Kamis, 03 Februari 2011
Win at the Digg Game
Posted by Bambang | Kamis, 03 Februari 2011 | Category:
Digg,
social networking
|
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.
Create a Catchy and Memorable Name
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) :
- Number of stories submitted.
- Number of stories which became popular.
- Popularity Ratio which is the percentage of your submitted stories which became popular. Kevin Rose is the only person who has 100% popularity ratio. Means all the stories which he submitting went popular. Well for those who don’t know Kevin Rose is the founder - CEO if Digg.
- The number of stories you dugg.
- The number of distinct people who viewed your profile.
Brand Yourself by Using an Avatar
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.
Diggers Don’t Like When You Digg Your Own Articles
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.
Use Feeds, News Alerts, and Social Aggregators to Stay Current on Very Current News Topics.
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.
Use Your Stumble Toolbar to Find Cool Sites to Submit to Digg
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.
Know The Interests of the Digg Crowd
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.
Choose Your Target Source Sites
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.
Stay Active
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.
Digg Stories When They Are New
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.
Subscribe to Digg’s RSS Feed
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.
Submitting a Lot of Stories
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.
Stories From Major News Outlets are Hot
Stories from the major news outlets tend to be the most popular stories.
Diggers Tend to Like Certain Type of Stories
Diggers Tend to Like Informational Top 10 Lists
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.
Pictures and Videos Do Really Well on Digg
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.
Statistics in Title and Description Tend to Do Well
Stats in the title and description tend to do well even if you can’t back up the numbers.
Bush Bashing and Fox News Bashing Almost Always Works on Digg
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.
Digg Uses an Algorithm That Not Only Counts Votes.
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 Diggs.
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.
Try to Submit Stories on Off Peak Hours.
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.
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‘.
Don’t Submit Stories to Digg if it is a ReBlog / ReCap of a Larger Story.
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.
Is it a duplicate story if I submit a similar story but from a different source?
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.”
Make Sure to Use a Catchy Title for Your Digg Stories.
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.
Digg Story Descriptions are Very Important Too.
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.
Place Your Article in a Non Competitive Category.
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.
Content is King … or Maybe Not?
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.
Don’t Submit Every Page of a Multi-Page Story.
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 Over Use Keywords.
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 Submit a Story that is written in Greek.
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.
You Have Submitted a Story and Your Story is Listed in Upcoming … Now What?
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 the Quicker They Come.
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.
Comment on Articles That You Have Submitted.
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.
Comment AND Digg Stories.
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.
Make Friends, Be Friendly, and Network Away.
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 Top Diggers.
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.
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.
You Don’t Need All of Those Friends, Do You?
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.
Be Selective When Adding Friends on Digg.
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 …
Checks in and uses the site daily.
Diggs a lot of stories.
Checks for stories that their friends submit and diggs them regularly.
Submits stories that you will enjoy following and voting on.
Doesn’t submit way too many stories.
Doesn’t have 50 zillion friends.
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.
Make Friends with Your Fans.
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.
Digging Your Friends’ Stories & Your Friend’s Digging Your Stories.
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.
Superficial Conversation Doesn’t Work.
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.
Follow and Digg Your Friends’ Content.
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:
Go to your profile.
Click on the Friends’ Activity tab up top
Now look at the right side bar and click on submissions
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.
Learn How to Have a Tough Skin.
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.
To Be Nice or To Be Rude.
There are several different ways to get attention on Digg, some people prefer to be jerks and some prefer to be nice.
Be Extremely Rude to Get Attention.
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.
Or Don’t Be a Troll - Stop Being Rude.
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.
StumbleUpon and Digg Together Make a Great Team.
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.
Save Your Site From Going Down with the Digg Effect.
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.
Use Digg Tools to Enhance Your Digg Experience.
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.
Don’t Game the System.
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.
Add a Digg Button / Widget to Your Site.
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.
Learn From Your Past Mistakes.
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, Try, and Try Again.
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)
11 Tips to Enhance Your Digg User Experience (And Hopefully Bring You Front Page Fame)White Hat Digging - 3 Tips and Tricks for Understanding and Submitting to Digg
How to Get to Digg’s Front Page
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