Steal This Idea: Creating your own mini-Digg August 6, 2008
Getting an article on the front page of Digg often takes a lot more than just writing good (or viral) content. Many of the stories that make it to the Digg front page do so as a result of a mini-PR campaign, with submitters actively recruiting diggs via back channels such Twitter, email and IM, and by embedding Digg icons within the stories themselves to encourage digging.
But lately I’ve seen a few publishers taking their Digg promotion a step further, building sections on their websites devoted to promoting their stories on Digg.
The best example I’ve seen of this type of integration with Digg is CollegeHumor.com, which has a section on its site where you can view College Humor stories in the Digg queue, stories that have recently made the front page and the all time most popular Digg stories. A screenshot is below:
The Huffington Post has a similar feature on its site. On just about every article page on the is a feature listing “HuffPost Stories Surging Right Now”, which lists stories in the Digg queue. Screenshot below:
I think these features are really smart. I’m sure there is a hardcore group of people that are willing to sort through the stories in the Digg Upcoming queue to find and vote for that one great story buried in a seas of mediocrity. However, most Digg visitors rarely venture into the Digg upcoming section, but are willing to digg your content on your site if the story is engaging and you make it easy for them. This is the rationale for the ubiquitous Digg buttons. College Humor and Huffington Post take the concept a step further by creating little mini versions of Digg right on their own site.
Like I said, that’s smart. Steal this idea.
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Also a smart idea is simply developing content that is geared towards the Digg audience - Cracked.com seems to do this on a regular basis. DoshDosh wrote about this a few weeks ago: http://www.doshdosh.com/how-to.....y-content/
I know Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has always been a big thing, and lately I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about SMO (Social Media Optimization). Now it seems like DO (Digg Optimization) is the new talk of the town.
On a slightly related note, I’ve often wondered how much competition/camaraderie/animosity there is amongst the top Diggers.
Digg is controlled by a mafia. Less than a dozen users account for 90% of front page content. I use presscue (http://you.presscue.com/) instead, to promote my content.