Digg summary

[trisha]

I?ve been trying to learn more about Digg for a while now ? the following is the information I?ve collected so far from various sources (much of it from the Digg Bootcamp today). I apologize for not keeping track of or giving credit to where I got the information from. And I realize that some of this may be basic stuff to many, but hopefully helpful to some.

If you see anything in here that you think is incorrect ? please let me know. Or if you have anything to add also, that would be appreciated.

The Typical Digg user:
1) is male
2) is relatively young
3) is smart, or at least thinks he is
4) loves new technology
5) is skeptical of authority

Things typical Diggers don?t like:
1) pop up ads
2) ads in content
3) ad overload
4) thin content
5) slow loading sites
6) blogs about blogs
7) SEOs
8 ) spelling and grammar mistakes

To Digg or not to Digg?:

Only try getting your very best and most diggable stuff dugg

What is diggable? Stuff that typical Digg users would like (see above). Some examples of topics ? gaming, politics, Mac, linux, anti-authority stuff, cool or new technology, etc.

Stuff you need to do ahead of time:

1) Have a small group of people you know very well and can ask to submit posts for you and leave comments. Maybe make an arrangement between a small group of people who can take turns doing the submissions for each other.

2) Build a network of people you really know through email, twitter, IM, etc. and feel comfortable asking for help

3) Build a network of people at Delicious, Reddit, SU, Digg.

One possible Digg strategy:

1) Plan to get your post on reddit, Delicious and/or SU first. From what I?ve read it sounds like it can help a lot if your post first does well at reddit, Delicious and SU. Some Digg users will find it on their own through these sites. Plus it is easier to do well at these sites than it is Digg and you may very well get good traffic from these sources alone. (I?ve heard but can?t swear its true that you can get to the front page of Delicious with 100 bookmarks within 24 hours.)

2) Ask someone you know very well to submit your post to SU, Delicious, Reddit and Digg. (I?ve heard its bad to submit your own stuff to SU, and that while you can do it at Digg it is frowned upon. I don?t know about Delicious and Reddit. It certainly won?t hurt to have someone else do it though. )

3) Make it easy for the person submitting by including relevant information in the Digg link by your post. You want to make sure your post is submitted to the right topic and do your best to insure it gets a good description. Yes, the submitter could change it, but probably won?t.

No, this won?t work if you plan to add the Digg badge thing on every post automatically ? but is every post you write really Digg worthy? And if they are (it is possible) are you really able to produce them so frequently that it is too much work to add info in manually?

Go to this page: http://digg.com/tools/integrate - towards the bottom to see the list of categories. (Lots of other code variations there too).

Here's code to get the badge to appear in upper left of post ? just fill in where needed:

<p style="float:left; padding-right:20px;"><script type="text/javascript"></script><script type="text/javascript">
digg_topic = "topic name";
digg_url = "your url";
digg_title = "the title";
digg_bodytext = "description of the post";</script>
<script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script></p>

4) Start contacting your network ? but don?t contact the same people each time for each thing you want Dugg ? try to mix it up a little. I?ve heard its not good if all the people who digg something for you are your friends on Digg either.

- send some people to the post url to Digg it
- send some people to the digg page
- send some people to digg from a shout
- send some people to digg from upcoming (if/when you can get there)

Other:

How many Diggs do you need? Based on what I?ve read in various places it seems you need 200+ within 24 hours to get to the Digg front page.

If people leave comments on Digg that is supposed to help too ? you may need to call upon your network of friends to get some comments left.

Another approach could be to contact a Digg power-user to help out, if you know one well enough.

Things that still aren?t clear to me about Digg:

1) what day of the week is best to submit? I?m guessing Tues ? Thurs. Monday people are too busy. Friday people just want to go home ? or maybe they have more time to goof off? What do you think?

2) What time of day is best to get it all started? I?ve heard Digg gets higher traffic around 8, noon and 4 ET. So would first thing in the morning be best?

3) Which topics/categories are easiest to do well in? i.e. which ones need the least amount of diggs to get on the front page?

4) Is it better to hide them or let your incoming shouts be seen?

5) How do you get a post to do well in reddit or delicious to start with?

My situation:

For me, after spending some time researching Digg, I don?t know how useful it would be for me. Most of what I write would not be diggable being that it's a women's site. I do have some ideas for posts that fit the description of something diggable though. But I don?t know if its it worth all the work or not. I would be mostly interested in it for the links - but maybe there are better, faster, easier ways of getting more links? What do you think?

One (almost) last thought -anyone here familiar with Tina Su and her blog http://thinksimplenow.com/? She gets tons of diggs. She has lots of subscribers too. Scroll down to bottom (of any of her posts) - http://thinksimplenow.com/relationsh...-relationship/ - to see digg badge. As far as I can tell, she gets a lot of her diggs by contacting individual people of a network she has built up for herself through email ? see interview at problogger: http://www.problogger.net/archives/2...s-in-120-days/ That strategy seems to work very well for her, but so far for me it has been extremely time consuming building up a network of people one at a time. What do you think? I'm willing to work - but they saying working smarter is better than working harder. I don't know how to work smarter in this situation.


And as long as I'm here talking about this ? if anyone here at the Hive needs a stumble, digg, etc ? please let me know. Email me, or @ me - http://twitter.com/trisha_ifw or contact me some other way. Unless the post is against something I believe in ? I would be happy to help you out. I will try to follow up with requests within 24 hours, but may not always be able to do that. If you want something submitted to digg, please let me know the topic, a description, etc. - or embed it in the link - because I am bad at writing those things. And if you should feel inclined to do so ? please subscribe to my feed ? there might be something I write about that guys would want to read too! (and yes I know there are some women here, but it seems like mostly guys)

[rdash]

Wow!! Great job, Trisha. Maybe this should be published somewhere.

[jdarney]

3) Which topics/categories are easiest to do well in? i.e. which ones need the least amount of diggs to get on the front page?

4) Is it better to hide them or let your incoming shouts be seen?

5) How do you get a post to do well in reddit or delicious to start with?

3) The easiest categories are the ones in which nothing has gone front page in awhile. It varies. I could just say that the tennis category is pretty easy, and it is 99% of the time, but if you are trying to get a post up the weekend the final two rounds of Wimbledon are going on then its going to be tougher as Wimbledon news will be hitting the front page. But if you see a category that is lightly used and nothing has gone popular in a couple of days, then it's probably ripe for the taking.

4) Hide your incoming shouts

5) Reddit is the easiest social news site out there if you have content that fits. You just need to prime it with 10 votes or so and it'll usually take off from there as long as it fits the community.

[jeffc]

Hey Trisha, that is an awesome summary of what the social media bootcamp with all sorts of excellent information. You should put that in a blog post

[ryan]

I personally disagree with this:

1) Plan to get your post on reddit, Delicious and/or SU first.

If you submit to reddit, delicious or SU first, you run the real risk of having a terrible user submitting it to Digg. Then you have no shot at Digg.

I would always be very intentional about getting a strong user to submit to Digg. Then, since a story usually doesn't POP on digg for a good 10-24 hours, you can spend the next 10-24 hours promoting on SU, reddit, etc.

And, I always promote on delicious *after* I'm done with a digg campaign. Once a story pops I replace the Digg button with a delicious button.

[trisha]

rdash, jeffc - thanks!

jdarney - thanks and my shouts are now hidden! Only 10 for Reddit? wow

ryan - I suppose I generalized too much there. I meant more to try to get it doing well there first, since it would be easier and maybe digg people would find it on those sites. How do you define 'a strong user' and why do you wait with delicious?

[christew]

I replied here: http://performancing.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1125