Last month I wrote an article for Webcomic Planet, so to ease back in from my much deserved and needed break, I thought I would repost it here.
Raise your hand if you use Twitter to announce when you have posted a new comic/cartoon. Raise you hand if you also like to submit your new post to sites such as Reddit, Digg, or StumbleUpon.
If you are a user of Twitter and a registered user of StumbleUpon there is a great but little known tool at your disposal that you can submit a link to both sites at the same time. When posting your comic’s URL to twitter you either have to use a URL shortener like bit.ly or allow Twitter to shorten it for you. Instead, I recommend using http://su.pr to shorten your URLs.
Make sure you are signed into both Twitter and StumbleUpon. Once you have posted your latest cartoon, go to su.pr and type in your tweet along with the full URL of the post. Then hit submit. Your post will be submitted to both sites.
Here is what really makes it impactful. Now when someone clicks on your link in twitter they will go to your post on StumbleUpon where they can not only view your cartoon but also give it a “Thumbs Up”. The more “Thumbs Up” you get, drives potentially more visitors.
Even better is that Su.pr has analytics of who retweeted your post. If you are like me it can be difficult to determine if someone retweeted your post especially if they don’t use your twitter name. With Su.pr, anytime they use the shortened URL in a tweet, it will show up on su.pr analytics who sent out the message.
Hopefully this is a tool that is useful to you and please if you see the SU header in a post and you like it, take the second and give it a thumbs up. Your fellow cartoonists will appreciate it. And as always you can find me on twitter at @bearmancartoons.
Hey you’re back and as lazy as ever …there’s the Bearman we know and love 🙂 . About friggin time. Hope you won’t be doing that again!
Awwww…that’s the sweetest thing you have ever said.
I was trying to be nice 🙂
Birds twitter, bloggers write (or do visual stuff anyway) in proper joined up writing…
Welcome back BTW.
Wasn’t that a song?
That’s a bit of genuis that I forgot to use. Thanks again sir! Too late for today’s, but certainly not Wednesday’s strip. 🙂 P.S. Glad you’re back!
Just coming out from all my fan mail.
Welcome back Bearman!
Danke Danica
Glad to have you back. Good article even though I don’t tweet or digg at my age I stumble alot…. Oh, you meant on the computer didn’t you.
As well as dribble. That should be the new social network.
hmmm super cool…gonna check this out
You already have too many visitors..haha
lol no
Thanks for this post Bearman.. might I add that with the exception of Reddit, URL shorterners on sites are a great way to keep track of one’s traffic.
Yes don’t send live links to Reddit…they don’t like that.
Welcome back from a well deserved break, Bearman!
I hope hibernation was relaxing! 🙂
Sleep is good.
ZZzzz … huh?! 🙂
Good to see you back in the land of the living – even if I didn’t understand a farking word you said !!! 😉
Keep em guessing.
welcome back Bear! I don’t use either of them because….I just don’t get it!! 🙂
Give it time.
So glad you’re back Bearman!
(Although technically, I’m not back for another two weeks…so pretend you’re getting this two weeks from now.)
Well in two weeks give me another.
Does that work with Facebook? Good to know. I’ve never had any luck with Stumbleupon, Digg or any of those. I still am pretty clueless how some people get thousands of hits from those places.
Not sure since I don’t have a facebook fan page.
Your StumbleUpon advice works wonders for me. I’ve seen a gradual increase in my viewership since I began utilizing it. Thanks for the heads-up, Bearman, and it’s good to see you again.
You see me?? Damn’t wait while I close the blinds.
I can still see you.
Every few days I get a few stumbles and every few updates I suddenly get an unexplained flurry from facebok. I still don’t know what triggers it. If I knew, I’d be able to reproduce it for every strip.
Twitter doesn’t seem to work that well for me…
I haven’t gotten much from twitter either as far as traffic goes but it does help to get a few new regular readers now and then.