Digg this! Creating a Digg friendly post

It would be every bloggers wildest dreams to get his post on Digg’s front page, but even many famous bloggers struggle to do this feat. It doesn’t really depend on your existing traffic or sources of traffic, but on your post, that is your style of writing, the type of post and the time of posting.

Unlike StumbleUpon Digg cannot generate huge amounts of traffic with just a few positive ratings, it would take hundreds or sometimes thousands of Diggs to make it to the front page. But even if you don’t make it to the front page you still get a lot of links from digg and the small traffic you get is very targeted and gives a low bounce rate.

In this new decade optimize your blog to spread virally, instead of just search engines. Digg is of course one of the best place to do so, usually it depends on who submits or digg’s on your articles, there are many digg users whose every submission gets popular, this is because of their strong network and reputation on the site. Even you can build it soon enough, if some of your articles get popular.

Write for bigger niches

The articles which usually make to the front page are business and politics related articles, thats because its got a wider audience than my niche, so the key here is to write for your niche about bigger niches. For example I own an internet marketing blog, so I’d write an article such as ‘Social Media for mainstreet businesses’.

This way you’ll end up with more exposure and chances to end up in the front page, but you’ll have to make sure that there is no much competition for posts.

‘The’ ‘most’ ‘Top adjective’ and lists

These are the titles which usually get popular of Digg, if you posts on sites like Mashable, Cracked and OnionNews, you’ll see most of the titles contain such words, which generate curiosity. I can tell this because I’ve spent long hours analyzing the content which comes on top of Digg, this is one common thing in all of them.

You should know one thing, Digg users aren’t looking for information or guides, they are looking for entertainment, so the try to make your headlines as entertaining as possible.

Break the news

If its a news article you’ve posted, then make sure your the first one to do so, try to come up with the post and submit it before big news blogs. Usually bigs news corps get these types of news from their contacts and channels, but as a small blogger try services like Google Alert.

You may not have success for your first few ground-breaking articles, but after sometime you’ll have a strong network which can help take any of your articles to the front page. This requires plenty of hard work and determination, but plenty of success is guaranteed.

Encourage diggs in title

If you see the title of this post, you’ll see that I’m actually encouraging readers to digg my post, not only my readers, but also Digg users. I’ve seen many blogs using such techniques and to my surprise they all have worked. This is just a small experiment and I can’t guarantee that this will work.

This gives you more exposure on Digg than your own site, I still don’t know the reason for this, but I guess it plays the mind game here.

Be controversial

Most of the worlds biggest movies and books are those which are controversial and influence the public or some famous person. These kinds of posts are not only good for Digg, but also for other sources. This may lead you to some trouble, but traffic and exposure is guaranteed.

We can take a clear example Perez Hilton, he writes harsh and rude comments on celebrities, to which they give a reply, leading to more media exposure, such as televisions, radios and other blogs. Even on Digg a harsh comment can lead to plenty of user activity and engagements and for a site like Digg, this is more than enough to enter the first page.

Lists and stats

Another thing quite common in most of the popular Digg stories is that they are usually lists and stats. Any post which contains  lists or stats related to particular niche has great chances on Digg. That is the key reason why many bloggers these days make more lists and stats.

For me too much of these can get really boring and unexciting, that is why I write a list or stats post only once in a while. The key here lies in how your planning to optimizing your heading to make it more attractive and interactive.

On to our readers

Until today hardly 2 posts of mine have had success on Digg, but I’m pretty sure that the above points will work well. In case you know other methods of creating a Digg friendly posts please share with us below. You can also connect with me on Digg, I will try to promote your posts as much as possible.

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