Over 75% of consumers use social media in some form, so if you're not using it you may be missing out on a big opportunity. Getting involved doesn't have to be complicated. Here are three things you can do to get in the game.

Blogs are easy to create and easy to maintain - with tools like wordpress or blogspot, you don't even need to consult a webmaster. The key is to create high-quality content that is relevant to your target audience. Keep it consistent and keep it real. Other than that, just have fun with it! Some suggestions for blog posts include:

Facebook is one of the most popular sites in the world (along with Google). To get started, simply create a Facebook page where you can post updates, link to your blog articles, and receive feedback from your customers. As you post relevant content and interact with customers on your Facebook page, your fan base and your revenue will grow.

If a picture is worth a 1,000 words, a video must be worth 1,000 pictures (and 1,000,000 words)! Plus videos get priority in search engine results and allow you to show a little personality. Start with a company overview or a product demonstration and build your video library from there.

Are you aware of the importance of viral success? If the term doesn’t mean anything to you, you’d better get on top of learning about your marketing or you’re never going to make it in the world of dog-eat-dog Internet business. Viral marketing is a term that refers to the way that a marketing campaign is picked up and spread around the world, or at least around the Internet, creating success for a business. Like a virus, word about the business spreads. Viral success is a critical component of business success in today’s world, so you should know the strategies for it if you’re hoping to succeed.

· Laughter

· Love

· Hate

· Anger

· Excitement

· Compassion

· Deep Interest

· Feeling That Someone is an Idiot (not an emotion but this works)

Stop trying to please everyone with safe content and try get people excited, agitated, or laughing. Get people’s blood pumping and get those Diggs.

Social bookmarking. Of course! What better way to spread the word about your work than through sites that are specifically designed for users to spread the word about what they like. Make the most of social bookmarking by getting your content on the best, most appropriate, sites on a regular basis through a targeted social bookmarking campaign. If enough people pick up on your content through these tools, you can see viral success just from this alone.

The idea is very simple. Take advantage of the popularity of a celebrity, fad, newsworthy story, or other highly searched keyword. For example, writing an article about Britney Spears has a higher chance of viral success than an article about dog farts. The below tools will help you find out what the most popular searches are for that day, week, month, and year.

· What is popular today from Google Content - http://current.com/topics/76253632_google_current?sort=currentness

· Google Trends - http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

· Ask.com Top Searches - http://about.ask.com/en/docs/iq/iq.shtml

· Lycos 50 -http://50.lycos.com/

Many webmasters make the mistake of not trying to take advantage of past successful content launches. If you created an article that was hugely successful then you should try making sequels of that article. You can post a Part II, Part III, etc. with useful tips, tools, or further in depth coverage of the same topic. Some ideas for additional things to add to a topic are:

· Online related resources

· Useful tools

· Real world examples

· Video follow-ups

· Discussions about the comments you received regarding that topic

· Extras or goodies

· Post about other articles on the net with opposite views from you and argue the topic

· Interview someone with experience on the topic who has your view

· Interview someone with experience on the topic who has an opposing view and argue your case

If your target market is male, half naked women will really get you far. Sex is known to sell everything from beer, cigarettes, guns, cars, and everything in between. Although sex has nothing to do with any of these things, it peaks the male viewer’s attention enough to listen to or click through to whatever you are promoting. I don’t use this tactic, but I know that it works.

Offer people something valuable for free to get people to come to your site. For example, there are plenty of people who are hungry for useful information on specific topics such as “How to Drive Traffic to Your Site” or “How to Start an eBay Business”. When people are desperate for information, it is easy to get them to download a free ebook. If one person reads your ebook and it is helpful to them, they will tell everyone about it. You will soon have a huge number of people coming to your site to download your free ebook. Of course there will also be people who send other people to your ebook. How will those people know about your web site? They will know your url because your will plaster your url all over that ebook so that people who get your ebook from someone else will visit your site. Essentially, it is one huge advertisement for your site…unless your ebook is a piece of junk. Make sure to write valuable content that actually is helpful to readers, or nobody will send it to anyone else or add a link to your site.

Video is one of the hottest things on the web today so you should be incorporating it into your site. If you create a video that evokes strong emotions, people will share it and share it faaaaaaaaaaaaaast. That’s the essence of viral success. You will know quickly if your video clip is a success. Make sure that you have plenty of CPU and bandwidth available on your server…or it will crash and crash hard.

What sites should you submit your videos to?

Don’t have content for content’s sake. There’s been a big push recently to get as much content as possible on websites so that search engines see keywords in that content. But as users get savvier about the web, they are getting increasingly interested in the quality of content. It’s easy for them to just click away if your content isn’t good, so make sure that you’re not sacrificing the content just to get the right tags and quantity of content on the site. No one is going to spread the word about content that is bad.

People these days love to text one another so give them something short and easy to remember to text to others. Brand yourself with a great phrase that reminds people of who you are and what you do; your own slogan if you will. Make it text-worthy and brief and you’ll see your name cropping up in conversation.

According to a study done by MarketingSherpa, the top viral marketing strategy used by B2C companies in the US last year was email forwarding. I find this hard to believe, but I will explain to you what the process of viral email forwarding is:

You have received email forwarding campaigns before. I get them from my Mom, my Dad, My husband’s Grandmother and his Mother, as well as many of my friends. These are emails that have been forwarded from one person to another to another to another and so forth. Usually the ones from my family are emails that say things like “Don’t honk your car horn because there is a murderer out there who will shoot you if you honk your horn”. Do you get those too? I consider forwarded email junk and throw these emails away, that is why I am not the best person to explain email forwarding to you since I hate these campaigns. The great thing about email forwarding campaigns is that they can continue to accelerate as new groups of people are exposed to the campaign.

Every email that you send out should contain a signature. A signature is at the end of your emails and should look something like this:

You probably won’t get a ton of traffic from this but you never know when someone will see your signature and give you the big break that you have been hoping for. Every little bit helps.

Message boards and chat rooms attract individuals in need of advice. Take advantage of this. Just make sure not to blatantly market your services. This might infuriate people and you could get flamed or kicked out among other things. The way to network in this situation is to be as helpful and knowledgeable as you possibly can. If you are in a graphic design message board and someone is baffled about how to use layers in Photoshop, you could explain the process. You could maybe mention that you use Photoshop daily when running your design business. THEN at the bottom of the page use a signature.

There are Question and Answer sites all over the Internet. By offering answers on these questions, your name (and url) will get around quickly. Some Question / Answer sites are:

Placing a ‘Send Article to Friends’ button on your articles is always a good idea. Webmasters don’t use these types of buttons as often as they used to because of social bookmarking sites. However, if you have room on your article pages, I suggest that you place both social bookmarking and ‘send article to friend’ buttons. On the front page of your site you should place an ‘Invite Friends’ button. If you have room to place it elsewhere, I suggest that you do that too.

You want original content on your site so that you don’t get busted by Google for duplicate content. However, you still want to get your site’s url out on the net. My suggestion to you is to write great content for your own site and never send these articles out to article banks. My suggestion is to keep those great articles on your own site and write mini-articles to send out to article banks. At the bottom of the article, you can write the url to the full article. If this isn’t allowed, then you should write the full url in your signature. Make sure to utilize the signature with information about your site and list your urls. Think of viral marketing as putting your name on the lips of the people that you want to talk about you. Basically, give them something worth talking about – in the form of good content – and give them a way to do it – through a social bookmarking site – and you’ll see viral success.

Facebook is known as a social networking tool for young people. Even more so than MySpace (which has gained recognition in the business world because of its MySpace music channels and other marketing opportunities), Facebook is considered the playground for people who are looking to trade conversation and keep up with friends. As such, Facebook often gets overlooked by people in the business world who find it to be a waste of their time to gossip with their acquaintances about the latest going on in the world. But despite its use by youngsters as a place for gossip, Facebook can be a great tool for driving traffic to your own site and possible generating additional revenue for yourself.

American Chronicle published an article which looks at eight reasons that businesses should consider using Facebook. There are some good points made here including that Facebook users are active users who are on the site every day, meaning that they’re looking for new information and that new information might as well be content on your site that they can drive traffic towards. Another good point is that the nature of Facebook lends itself well to traffic-driving – it’s a naturally viral hotbed where people are sharing information about their likes and dislikes which means that if they like your content, they’ll let other Facebook users know.

And a point not made in the article but which bears some attention is the fact that Facebook is indeed used by a large number of young people. This is important because it is young people who make up a large percentage of consumers interested in purchasing products and services through the web. Those who have part-time jobs or access to parents’ money spend it on the hottest new things. And if you can reach these people and convince them that what you have is that hottest new thing, they’re going to rush traffic to your site to check it out. Now, of course no one is suggesting that you head to Facebook to con kids into buying your stuff. But all good marketing plans look at their target market and if yours can include youngsters, why not spread the word through a social networking site through Facebook?

Another important thing to know about Facebook is that it offers the ability to import your RSS feed to the site. You should always import your RSS feed to your social networking sites because this increases the number of people who are going to subscribe to it. And of course people who are subscribing to your feed are learning about your new content as its available on the site, driving traffic there not just once but every time that you add fresh content. The point should be made that you can’t make good use of Facebook for traffic if you aren’t regularly updating your site content and making sure that it’s of good quality. But if you’re creating stuff that people are going to want to read, Facebook is one of the many ways that you can let people know that it’s available to them.

If you don’t yet know what social bookmarking is, you’re missing out on a powerful tool for networking with others online. Think this doesn’t apply to you? Social bookmarking is more than just a way to make some Internet friends and pass some time. It’s the way that websites are getting noticed today which means that it’s the way that your online business or blog makes money. No matter how big or small your website is, social bookmarking can increase the traffic to that site and get people interested in whatever it is that you’re doing. And if you don’t know how to do it, you’re going to get left behind because in the world of Web 2.0, social bookmarking is the common language that everyone is speaking.

But let’s get down to the basics. Social bookmarking takes place inside of particular websites. You join them as a user under whatever name you’d like and you can create a profile there. It sounds a little bit like MySpace or Facebook which is why many people think that they’re just a fun social tool. But true social bookmarking sites are different because they let each user archive information about their favorite web pages. You can create lists of information about where to find your favorite books, read your favorite blogs, or find your favorite locations on a city map.

Other users on the site can access this information, searching it through various methods including topics and tags which you create. So, you might create a whole series of information that you tag with “music” and then users of the social bookmarking site can sort your information by that tag and find all of what you’ve posted under it. This might still sound like a thing for high school kids to do when they’re bored, but it’s actually a powerful tool for directing traffic to certain sites.

What happens is that certain users on any social bookmarking site gain a lot of credibility on the site. This is usually because they post frequently, update their bookmarks regularly and provide people with content that is of interest. People on the site start paying attention to the suggestions made by this powerful user. And they lead their friends and other contacts to what this user is doing, increasing the power of that person’s suggestion. Because of this, you can use social bookmarking skills to gain credibility on the site and then direct people to the things that you want them to site – like your website or blog.

When it comes down to it, social bookmarking is the voice of the masses. This is one of the key characteristics of the Web 2.0 world in which users are generating and directing the content on Internet sites. Anyone with a profile on a social bookmarking site can have some input into what sites people are visiting on the World Wide Web. At a very basic level, social bookmarking can direct you to some interesting and useful information. But at a more complex level, it can be a tool that you use on a regular basis to improve your business and influence the people who use that site.

Reddit is one of the social bookmarking sites that relies heavily on your interaction with the user community on the site. Reddit uses a point system in which users can vote on each post; the posts with the most points get pushed to Reddit’s home page for all to see. But Reddit is even more complex than this basic voting system implies; there are also ways to discuss the posts and to vote on the comments that are left on the posts which can affect their visibility as well. In order to be able to use Reddit to effectively direct traffic to your website, you need to get a handle on the voting system and user interaction that drives this particular social bookmarking tool.

In order to start using Reddit, you simply need to go to the site and register for an account. There are no toolbars to install and no confirmation emails to get you started which makes this a very easy site to sign up with. But once you’ve done that, you need to spend a significant amount of time networking on the site in order to gain popularity on the site and get traffic to head over to your site from there. The first thing that you should do is to begin submitting websites to Reddit. You should submit your website as well as relevant quality pages on your website (particular blog posts for example).

Next, you need to start meeting other Reddit users. This is best done by getting involved in discussions that are going on about other people’s posts. Do a search to find posts that are similar to your own and work your way into the discussions there by leaving comments. Be aware that your comments can be voted down so you don’t just want to spam posts with your own links. You want to leave interesting comments that show that you read the posts on which you are commenting. For this reason, it’s better to get involved in just a few discussions at a time and to contribute well to them.

You should know that Reddit is somewhat specialized in the kind of content that is found there. There are “subreddits” which are kind of like major topics that are of interest to Reddit users. The popularity of these varies depending on the day but top categories usually include programming, science and politics. If your content doesn’t relate to these categories or ones that would be of interest to people who enjoy these categories, you might not be able to get the attention of Reddit users. If that’s the case, you should consider using a different social bookmarking site instead of this one.

However, Reddit does get a fair amount of traffic, so if you have regular or occasional posts on your site or blog that are relevant to Reddit, you should think about using the site. It allows you to get into some interesting discussion which can prompt additional posts that will then be seen by Reddit users. The interaction that’s necessary to make it work can be time-consuming but it can also pay off in high traffic directed to your site.

Below you will find listed various tools that will help you get notified and alerted about stories that you want to hear about.

How to Win at the Digg Game - Tips by Top Digg Users - How Top Digg Users Get to The Front Page on a Daily Basis

Digg.com is one of the biggest social bookmarking sites currently in use. Because of its popularity, it can be a great site to use for driving traffic to your own website or blog. But because of its popularity, it can also be a difficult social bookmarking site to break into. After all, there are so many people on there throwing up posts that it can be easy to not get noticed on Digg. Still, if you can access the site and use it to your advantage, Digg is a terrific tool for getting more people to see the content that you want them to see. This article is an aggregation of tips from top Diggers themselves.

Here are a large number of tips for using Digg.com for driving traffic to your site.

When you are creating a Digg account, you will benefit from creating a memorable username. I tend to remember users who stole celebrity names and people who have created humorous names. Just remember not to create a spammy name that tells people you are just there to get traffic to your site, such as diggmenowplease.

One of the articles that I read stated that building up your profile is by far the most important factor that will carry a Diggers success or failure. According to the article on AdityaSpeaks.com, the 5 most important factors for a successful Digg profile are (the most important point is number 3) :

People will recognize you by your avatar. Don’t pass on an opportunity to get more people clicking on your stories. Put a face to your name. Try to find an image that is either very funny, very cute, or find a picture of a gorgeous woman. You are trying to get people talking about you and your avatar so take this seriously. Find or create an avatar that matches your personality and one that is either very humorous, super weird, or just really cool. I found a lot of funny avatars and avatar tools…you can see the list on this page.

Digg users don’t like it when you submit our own stuff. It is okay to digg your own stories, but you should try to get someone else to submit your stories for you. The submitter should appear to not have any visual connection to you or your sites. If the Digg community finds a connection, you might be blocked or banned.

The only way to be the very first to post a news topic, is to stay notified of the news and hot topics online. I you have subscribed to rss feeds, utilize news ticker, use social aggregators, and subscribe to news alerts, then you are probably doing the best that you can. I suggest subscribing to a select few RSS feeds or you will end up being overwhelmed. You can slowly add more RSS feeds in to the mix as time goes on. I suggest also using social aggregators such as PopURLs, DoggDot, NetVibes, or Reddiggulo.us as your start page, or at least visit them often. Another idea is to subscribe to news alerts from top news sites, top news aggregators, and niche sites.

If you are having problems finding a site or article to submit to Digg, then look no further then your own StumbleUpon tool bar. I find the craziest stuff in StumbleUpon.

Just like any site or news source, this site has a trend of liking a certain type of article and disliking other types of articles. For example, Diggers don’t tend to like articles about doing better on Digg, but Sphinn users eat it up. On the other hand, Digg users love funny news, news about the iPhone, Digg usability, and Paris Hilton. However, Sphinn users hate stories about Paris Hilton. So what is my point? Don’t submit articles that don’t fit the Digg genre or you will set yourself up to fail.

Before you are even ready to make your first post, you need to research to find some news sources that are updated frequently, but that you don’t see often on Digg.

Try to get on to Digg at least once a day. Becoming a top user on Digg is a lot of work. You can’t just join, submit a few stories, digg a few posts, and somehow become a top user. Like everything else in life, hard work and determination will get you to where you want to go. Pencil Digg into your busy schedule and try to digg and comment on a few stories.

Keep an eye out for new upcoming stories that you think will go hot and be one of the first people to digg and comment on it. Digging and commenting on new upcoming stories is the way to get noticed. Think about it. After you submit a story, don’t you additively watch that story to see how it is going to fare? Don’t you always notice the first user who comments on your story? Of course you do, because you have been anxiously awaiting a positive comment. Well, other members feel the same way. That is why this tactic works.

Subscribing to Digg’s RSS feed is the best way to stay on top of things in Digg. This also helps you to stay acquainted with the current popular trends.

In order to get to Digg’s homepage, you need to submit a LOT of stoires. Create a favorites folder and call it something like ‘LinkBait’ … ‘DiggBait’ … ‘Diggables’ or something like this. Place in this folder sites that you will check regularly to see if there is anything worth submitting to Digg. Include the obvious sites, such as ‘Google News‘, ‘Reddit‘, ‘Netscape‘, Mashable, BoingBoing, ArsTechnica, TechCrunch, Technorati Top, and ‘PopURLs‘. But, then also place not so obvious source URLs in this page as well. Submit stories as often as you can and you will start doing well in no time.

Also, Diggers tend to be interested in informational articles and stories. So if you see an article that is informational, such as top 10 Tutorials on Building a Light Bulb out of a Piece of Steak or Top List of Free Tutorial Sites. If the story has ‘Top 10′ in it, the article will probably do pretty well. Diggers love lists.

If you find a great useful tool for web users, you should definitely submit it. What is even better? A top ten list of web tools would be even better.

There have been tons of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton posts that were hugely popular on Digg. Both of these ladies are synonymous with ‘Hot’ submissions (at least Paris is). There also have been many hugely controversial political posts as well. Submit something controversial and you are almost definitely going to do well with that post.

Picture and video diggs do really well on Digg lately. Find a really interesting, funny, or strange picture or video and submit it. You are sure to do well if you pick a good headline for the story.

Digg tends to be a very liberal site and most of the users tend to think that Bush is an idiot and that Fox News is spreading blatant lies. Post an article about George Bush, the Bush administration, or Fox News and you are almost guaranteed to go hot with your story.

Commentaries and Opinionated Articles Tend to Do Badly on Digg (Unless it is extremely controversial)

If you want to post commentaries on Digg, be prepared to not get anywhere with your story. However, controversial articles do great.

There are a lot of clique / fan topics on Digg. There isn’t a list of Digg subculture topics, you just need to find out what these topics are. Some of these topics are Star Wars, Ron Paul, Linux, Wii, and Apple. If you know of more subcultures on Digg, please let me know and I will list them. Almost any good article or news item listed about one of these fan-base topics will do well.

Many people thing that Digg is run by a small number of people and that new Digg users don’t have a chance to make it to the front page. This isn’t completely true. Yes, it is much harder for a newbie to get on to the front page of Digg, but it has been done. Digg not only counts the number of votes, but it also takes in to account how many friends that Digg user has. Newer users’(those with few friends) votes count more than a user who has a lot of friends. On the other hand, a story that gets a large amount of votes gets shown on the ‘most voted’ page of ‘upcoming‘ stories, which puts it in front of more potential voters more easily.

Try to time your digg submissions at times when you know that is an active time for your friends. The more friends that you have online, the more likely that they will see your upcoming story and digg it.

Another good tip, especially if you don’t have a lot of Digg friends yet, is to submit your stories in the middle of the night when there is little competition. This way your story has some time to get noticed and dugg. Try to time your Diggs for about 7 - 9 AM Eastern time (GMT -4). Use Dugg Analytics to view statistically what time is best for you to submit your articles.

Don’t submit your own stories until you are able to get 20 or more Diggs from another site’s story. Also, if you start out using other site’s stories, you build up your karma with other members. Nobody will think that you are using Digg to promote your own stories if you start out submitting other site’s stories. Here is a story called ‘The Dangers of Digg Self-Submission‘.

This tip seems obvious to me, but it must be said. If you continuously submit already submitted stories, you are in danger of getting your domain and account being banned from Digg. For example, If you use reblog (a software that allows you to use other people’s stories as your blog) then using Digg isn’t for you. You should only be submitting original content. However, if you recap a larger story, but also added commentary and something unique to the story, then it is okay for you to submit that story to Digg. Below, you can see what is stated in Digg’s FAQ. Beware, this doesn’t mean that people don’t break the rules. Yesterday, I saw the same story submitted over and over again about Britney being pregnant with her 3rd child.

That isn’t for us to decide. Sometimes there is a better story from another news outlet. We let our users determine that aspect of duplicate submissions. It is, however, a duplicate story if you submit the same story from the same source.

Digg’s FAQ also says: “We strongly discourage the submission of duplicate stories as it only steals credit from the first submitter.”

Unless people find your article’s title interesting, they won’t click on them. Even if your article is just so-so, if you spin the title in a way that makes it sound exciting, you will get people to click through to read your story. Diggitizer is a cool (and funny if you ask me) tool that helps you create a good title for your digg stories. Maybe this tool will help you if you are stuck for a good story title. Some tips are to use the words ‘Cool, Top, Best, New, How, Free, Launch, and First.’ Read this article for writing quality Digg titles … and … Here is a good article on how to write a title for Digg stories.

Also, if you are submitting someone else’s article, it is usually better to create your own catchy title. Probably the author of the article wasn’t creating a title specifically for Diggers. You probably know better what titles work on Digg, so I suggest you create a new title for the Digg post.

Titles are very important to grab the Digg users in, but please don’t forget about the description. The reader wants to know more before they click on the link to the story. It is acceptable to just copy and paste the first paragraph of the story, but I usually prefer a more to the point approach. I want to know quickly whether or not I am interested, and most Diggers feel the same way. I would suggest highlighting the key points of the story in only one or two sentences.

You might have noticed that some categories move way too fast for your articles (such as Offbeat News) to even have a chance to get Dugg. Try finding a category (that matches your article’s content) that moves a bit slower, such as Technology > Gadgets or Sports > Golf. However, don’t get caught putting your story in a category that doesn’t even match your content or you will find your story buried or even banned.

Some of the articles that I read said that content was the most important part of the Digg process. Other articles said that the better the content, the worst the story does. I have found both to be true. It seems like the stupidest stories get to the top sometimes. And I have posted some amazing articles that went unnoticed. It is very frustrating sometimes.

Digg users hate when you submit multiple pages from a multi-page story. You might even be banned for spamming. If you find a multiple page story that you want to submit, then find the first page of the story and submit that page to Digg.

Don’t overuse keywords in a spammy way. Some people spam Digg with keyword heavy submissions so that they will get traffic from the Digg search engine. Don’t do this, you will get banned anyways.

Don’t you hate it when people submit stories in Russian or Japanese and all you see are funky characters?Please don’t be one of those people. LOL.

After you post your story to Digg, your story lands up in the Upcoming section that you posted to. If you posted to Technology > Design, then look for your story in Technology>Design and then click on ‘Upcoming’ in the upper right corner. Watch for your story on the right side bar called ‘Hot in All Topics’ if you are on the front upcoming page or ‘Hot in Design’ if you are on the Technology > Design Upcoming page. When you hit 30 - 40 Diggs, you usually appear on the front page ‘Hot in All Topics’ side bar. When your story disappears off of the ‘Hot in All Topics’ or ‘Hot in Design’ sidebar, it has either gone ‘Popular’ or was buried. DON’T BURY OTHER PEOPLE’S STORIES TO GET YOURS TO THE TOP!!! This silliness will get you banned, not to mention that it is just ethically wrong. However, you can bury articles that you feel are nonsense or that are spammy. When your story is in the hot stage, you should play the upcoming page. Digg good articles, bury bad articles, and comment on as many as you can. This will get more people to digg your article because people notice that you are being active in the community.

Votes count more when they come in quick succession. Try to get your friends and family members to digg your submissions within a 30 - 60 minute window.

After your submitted article starts to get a few Diggs, make a comment on the Digg to get the conversation rolling. Don’t say something like ‘this is the coolest story’. Instead, say something meaningful, interesting, or funny. Continue to comment as more people do to keep the conversation going. This is not only a good way to keep people interested in the submitted story, but it also builds up your credibility, and possible friendships with other Diggers.

If you have something to say, then say it. If you are a very quiet person, and you don’t ever have anything to say, then this is a problem. You need to force yourself to make comments on stories. The reason that it is important to comment on Digg stories is so that other users start remembering your username and avatar. You want to become branded in everyone’s However, remember that commenting on a story won’t count for anything for the story if you don’t remember to digg it too. Here is a cool tool to track your comments and how many diggs each comment received.

Making friends has become the most important strategy to becoming a top user on Digg. Even if you aren’t inherently a social person, you will need to become one to win at the Digg game. On other social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook, there’s no easy way to contact Digg members, browse their photo gallery or break the ice first. The way that you make friends on Digg is by looking at member’s statistics, comments, and stories and forming your opinion that way. It takes a bit of getting used to.

Seek out Digg top diggers and get their attention. Top diggers have put in a lot of work to become top diggers and they demand your respect. Make sure to get on their good side. Make them your friends, digg their submitted stories, and comment on their Digg submissions. You should also visit their blogs and make positive comments and suggestions on their blog. I also suggest placing top diggers on your blogroll to really get their attention. Another good idea is to review their blog in a positive light or interview them. If this top digger is on sites like MyBlogLog, add them to your network. Find out where these users hang out online, such as forums, blogs, communities. Start hanging out in those places as well. You need to then take part in those communities too and make helpful, friendly, and maybe even funny comments and observations. Try as hard as you can to build a relationship with this Digger by building not only your credibility but by trying to show your similarities to that person (not blatantly just in casual conversations). Never ask these users to Digg you as you don’t want them to know that you are looking for Diggs from them. Let your great content speak for itself.

Frequently check to see who has befriended you. If someone has added you as their friend, check out their profile before adding them as a friend. You can try to add them to see if they Digg your stories, after all, they did just add you as a friend so they might like your content. You can always dump them later if they don’t digg your content.

Every once in a while, you need to reduce the number of friends that you have. Yes, it sounds strange, but it is true. Like I said earlier in this article, the more friends you have, the less each vote counts. In other words, if you get 30 votes with only 5 friends, your votes will count more than a person who also gets 30 votes but has 300 friends. You should unfriend people who don’t Digg your content. You should keep top Digg users and people who befriended you, but other than that, I would prune the rest. Use this tool to find out which members are Digging your content. Some of the top users have as little as a few dozen friends, so don’t be afraid to cut down your list of friends a bit. Only 1 out of every 100 Digg users are active participants in the community. You are trying to find the needles in the haystack.

Adding friends is essential to become a successful Digger. Your first instinct may be to add as many friends as you can. Don’t go adding huge numbers of friends though, instead be very selective. Look at members who have digged your past or current stories. Take a look at this member’s Digg stats. Have any of their diggs gone popular? Do they have plenty of submissions? Do they have plenty of comments? If they do, I usually make them friends. You should also make friends with some or all of the top Diggers . One reason for this is so that you can follow their lead. See how they do it…they are obviously doing something right. For example, check out their titles, their descriptions, what types of articles they submit, etc. Use Dugg Analytics to view stats about Digg members. The good news is that once you start hitting the home page of Digg, you won’t need to search for friends anymore, they will come and seek you out. Only 1 out of every 100 Digg users is active in the Digg community. Your job is to find those needles in the haystack. You can even add the #1 Digger, Kevin Rose , or the #1 digger Mr. BabyMan. He has a 100% Popular ratio … he is the only one on Digg who can boast that percentage. What does an ideal friend look like? Take it from Brett Borders on Copy Brighter, your ideal friend does the following …

Note: When you add a friend on Digg, you will see their submissions, but they won’t see yours. When you add a friend, you are becoming their fan unless they add you as a friend too. If this user adds you as a friend, then you will both be mutual friends and both of you will see each other’s submissions.

For the most part, fans are the Digg members who like your Diggs and your submissions. Make friends with the people who are fans of you. After you both have befriended each other, you will both be able to check out each other’s submissions.

Don’t just blindly Digg all of your friends’ articles. This is very tempting to do since you are a busy person and you have a lot of other things to do. However, you will more than likely get banned if you keep doing this over a period of time. Instead, only click through to the articles that you find interesting or that already have a number of Diggs. Also, take the time to click through to make a meaningful comment (not just - great or liked it).

Don’t shout ‘Digg this’ to all of your friends. Instead build up a report with all of your ‘friends’ or better yet, become actual online friends. Also, if the same people keep digging your stories, you will get caught. Also if your friends digg your stories too quickly, it will appear unnatural and you will get caught.

In order to be successful with Digg, you can’t just send superficial messages to other Digg members and Digg friends. An example of a superficial Digg message is “Digg my stories and I will Digg yours”. Instead try to make a deeper impact on this user. An example of a deeper conversation starter would be “I saw your post on business card design ideas and I really enjoyed it. I am adding you as a friend because I see that you have dugg a lot of stories that I find very useful. Are you a designer too?” Although it might feel like it will take forever to make friends this way, if you want to become successful at this, then try to at least make some friends this way.

After you have added some friends, you will need to stalk them and Digg their content. How do you do this? It is easy, just do the following:

Browse through and Digg all of your friend’s stories that you like (don’t leave any of your friend’s out … if you find that you consistently don’t like one of your friend’s stories, then find a more compatible friend.

After you continuously Digg your friend’s stories, they will take notice and reciprocate. If one of your friends doesn’t catch on after a while, maybe they should be on your friend’s list.

If you are going to be a top Digger, then you will need to grow a tough shell. Some Diggers are very rude and they will personally attack everything you like about yourself. Don’t take everything to heart. These Diggers are either trying to get attention, are trolls, or are just plain mean. Some things that these people say are true though, so try to learn from your past mistakes.

There are several different ways to get attention on Digg, some people prefer to be jerks and some prefer to be nice.

I hate this one, but since I am aggregating everything that I found out about Digg, I am going to repeat it for you. I am against this tip, but if you aren’t, then go ahead and try it. Be rude and people will notice you. Beware, some people may block you and then they won’t see any of your stories. Try to create mortal enemies to get even more attention.

Trolls are jerks, so don’t be one. It is very frustrating when you work for days on an article and then someone says nasty things about your writing style, the design of your page, or other personal attacks. People will think you are a jerkhole and they will block your user account so that they don’t see your posts at all. You catch more flies with honey, so be sweet. Be nice even when others are being mean and heartless. Maybe Digg members will stop and think twice before burying your story to raise the rank of their own story if they know that you have been kind to them. You never know, it might work.

Using Digg along with StumbleUpon is a good idea. Add a digg button to the article that you are going to submit to Digg (if it is on your site that is) and then submit the article to Digg and then to StumbleUpon. Hopefully the two together will work to your benefit.

If you are going to try to get a page digged to the front page, you need to worry about The Digg Effect. Simply said, The Digg Effect is when your site crashes from so many Diggers visiting your site at once. The way that your server goes down is that your server gets suddenly hit with a spike of thousands of requests, overloading your server. Read this article for many ideas for Digg proofing your site. Also, if your site cannot handle a popular Digg, then you should consider first mirroring your site. Visit The Coral Content Distribution Network. CoralCDN is a free peer-to-peer content distribution network, comprised of a world-wide network of web proxies and nameservers. It allows a user to run a web site that offers high performance and meets huge demand, and all for free. There is also a possibility that your site’s cache was picked up by DuggMirror, but only if you were listed in popular upcoming stories long enough, and even then it isn’t always a sure thing.

Enhance your Digg experience with Digg Tools like Smart Digg Button, Digg Alerter, and the powerful Social Media for Firefox browser tool … and here are more Firefox Digg tools. Use Dugg Analytics to analyze Digg data…it is an amazing tool. Also, you should read this article - 29 Awesome Tools Built on the Digg API.

Even though there is software and web sites that offer services to allow you to game Digg and other social networking sites, doesn’t mean that it is acceptable. Digg is a community, a place where users can get together to discuss the things that they do and don’t like on the web. Despite the fact that many people on Digg to promote their own online work, Digg is still widely used for the purpose of community and online sharing. People who violate Digg’s community rules will essentially be shunned by Digg members and ultimately banned. Read Subvert and Profit. It is an article about the site Subvert and Profit, a site that games Digg. The premise of the article is that if you use gaming systems, your article might continue to get diggs, but Digg will bury your story anyways. So gaming the system isn’t worth it.

If your submitting your own content, then you should add a Digg button to all of your articles. Adding a Digg button / widget to all of your articles, gives each of them a higher chance on Digg, and as an added perk, you are helping to increase the number on Digg. Take a look at this page on Digg to find the perfect widget for your site.

If your story was buried or just totally missed by everyone, learn why this happened. Did you submit a lame story? Was your title not enticing enough? Maybe you submitted in the wrong category? Did you submit a story at peak hours when there is way too much interesting stories to compete? Do you need to make more friends? Be honest, is it a lame story? There are some Digg tools to help you find out why you were buried, such as Digg Spy, Digg Alerter and The Bury Brigade Exists. You might be surprised to find out that there were just vindictive webmasters trying to get above you so they worked together to bury your story. This just happened to me yesterday. Also here are some interesting links. Top 50 Buriers in the Bury Brigade .. Digg’s Dark Future and Online Censorship .. Digg’s Failure and When No Moderation Doesn’t Work .. Digg’s Bury System is Being Abused .. An Open Letter to Kevin Rose ..and a post on Diggs blog .. On Buries and Blocking.

Try posting at least once a day. The only way to succeed is to try until you get it right. And after you get it right, keep doing it right (easier said than done). Your persistence will pay off, I promise you. If you don’t give up, you will find yourself being a top digger. Don’t give up. You will have your up days and your down days.

Sources: Here are the blogs and articles that I found some of this useful information from (also used forums and communities)