Social Media Networking – Digg for Business
Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the Web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blogs, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by users. You won’t find editors at Digg — it provides a place where people can collectively determine the value of content and therefore, change the way people consume information online.
Digg is all about sharing and discovery, there’s a conversation that happens around the content. By looking at information through the lens of the collective community on Digg, you’ll always find something interesting and unique.
Source: Digg.com
How Digg works
Discover
Submit your favourites – articles, images, or videos. People then vote on it.
Become popular – Once it earns a critical mass, it will get into the top 10 within a category, starting in the ‘Upcoming’ section.
Discover media – Check other recommendations for interest to you, and get involved in the network.
Select
‘Digg’ – participate in the collective editorial process.
Bury – kill off bad links, off-topic entries, duplicate entries, or blatant spam.
Share
Build a network – invite others to follow your recommendations, and track what they are doing. This is especially important if using Digg for business!
Email – communicate your recommendations to ‘Diggers’ and ‘non-Diggers’.
Discuss
Comment – share opinions on stories, images, and videos.
Encourage Digg for business on your blog
The top 10 tips to create a culture of Digg for business in your blog:
- Writing Style – many hundreds of pages do get to the top of the Digg pile every week and there is quite a variation in their style – many of them do tend to be very similar. They are often lists and are usually easily digestible pieces that appeal to a sceptical yet reasonably knowledgeable audience.
- Writing Topic – Digg has recently broadened the topics that it covers, however, its roots are technology-based so blogs that have a technology focus tend to have a higher chance of being ‘dugg’.
- Become a Digg User – use Digg yourself. Become a part of the community, be an active Digger (not just of your own sites), watch what stories make it big, analyse their style and topic, and make connections with other diggers.
- Get on other Key Sites/Blogs – One way to get highly Dugg is to be featured on other sites with a Digg Culture. Ultimately the more people that see your post the higher the chance of it being bookmarked – however, certain sites can send traffic that are more likely to do so.
- Drive Traffic to Diggable Posts – it appears that every Friday morning thousands of readers log into Digg and so release my more ‘diggable posts’ on Fridays instead of randomly and let other blogs, like a newsletter, continue to do their work.
- Make it easy to Digg your work – add a text link at the end of your posts pointing to the Digg page that readers might like to visit in order to bookmark it. This means that not every post on my blogs has a Digg button – but those that someone has bookmarked often get enough extra Diggs to get on the front page.
- Titles and first lines are Important – just as in email marketing, you must have a strong subject line. In many cases, they also use the first line or two of my post as the description. As a result, it is important to hone your title-writing skills and to think carefully about how you start your posts. Posts that make it to the Digg front page are punchy, and informative and draw readers in to read more.
- Digg Your Own Stories – With Caution – some Digg users become suspicious of sites that get Dugg too much – moderation is the key. If all you do is self-promotion, people may bury your posts automatically.
- Celebrate Diggings… Subtly – if you get on the front page of Digg it can be worthwhile to subtly mention it on your blog and/or thank your readers for it. Subtlety is the key though – don’t be obsessive or cheesy about it.
- Quality Content – Digg users (like most Web users) like quality, useful and unique content. They get frustrated with second-rate writing, lots of mistakes, recycled stories, and sub-standard site design.
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