I have recently become addicted to Digg (see my other blog for proof). At first, I thought Digg was all about being another place to promote your blog. The more I use it though, the more I realize how wrong I was. In light of this, I thought I would take a second and give you the REAL skinny on Digg. If you still want to use it to promote your blog, I'll give you a few tips. But hopefully after reading this, you'll realize how that is not even necessary.
What Digg Isn't
Digg is not a blog promotion tool. They don't have a category about blogs and I am sure that is not an oversight. Don't even bother trying to submit your latest blog post about making money online because the Digg users don't care. It will just be a waste of your time.
What Digg Is
Digg is a social network that helps you find the VERY best of the Internet. If you want to read something interesting, something funny, something GOOD...go to Digg. The users of Digg are very proud of this. They don't mess around or put up with any crap. If your article is not something that can be considered "the best" of the Internet, it will get buried quicker than Tatum O'Neal in a pile of cocaine. But if your article is good enough, the Digg users will acknowledge it and give it some votes. If your article is GREAT, it could earn enough votes to make it to the front page of Digg and you will get more traffic than your server can handle.
The Wrong Way To Use Digg
A lot of bloggers make the mistake of going to Digg and submitting their latest post. No matter how brilliant the article may be this just won't work. As I mentioned, the Digg users are very protective of their content. Submitting your own work is against everything the service stands for and won't be tolerated. Why? Because there too much bias - of course you think your work is the best of the Internet! But everyone else may not agree. Spamming all of your friends and asking them to Digg your article is just as bad. That is not how the service is supposed to be used and you will not get good results if you use it that way.
The Right Way To Use Digg
This is going to sound very counter intuitive, so please bear with me as I try to explain. In order to get the most out of Digg you need to completely forget about your own content. That's right, forget about it. No matter how badly you want your post shown to the Digg community, its out of your hands so don't even think about it. The creators of Digg are brilliant. So are the users. This combination of human judgment and super smart computer algorithms is what makes Digg so unique and powerful.
Digg is all about building a good reputation. Digg something good, and your reputation will go up. Digg a piece of crap and your reputation will go down. If you don't Digg anything at all you will have NO reputation so anything you submit will be ignored. Your submissions are very precious. They should be used very carefully because they will have a HUGE impact on your reputation. The goal of submitting something is to make it "popular" by getting on the front page. Period. Do not submit anything if you don't think it will make it to the front page. The only time you should submit something is if you are lucky enough find something REALLY awesome on the Internet that no one has Dugg yet. If you are fortunate to make such a discovery and the Digg users vote your submission to the front page, your reputation will skyrocket. More people will follow what you're Digging and the things that you do Digg will have a better chance of getting more votes.
Take FamilyGuyFan, a Digg friend of mine, for example. His Digg Stats are shown to the right. He has Dugg over 43 THOUSAND articles, images, and videos! Yet he has only submitted a mere 191 items for consideration. Those 191 items must have been very good because 59 of them went on to make it to the front page of Digg. Were they his content? Probably not. But his Digg reputation has become huge. Anything he Diggs now has the potential to turn to gold.
See...are you starting to get it yet?
A great way to build your reputation is to start adding as many friends as you can in your Digg profile. Be prepared - your inbox will start filling up with shouts from friends asking you to Digg an article. I know what you must be thinking...previously I said not to spam your friends with Digg requests. This is different. These shouts are for items that have ALREADY been submitted to Digg. Theoretically, they are already among the best of the Internet. If you Digg it, you can contribute in sending it to the front page and your reputation will go up because of it.
So Can Digg Help My Blog or Not?
Not directly. But what you can do is make it easier for your readers to Submit and/or Digg your article if they think it deserves it. See the Digg badge at the beginning of my post? I put it there to make it easier for you to Digg this article. I won't ask anyone to Digg it. If someone thinks it has the potential to become popular, they will go ahead and Digg in an effort to increase their reputation. Remember...the ultimate goal is to submit something that will make it to the front page. I have just made it easier for my readers to do that because they can just click on the badge to submit it directly from this page.
I won't put the badge on every post of my blog. I will be the first to admit that BuzzMyBlog is not really about the topics that Digg users are interested in. So on this blog, I will only put the badge up on posts that I think might have a chance of doing well. My other blog, however, has much more in common with normal Digg content. It is a humor blog that makes fun of bizarre news, celebrities, and other hot topics. So on BuzzPirates.com, I do put the badge up on every post.
If you want to add the Digg badge to your posts, here is the code to do it in WordPress.
<div style="float: left; padding: 15px 10px 10px 0px;">
<script type="text/javascript">
digg_url = '<?php the_permalink() ?>';
</script>
<script src="http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
</div>
The code above adds the badge before your post content. If you want it on every post, edit the Main Index Template (index.php) in the WordPress Theme Editor and paste the code just before the call to the content function that looks like this:
<?php the_content('Read the rest of this entry »'); ?>.
If you only want it on certain posts, view the HTML in your post editor and paste this code at the very beginning. You can adjust the spacing by changing the padding numbers. From left to right in order, the four numbers adjust the spacing on the top, right, bottom, and left of the badge. Change the numbers to align the badge with your text.
How To Get on the Front Page Of Digg
Finally! The answer you've all probably been waiting for. Getting on the front page of Digg is easy. Simply write something that TRULY is among the VERY BEST of the Internet! Ok, maybe its not that simple. But it is the ONLY way.
Good Luck!
Jeff
