The topic for todays social media bootcamp was: The Secrets Of Digg Success. Till this day, I have yet to appear on the Digg frontpage. The closest I have been to the front page of Digg is an article which received 35 or so digs. In todays bootcamp, I learned that it is not just a matter of catering to the Digg crowd but that there is much more involved in a successful Digg post.

Apparently, human psychology has a lot to do with many of the posts that are successful on Digg. There are two points which Ryan brought up during the bootcamp which I thought were points to keep in mind.

1) It's not just about quality content on Digg. It's about quality content that fits the average Digg user's sensibilities

2) It's not just about quality content on Digg. It's about quality content promoted by a variety of somewhat independent networks.

Andrew then brought up an excellent question. What makes up the average Digg user? According to members who attended the bootcamp, the typical Digg user is someone who love technology, is an early adopter, enjoys sticking it to the man, and contains at least a higher than average intelligence level. Although that last point could be argued based on the comments published on Digg articles. With the psychological profile in mind, you can then write content which pushes those buttons.

Other topics we discussed included the use of digg buttons, the placement of the share bar where social media buttons are displayed (top or bottom of the post), types of content which always seems to be a hit on Digg, techniques on getting articles dugg and, combination of social media (digg, reddit, SU, all at once).

If you couldn't attended the bootcamp, you can view the entire transcript within the hive. Be sure to stay tuned for the next social media bootcamp. Rumors are, that the next event may focus on Yahoo! Buzz.

I remember Chris Garret mentioning in the Hive that if you want to add on to your social networks or get with the IN crowd, that it's best to hang out at the watering holes where your audience is. Traffikd has published a great post which highlights 10 different niche social news sites that you should keep note of. These sites include:

Design Float - For Designers of course
Health Ranker - For health related content
Kritsy - A social site targeted towards women.

Be sure to check out their article for the rest of the list. As Traffikd mentions, don't submit content to these sites if it's not related. You are doing that social news site and yourself a dis-service.

Last but not least, I just discovered another gem where Traffikd has a list of 400 different Social Media/Networking sites all categorized for your submitting pleasure. If you happen to gain any measurable success using any of those sites listed, come back and let us know about them!

So what the heck IS social media? If you don't know the answer to that question, this SlideShare presentation will do a good job answering it for you. This presentation was created by Marta Kagan, a self acclaimed social media evangelist + online marketing pro. Special thanks to her for uploading this to SlideShare and allowing people to pass it along.

I've gone through most of the presentation myself and although I already had a good idea as to what Social Media was all about, this presentation gives you a ton of numbers to think about and it just makes sense.

Let me know what you learned from the slideshow in the comments.

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