I get so many people asking me questions about digg that I’ve decided to put together this little check list. These are my opinions and thought not a secret formula that take you to digg stardom nor is this an article to give you leverage to game on digg. But I’m wrote this to help those who want to promote good content to digg and continue to build a better community there. Gaming from this article? Shame on you, reading it to improve your profile and contribute to the awesome digg community, kisses and hugs, from Kevin.
I found out the hard way what the most popular sites were. You can now do it easier with di66.net in Digg’s Top Sources. If you want to get popular articles than submit from the top sites more often. Why? Because these sites already have a hugg digg following thus you’ll get natural digg’s anyways even if you’re a newbie.
I added users who had high % of digg popularity counts like Zaibatsu, MrBabyman & Msaleem. I also added people who were active commenter’s. Having the right friends that will actually read and comment on your submissions are a great way to get the recommendation engine going.
I also recommend you make friends with some top digg users hopefully they will notice you and make you a mutual friend. To get them to notice you, you need to firstly improve your stats, once you do this you will notice more top users making friends with you.
Having less friends makes it easy to monitor what they submit and when they comment. It also makes your shout inbox clean. I use to have 100s of shouts sent to me per day and that got annoying. So cut friends who you don’t really talk with and keep users with similar topics of interest. The misconception of having 1000 friends is not the way to go. I personally try to keep my friend count to around 180.
Can you read 500 words in 5 secs? Well if you can than you could possibly digg everything in your friends submissions page but do not do this. It’s blind digging and this will only get you banned from digg. Digg what you like or find interesting. Comment and favorite only the ones you really liked. I personally digg betwee 80 - 150 per day as I don’t have time to read everything and digg’s new algorithm is giving me the itchy finger if I try to go above my average count.
I asked a few people on digg, mostly active ones, for any tips on how to submit great content. Eventually I learned that Google Reader was the best thing you can use to manage 100s of RSS Feeds from multiple sites. You should add at least 100 sites to your RSS Feed. Google Reader is one of the best RSS reading app and its free to use online.
We all know Cracked.com hits digg’s front page all the time. It’s also one of the very few sites that people literally camp on hitting that F5 (refresh) button waiting for a new post. If you’re not fast you won’t get to submit from Cracked (which is an almost guaranteed front pager). So the lesson here is not to camp out on Cracked.com but to take this idea and apply them to sites that you want to submit. One strategy is to use any webpage reloader software or firefox plugin. I personally use “update scanner.”
If you have something to say make sure you comment. But if you only have something like LOL or WOW, then I strongly suggest you keep that to yourself. Be smart, witty or funny in your comments. This can help the rest of the community see that you’re an active member. Commenting also shows your friends that you are reading their submissions and in return they might pay more attention to what you submit. Try to comment at least 3 - 5 times per day if you have the extra time do more.
http://digg.com/2008_us_elections/Digg_This_If_You_Voted_For_Obama_2
There’s nothing worse than a digger with 50 submits a day (no offense to you if you do). Try not to do this. Submit things that matter and things that people want to comment about. This how I increased my % of popular articles and became successful on digg. You can take a look at my history of submissions, check the front page of digg or fark.net for examples of what you should be submitting. Learn from other people’s success.
My personal recommendation is 2 – 5 submissions per day anything more would be just too much, if you think all your friends will digg everything, think again. Some people submit way more than just 5 per day so it’s entirely up to you to set your own limit.
Ok shouting to your friends on digg is a pretty good way to get digg’s recommendation engine working in your favor. Personally I would only shout 20 – 50 people at any one time. Try not to shout to the same people more than twice. Be considerate, they have a life besides digging your stuff. If you have 100 friends you can do 2 shouts on 2 different submissions, this is a great way to get exposure to your best submissions for the day.
Twitter, the newest kid on the block is the one site I love more than digg (sorry Kevin but twitter is just hot). I can recommend you tweet what you submit but don’t tweet the digg page because not everyone is on digg, most people would get pissed if you gave them a digg page where they had to click on another link to read the article. People who have digg, will notice that it’s submitted to digg and eventually you’ll get some natural diggs from people you don’t know. You can always include a digg link with the tag #digg on it on all your tweets.
Example:
Obama Is The 44th President of America – http://tinyurl.com/1111- (#digg - http://tinyurl.com/2222)
If I knew the magic number to get an article made popular on digg, I’d tell you for 1 million dollars. But I don’t so I guess I won’t be getting rich anytime fast but the magic number is determined by many factors. Some of the more common factors I’m guessing are:
These are a few factors but no one knows the real secret. These factors are based on experience and a few smart people that I’ve conversed with.
It is very important to add and remove new friends on your digg profile. You could remove friends because they don’t read or comment on your submissions anymore, or simply because you don’t like what they submit. Also check your fan page because there are always new digg users who use digg regularly and comment on your submissions. I can recommend you add and remove friends and fans once a month. New friends can also get the recommendation engine to work in your advantage.
That’s about all I can give you. I wrote this because many people ask me how to get a front page and improve their profiles so here it is. I hope this article will help improve diggers who want to contribute and make digg a better and brighter place. If there’s anything I left out feel free to send me an email here and I’ll try to update this article from time to time.
I won’t be thanking anyone in particular but those of you who have helped me in the past, you know who you are =)
