Where is the first place you’ll hear news about StumbleUpon? Where do you look to discover what StumbleUpon is, how it works, why you would want to use it, how it can help your coaching business, as well as find out the latest updates and services offered? Why, on the official StumbleUpon blog, of course.

When you take a closer look, the simple tabs on StumbleUpon’s official blog are a good model for our own coaching sites. The tabs on the StumbleUpon blog are:

- About us
- Recommendation Engine
- Official Blog
- Press
- Legal

We should always make sure that information specific to our coaching business, as well as basic coaching information, is provided on our web pages within plain sight, the way StumbleUpon’s blog lays them out in its “Recommendation Engine.” It’s so important to provide interesting, valuable, relevant, and original content, as StumbleUpon’s official blog does.

We should all have a Press Page, but too many of us don’t. And, of course, legal disclaimers are a must. But it’s the blog page that keeps our readers and prospective clients up-to-date on our coaching services and programs.  Take StumbleUpon’s example. Some recent entries on their official blog include news about StumbleUpon’s capabilities, news about important community events, organizational changes, contests, and news about StumbleUpon-compatible technology.

The information is concise yet gives the detail you need. And it’s always up to date! It is very frustrating for someone interested in our coaching services to read about a coaching program but discover that the program was offered two months ago. A blog let’s you communicate on a daily or weekly basis with your clients.

So check out StumbleUpon’s blog and see if you can incorporate some if its ideas into your own coaching site today. And for more info on how StumbleUpon can help your coaching business, check out Stumble Traffic Map.

You know that videos are one of the best ways to let your prospective clients get to know you and decide if you are the right life coach for them. But do you know posting those videos on the Internet and marketing them effectively can  bring more prospective clients to your website?

Yes, you need to distribute the videos on sites like YouTube and other video sharing sites, but don’t forget about the social bookmarking networks, too.

It can be as simple as creating a video for your site or on YouTube and submitting it to StumbleUpon.  But there are definitely 3 tips you should pay attention to, as well as other tactics you need to be aware of, to get the most impact for time invested.

1. Don’t stumble just your videos. This looks overly self-promotional and spammy. It’s important that you also stumble videos and content from other sites as well.

2.  Make sure you have a Stumble button on your video page!  It allows stumblers who come to it organically through search engines to instantly stumble it, putting it in StumbleUpon’s database.

3. Don’t set your videos to autorun when people open your page. Give them the option of clicking Play.  People are more likely to “thumbs down” videos that autorun. When fellow stumblers were polled about videos set to autorun, many reactions went along these lines:

“It feels like a pop-up when they start playing before I can think and decide”
“I don’t like being hi-jacked”
“It didn’t say how long it was going to run, and I have to watch my bandwidth”
“I like to choose what I click on”

Using Videos As A Strategy on Your StumbleUpon Profile

When you click on your Favorites page in StumbleUpon, notice there’s another horizontal menu bar underneath the Discover, Favorites, and Stumblers tag. As well as All, this menu bar includes:

- photos
- videos
- discoveries
- your tags

Is your video tab empty?

If so, give your potential subscribers one more facet of your online personality to feel enthusiastic about. Be sure to include a few videos of your own.

And start stumbling your videos – and others’ – today!

If you’re using StumbleUpon for your life coaching business,or you want to learn how, CLICK HERE for quick pointers with screenshots to save your time and fast-track your way to StumbleUpon proficiency.

If you’re a serious seeker after information, and you depend on solid online research for your living, you may find it’s not enough simply to wait until you’ve logged in enough clicks via StumbleUpon, to refine your results.

Waiting for this powerful social network to learn your preferences is all well and good – but there are definitely ways you can trim the fat from your Stumble results, leaving only those valuable golden nuggets (and I’m not talking about the McDonald’s variety, here!)

Here are my 3 best tips for getting better StumbleUpon search results:

1. Pay attention and subscribe to Superstumblers. These are people whose content is even more ideal for your needs than your own. Remember that when you subscribe to them and befriend them, their favorites are added to yours in StumbleUpon’s algorithms.  Search their content, if your own is proving too slow.

And if you’re subscribed, you can receive updates whenever they have something to share.  (It can be rather like going through your ultimate coach’s personal library and files, with permission!)

2. Don’t stumble by topic or category, if you’re really serious about finding specific information.  Search by long-tailed keyphrase instead. You can do this by clicking through your “All” button until you locate the “Search” channel.  Click on “Search” and enter your long tail.  You’ll find the results well worth it!

3. Don’t forget to visit your favorite power stumblers’ profiles. Subscribe to them (the green “Subscribe” button in the top right-hand corner. Check “accept shares to my toolbar” to be party to their new discoveries.  Review their entries (not every one, but your genuine, absolute favorites) – it’s well worth it, when they (hopefully) review one of yours in reciprocal gratitude. And because you’re both like-minded.

These three tips may not seem like the be-all and end-all of power searching, but put them into practice and I guarantee you’ll see a significant positive impact in your StumbleUpon search results – and who knows? Perhaps in your own traffic and fan base, too!

Are you working at branding yourself or your business?  If so, consider adding StumbleUpon to your arsenal of strategies.

Within StumbleUpon, branding yourself is the first step. It will help create a strong authority status and make you not only recognizable, but a “go-to” person your subscribers can feel is firmly on their side.

But branding isn’t going to happen unless you have a clear target. Decide who you want to be known as on StumbleUpon, and what for. And thoroughly research your potential audience.

The real trick, however, is not to spread yourself too thin. It’s better to be known for one thing you do really well than for your average performance in several areas.

12 Tips for Tailoring Your Branding to StumbleUpon

Once you’ve got who and what you are on StumbleUpon firmly fixed, it’s time to implement your StumbleUpon branding strategy. Make sure…

- Your profile reflects your brand

- You stumble each entry on your blog (but not all at once!)

- You stand out from the crowd: Speak with your own unique “voice”

- Be friends with fellow Stumblers. Review their pages and sites – but keep it honest and real. (Never do this just to “collect” friends!)

- Visit and stumble only quality sites. Don’t mix business with personal, if the personal doesn’t enhance the business

- Read reviews to see what people are really thinking and feeling about a site or issue

- Stumble your “competitors” favorites to find out what gaps they’ve left you

- Factor backlink creation into your branding strategy

- Guest post on your Stumble buddies’ blogs.

- Stumble your Stumble friends’ posts

- Be consistent in your Stumble life

- Stumble your guest posts!

Once you’ve decided on a course of action for your StumbleUpon branding strategy, do your best to stick to it. After all, consistency is the most important key to branding. (Think how disoriented you’d feel if Coca-Cola suddenly started producing bright green cans with a rocket ship as their mascot, instead of a polar bear!)

Don’t forget to tie your Facebook and Twitter strategy in with StumbleUpon too… And if you’re a LinkedIn user, make sure your profile and information on that site reflects the image you’re portraying in your other social sites.

Remember that in branding yourself, the most important thing is to create and nurture your own strong, separate – and consistent – identity. So ask yourself, what do you want to be known for?

The Abundance Stimulus Pack is now live!

Ronnie Nijmeh of PLR.me has just released the Abundance Stimulus Pack, a set of 5 ready-to-sell self-help PLR products with the complete package of “cut and paste” marketing materials. These are perfect for anyone looking for life coaching PLR and personal development PLR. Check it out here: Abundance Stimulus Pack.

Ronnie’s only selling 250 copies of the pack and based on the buzz around the ‘net, it’s really going to sell out quick. So if you’re interested, I suggest you grab yours now.

PLR.me is not like other PLR content out there. It’s got the best quality I’ve ever seen in PLR and typically comes at a premium price. And now you can get FIVE top quality PLR products for less than 30 bucks each. (Plus, the topics are always in high demand.)