How do you build a ‘Digg Culture’ and get repeatedly on the front page of Digg over time?
In this post I’ll share 10 ways that top bloggers do it.
Last week on a post that Tony wrote about Digg Fraud one of those who left a comment wrote:
“I think it’s been pretty much proven that any traffic a site gets from digg is fleeting and doesn’t translate into long-term traffic.”
Many don’t believe that getting on Digg is worth much because the traffic is so fleeting however I think there is much more value for smart publishers than just the initial burst of traffic.
Such benefits to getting on the front page of Digg include:
1. Fresh RSS subscribers
Every time I get dugg I notice a leap in my RSS subscriber count. The first few times a site gets on Digg this is often bigger than subsequent diggings (after a few times I guess those who are interested in your topic will have already been subscribed) but there is a noticeable bump in subscribers each time.
2. Newsletter subscribers
Similarly newsletter subscribers (if you have one) will generally get a bump when you’re dugg. I generally add a link to subscribe to my newsletter on any post that gets on digg to leverage the traffic in this way. In this way (and with RSS subscribers) you are not only getting that first wave of traffic but are building ongoing waves of traffic each time you post or send a newsletter.
3. Secondary link ups
Digg has a ‘blog this’ feature and while it’s not used by every Digger it is used. I find that each time I’m dugg that there is a secondary wave of incoming links to your post via this feature but also other diggers blogging about you. I also find that when featured prominently on digg that you quite often get linked to on other social bookmarking sites (delicious, reddit etc) and get further waves of traffic and incoming links from their users. The secondary link ups don’t generally send a lot of traffic (although on occasion they can be from larger sites) but have the added benefit of helping the site’s Search Engine ranking (Google Juice) which over time helps build a site’s traffic.
4. A Digging Culture Emerges
If you are able to convert your incoming readers from Digg into regular readers you then have a unique opportunity to get repeat appearances on Digg again. I’ve found that with each appearance on digg that I seem to gather more and more readers to my site who will naturally submit my posts to Digg in future. I can’t quite put my finger on it but I guess the type of reader that is now subscribing to the blogs is now familiar with Digg and is even actively looking for things to bookmark. Once you develop this type of ‘culture’ the cycle outlined above can continue.
The Impact of Digg Culture over time:
Once this ‘digg culture’ kicks in a site can experience a series of ‘diggings’ which on each occasion will see the site receive a sudden and short burst of traffic followed by a return to lower traffic that is actually higher than pre-digg levels.
The actual traffic from digg is a nice (but short lived) thing – but the real benefit of being dugg regularly is the increase in traffic from loyal readers (RSS, bookmarks and newsletters) as well as the SEO benefits of new incoming links.
I’ve attempted to graph this below (this is not from any actual site’s traffic but is typical of a blog that enjoys the benefits of ‘digg culture’:
While each blog is different (and the graph won’t apply to everyone) I’ve witnessed this ‘digg effect’ on a number of blogs now.
Can you Encourage a Digg Culture on Your Blog?
So how does one build a ‘Digg Culture’ on their blog? I’m sure this is a question that many of us would like ‘the answer’ to.
I’m afraid I don’t have a definitive answer and while many articles have been written on how to be successful on Digg I’m not sure anyone has really got it completely worked out because it can be a reasonably unpredictable and whimsical beast.
Having said that – here are 10 tips that come to mind on how to build a ‘digg culture’ on your blog. They come both from my own experience of having my blogs regularly featured on Digg but also by watching what other successful sites do.
- Style of Writing – while many hundreds of pages 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 have similarities. They are often lists and are usually easily digestible pieces that appeal to a skeptical yet reasonably knowledgeable audience. I don’ t know their demographics but I suspect it’s largely a young male audience so your writing needs to be appeal to them. I find ‘how to’ posts tend to do well on Digg, as do posts that break news or that are irreverent to some sort of institution.
- Topic of Writing – Digg has recently broadened the topics that it covers, however it’s roots are technology based and I find that blogs that have a technology focus tend to have a higher chance of being dugg repeatedly than blogs that are on other topics. This may change with time.
- Become a Digg User - perhaps one of the most powerful tips I can give you is to actually 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, analyze their style and topic, make connections with other diggers. Don’t do all this just to manipulate the system but because in doing it you could well learn a thing or two about building a successful site, have some fun and meet some cool people.
- Get on other Key Sites/Blogs – One way to get highly Dugg is to be featured on other sites with a Digg Culture. For example blogs like Life Hacker routinely have the sites that they link to get flow on diggings. Similarly, other social bookmarking sites like delicious and reddit often bring in a type of traffic which will then also digg your posts. Ultimately the more people that see your post the higher chance of it being bookmarked – however there are certain sites that can send traffic that are more likely to do so.
- Drive Traffic to Diggable Posts - a few weeks ago I noticed an interesting trend on one of my blogs statistics. It seemed that every Friday (or at least every second one) I was getting on the front page of Digg with one of my posts. This was strange to me as I had not purposely tried to get any of those posts featured in that way but almost as regularly as clockwork they were. Why was this? The answer lay in my weekly email newsletter which I sent, you guessed it, every Friday morning to thousands of readers. While I hadn’t mentioned Digg in those newsletters and had not asked readers to do it – the fact that I sent thousands of readers to a freshly written post all at the same time meant that a certain percentage of them Dugg it (partly because the Digg Culture was already in effect as I’d previously been at the top of Digg on that blog). It struck me that I was onto a good thing so I began to release my more ‘diggable posts’ on Fridays instead of randomly and let my newsletter continue to do its work.
- Make it easy to Digg your work - I know that some people hate the recently common practice of putting social bookmarking icons at the end of posts but they can at times be the difference between getting your post on the front page of Digg or not. I choose not to use them but if I do see one of my posts rising in the number of Diggs that they have I will generally add a text link at the end of my 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 – I find that in most cases that I’ve had a post I’ve written submitted to Digg that the person who submits it uses my title (or at least something close to it). 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, informative and draw readers in to read more.
- Digg Your Own Stories – With Caution – I quite often get asked whether I submit my own posts to Digg. To be honest, in my early days I did, but I found I had a much higher rate of getting to the front page when someone else did it naturally, so I stopped. My attitude is that getting into Digg is something that I want to happen naturally but that once it’s in and climbing the ‘upcoming stories’ ranks that digging my own story is something that I’ll do on posts that I think are worthy of digging. I’ll also pass the digg page link onto a few friends on occasion to help it on it’s way – however this is not something I engage in heavily because I’m much more interested in organic results for my blogs these days. Also don’t aim to get on the front page of Digg every day (or even every week). I’ve found that some digg users actually become suspicious of sites that get Dugg too much – moderation is the key.
- Celebrate Diggings…. Subtly – If you get on the front page of Digg I think it can be worthwhile to subtly mention it on your blog and/or thank your readers for it. Don’t go over the top with it (or your readers will think you’re boasting or obsessed) but to mention it reinforces that you’re a diggable blog which may trigger other stories that you write to be dugg. Subtlety is the key though – don’t be obsessive or cheesy about it.
- Quality Content - Ultimately 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. If you work hard on building a quality website you’ll substantially increase the chances of building a Diggable blog. Once again – don’t be obsessive about it. Build your blog up to be a site that people enjoy and want to come back to and let your Digg culture grow in it’s own time.
Digg This Here – I had to follow my own advice! :-)
About Darren Rowse
My name is Darren Rowse and I’m a full time Blogger making a living from blogs like 
does anyone have any suggestions how to get a URL (or two) un-barred from Digg?
klm, ed, travo
Ahh but what about non-diggable topics?
I’ve heard that it’s not always a good thing to get “dugg” since the quality of readers are less than desirable.
What about sites that aren’t really technology oriented. Correct me if I’m wrong, but most Digg users are either Technology oriented, Politics oriented, or both.
Would Fark or Delicious be more suitable for certain sites?
Both Ian and Nicholas have good thoughts here. I appreciated the tips, Darren, but based on personal experience with Digg itself (nothing to do with getting my own blogs ‘Dugg’) I strongly question the value of wasting time with those folks.
First and foremost Digg is a service which mainly supports the self aggrandizement of a certain clique within the ‘inner circle’. They have no interest in actual newsworthy items unless such item be submitted by an ‘insider’. There have been numerous examples reported of items submitted and ignored and then re-submitted by a member of the Digg cognoscenti and rapidly advancing to the top. Blogging takes a lot of time and effort to do ‘right’, I can’t see spending that time and effort to make others feel important. This leads to the question of the quality of readers one might get from Digg.
If one is a techno-geek, or a rabid political idealist, Digg readers might be worth the effort. However the ‘snarkiness’ and immaturity evidenced in a majority of Digg comments leads me to believe it’s not much of a source for most who want to attract a broad spectrum of thinking, polite readers.
Purely my own thoughts, but Digg is certainly not on my list of “ToDo’s” for 2007. The type of reader interested in say, “retirement planning”, “GPS vehicle tracking”, “Philippine travel” and such may well not even know what Digg is and, in a practical sense, why should he or she care?
So, what kind of a traffic jump did you see from this one?
Completely agree Darren… esp about the RSS subscribers.
Digg is an amazing tool, writing excellent content in all reality is all that makes or breaks a web site and in the end will determine the number of users that read the content.
good post, but kind of long. I would have just kept it to “post interesting stuff, and do it often”.
There is no doubt that Digg can be a great source of traffic and a way to let your Blog known by people. However, it is become increasingly difficult to compete with all the people who have realized this and make it on the front of page of digg.
I’ve become a regular reader of ProBlogger over the last few weeks and I thought it was cool to see an article posted on digg that I had already read.
Thanks that was really helpful, and I have definitely seen those results with my site. I like this site a lot.
I agree with Dave Starr’s comment above — and here’s one way not to build a Digg culture: Get banned by Digg like I did…
Yet another great article!
Ha, These are some of the techniques I’ve been implementing on some of my blogs. It takes a bit of learning to figure out how to monitize DIGG, thanks for more great advice
Build a Niche
For a little more on the pluses and minuses of Digg folks might wnat to look at the 21 Dec entry here: http://www.bruceclay.com/blog/
Apparently there is even more under-handedness going on at Digg than I personally observed before I quit wasting my time there.
Great post, Darren. I am employing many of these techniques to cultivate somewhat of a Digg Culture at my blog, both for mine and my reader’s (more importantly) benefit.
Solid stuff. As a relative newcomer, I’ve employed some of these tactics. Some good observations.
I use a free web hosting site that gives me 10gigs in traffic, if I used
Digg would it bury my site?
Hey Darren,
Great list! Found this via Digg, of course. I’ve made it here before the same way and I’m consistently impressed with the quality of your posts.
One question though, there’s a noticeable absence from your list:
Digg-centric content.
If there’s one thing I’ve noticed it’s that Digg users tend to be very interested in how Digg is operating or being received in the mainstream media. So when drama about Digg being rigged is around or they do a new version or MSNBC mentions Digg, that will consistently hit the front page. Almost to the point that it should have it’s own category.
I tend to attribute this to a form of digital web-2.0 pride. ‘Something I help sustain made it on CNN’ kind of satisfaction.
Had you considered and dismissed this? I’m curious to know what your thoughts on it are.
>>I can’t see spending that time and effort to make others feel important.
With that attitude why bother with traffic at all? No one wants to read someone who writes to make themselves feel important.
What a joke. Who in their right might would want to get Digg users on their site? Digg’s demographic consists of 13 year old kids. Culture, my ass.
Several of the commenters have questioned the value of diggers, which are lovely wonderful people with high moral standards and are some of the nicest people in the world…
…They are almost all irrelevant “sorry nice diggers” if you look at this post and look at the trackbacks you will see a mix of regulars who watch comment and write about Darrens blog and new ones but look at the numbers and compare them to a normal non digged post. I think the value of dig is that it reaches a minority of diggers who are also bloggers, and if interesting enough (I thought it amusing quality was #10 but I suspect that was deliberate) will refer mention or otherwise cite the article.
Digg brings a temporary annoying spike of visitors and long term visibility in both links and through its search facility which seems to be becoming more used as it pops up often enough in referrers logs. But I should point out the Digg community are lovely and are all ways welcome and the annoying spike is a by product.
This is a very cool article. I’ll try it immediately
Somebody put one of my articles from a site on Digg yesterday, today I noticed a small bit of digg traffic but also noticed traffic from a BBC website. Seems as if the BBC read digg for news stories not just 13 year old kids.
Makes you wonder….but the good news is I have a nice backlink from the BBC to a new website
how to get a digg colone script ?
can you give some links?
thanks
I discovered your blog someway or another via http://www.chrisg.com and I somehow keep ending up here via digg or other sites. Seems you are a large source of content on the net so it will probably be a good idea to subscribe to your site.
thanks for the awesome info,
Jeff L.
actually in my opinion,i think by slowly building up your quality of your post is the best way to get yourselves in the top list of digg.
Thanks Darren for your valuable article on digg. I never heard about digg at all.
I dont know which world i am in. Lot of things to be known in the world.
http://analogstuff.blogspot.com
janish.
Thanks for the great info. There is always some benefit to being front-page listed, including any sites like Slashdot, Digg, etc. I had a blog article Slashdotted a few years back, and subsequently got listed on the front pages of Gizmodo, Hackaday, and several other techy sites. The results were fantastic.
Hello, That was cool information about digging on digg. I will surely try to see if I can be lucky to have my blog http://seo5india.blogspot.com appear on top pages :)
Meanwhile , I have ordered a shovel to digg into digg.com ;)
Instead of “trying” to get on the front page of Digg, just submit an article to http://www.subbmitt.com all articles will make it to the front page so you are not wasting your time by posting one.
-JT
Although your article was writen in 2006, it still works perfect in 2008. Thanks!
Yes, it is works well today 2008. I will put it straght into action, thanks for the high quality information. Thanks.
Wow, that was one sort of nice information that I have ever read. Really. Yes, Digg culture may be difiicult for most of the beginners and I faced the same at the beginning. But, as time passes being a member of Digg and digging other’s useful stories, it became quite easy and got opportunity to know the Digg community closely.
Really nice article regarding how to get yourself digg and creat a nice digg culture. Really appreciated. Thanks
What I feel is that newbies have no option but to digg their own content. You also need to add friends on digg to help getting dugg more.
Thanks for the tips! Although indeed I do believe that the primary traffic coming from Digg (and the likes) isn’t that particularly useful, it is the secondary traffic that is very interesting! So let’s start working on a Digg Culture!