If you're like many business owners, you're aware of social networking as a business building strategy. You may even participate in a few social networking or social media websites like Facebook and Twitter. This is a great start. However, StumbleUpon is a commonly overlooked and potentially more powerful social site. It offers business owners many unique advantages that other social sites do not offer.

StumbleUpon is used to drive traffic specifically to your website. Yes, you can post links in Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. However, StumbleUpon is a bookmarking site as well. That means that when you rate or review a website, the thumbs up or thumbs down is permanent and it becomes not only part of your profile but also part of the profile of those who subscribe to your profile. It has the power to multiply traffic and generate links to your website.

StumbleUpon has significantly better privacy rules and restrictions. You're likely aware that Facebook is a privacy nightmare. While it's still a good business building tool, many people are dropping off of Facebook because of the way they manage privacy, or rather the way they don't manage privacy. Nothing is private on Facebook. SPAM and hackers are also a common problem with many social networking sites.

StumbleUpon enables you to share your website reviews. What if you could bookmark a page, even a page on your own website, and have that posted on your Facebook and Twitter profile? Pretty cool, right? StumbleUpon enables you to share your reviews and customize the post so you can add content before or after the link. You can also share with email addresses.

StumbleUpon makes it easy to interact. With a quick toolbar download for your website browser, you can build your business while you're surfing the net. You can Stumble while you're at a coffee shop, and while you're watching television. The toolbar is there, right on your browser. You don't have to go to a separate website or page and you don't have to use a separate service or tool. And there are toolbars available for nearly all web browsers, even a Stumble Upon Google Chrome toolbar!

StumbleUpon makes it easy to tag your pages so your content is easy to find and user friendly. And it doesn't require any super technical keyword research. In fact, broad keywords tend to work best. For example, if your website sells dog treats, you can tag your information as dog treats, dog care, dog nutrition, dog food and so on.

As a user of StumbleUpon, you're able to find unique and quality content when you search by subject or user. You can also Stumble videos.

Finally, StumbleUpon makes it easy to see what your competition is up to! All you have to do is subscribe to their Stumbles or profile and you're good to go. You can also keep track of your target audience and the things they're interested in.

StumbleUpon lets you both create traffic for your website while at the same time lets you build a community of followers. You can interact, build your brand and drive traffic to your website. It's a win win for business owners.