you can see in the screenshot below )

I hope that the above tips help you to make your stumbleupon experience a better one and further contribute to the community. Let us know about your experience of using stumbleupon in the comments.

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