How I Use Digg to Increase My Traffic by Over 5000%
Digg is a social news site where users discover, highlight and promote content that they find interesting or newsworthy. The visitor figures speak for how much people love Digg. Traffic-tracker Compete.com reported that Digg amassed almost 20 million visitors in March 2008.
However, with the massive amount of content online nowadays, it is a tough competition to get ‘dugg’ and a race to make it to the front page! Each story is given a 24 hours frame to collect as many votes to propel it to homepage headline where the top 15 stories get their two hours or so of fame before it gets pushed down the chart by other emerging headlines.
Front liners can gain an increase of over 10,000 to 15,000 unique visitors, while truly sensational stories have generated up to a whopping 200,000.
Other features that make Digg so popular is the ability for users to dis content that they don’t like by ‘burying it’ because it is a bad link, off-topic, duplicated, spam, or even because “it is lame”, an option offered by Digg.
Typically, content like breaking news, how-to guides, news on high profile people, lists and off beat stories get the most votes.
While digging your own content won’t count for much given how big the community is, you can use Digg another way to help with your marketing. With knowledge about Digg, you can utilise these concepts to create and position your content such that it will be popular with ‘Diggers’, search engines and your visitors.
Start off by signing up for a free account on Digg.com, but don’t immediately submit your content. Familiarise yourself with the website and check out the stories that make it to the front page to get an idea of what users like.
Here are some quick suggestions and tips to get you the visibility you want.
- Flame Del.icio.us, Microsoft , Vista or any thing logically except Digg in a single post
- Write something related to Apple, Pleo, Wii or other popular tech gadgets. Extra points if they are unheard rumours which you can create evidence for
- Embed a Youtube Video that shows something contagiously funny
- Hacks and How to – Create “How-to” that can fit a mention to Roomba or Pleo, or even better, hacking a Wii remote to control your Pleo through your Iphone.
- Share your excitement with exclamation marks at the end or “Funny Video!!!!” Extra points if you can squeeze in some bracketed number for some line noise.
- Perform some unusual transformation to any piece of food, or some hot consumer product. E.g. Toasts with Harry Potter effigy or try microwaving a Wii
To maximise the benefits of Digg takes more effort and time. This will require you to use the social networking aspect of Digg and understanding the Digg community well so that your friends can help you generate Diggs and create hype about your content.
However, if played well, Digg can help you increase traffic to your site and give you the exposure you never thought possible. Now dig that?
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