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.

Thousands of people each day waste their time submitting stories to Digg without a plan. Some of the stories are great, but get lost. Some of the stories are mediocre, and should never have been submitted in the first place (like digging a hole to China).

One Wednesday, August 20th at 1pm Eastern, Performancing Hive members will be holding a live chat to discuss the secrets of Digg success. We'll cover content strategies, promotional strategies, and perhaps just as importantly, withholding strategies. At the end of the bootcamp, you'll have a crystal clear sense of what it takes to use Digg effectively as a social media platform.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Ryan

After finding that one of my sites was flagged at Digg for "consistently" being a news middleman (despite not being a news site, nor ever submitting news content to Digg), I sent the following email which I feel makes an important point. If I receive a response, I'll post it here.

I say this with genuine intent on making Digg a better place:

It is in the best interest of Digg long term to have a more agile and intelligent means of determining what constitutes "consistent"

The point of the email? Well, to be blunt, it's this:

It's only in a police state-like environment that "consistent" comes to mean "at least once."

Are you using i.e. Google personal maps?
How do you promote your maps?

Ongopongo is a specialized directory for maps with some digg-like features.

When Google made the 'My Maps' service public in April 2007 (Map-making: So easy a caveman could do it) it only took a very short while until Riley created Ongopongo. This Drupal driven site is a kind of specialized digg clone for links to maps. As far as I have checked out Ongopongo all of the submitted maps are hosted on the Google My Maps service. But you can submit every kind of map because Ongopongo takes links as submission.

Don't expect explanations for the name Ongopongo from me :)

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The biggest problem with Digg is that it's largely an all-or-nothing game. After spending a few days looking around Digg with the sole intention of understanding what is wrong, I've come up with this simple proposal:

Separate the logic of going popular in a category from the logic of going popular on the front page.

Ok. So what exactly do I mean and I why am I proposing it?

Right now, Digg sets a very high threshold for going "popular" - and it's the same threshold for both the category pages and the Digg front page. Because of this high threshold for making the front page, there are many categories that are just ridiculously "stale" - I easily found a category where the top news story was from more than 6 days ago. I bet there are some categories with older news.

Because many of the categories are stale, or only have a few fresh stories per day, no one really monitors them as "breaking news" sources. Or even as a steady dose of interesting news. Most of the category pages are just plain dull and boring.

To fix this, Digg should have two levels of filtering. First, allow stories to go to the front page of a category more easily. This will create a steadier stream of new and interesting content on the category pages. Then, force a story that has gone popular on the category page to fight it's way onto the "All" front page.

This kind of setup would create an environment where users votes on the category pages actually meant something. In other words, let the Digg users act as collective editors that play a critical role in deciding which "really good" stories deserve to be considered "great" - a 2-tier system of popularity would allow really good content the chance to exposure, it would freshen up the category pages with a steady stream of information, and it would put the average digg user back in control of what ultimately makes the front page.

Let me paint the picture for you. You spent the last 8 hours perfecting a killer linkbait. You're proud of your work. You think it's going to do well on Digg, it collects some votes...

...a few hours later, you receive an email from someone claiming that he'll get your account deleted and your article removed from Digg if you don't pay him $1000.

Well, not having $1000 to spend, and not believing for a second that this is for real, you ignore it...

...and then bang, your story's gone, your account has been deleted.

Welcome to the brave new world of Digg blackmail. Where sophisticated online users earn a living by abusing the Digg abuse reporting system. It' a reality. I'd heard about it, but I've now seen it happen...and you should prepare for it to happen to you too.

So, you want to try your hand at Digg blackmail?

Here's how you do it.

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My article Dealing With Stupid People Online made it to the front page of Digg.

And within 10 minutes it got buried.

Sources tell me that a story is most likely to get buried if it hovers on both the digg.com (technology) and digg.com/all front pages in the top 3 positions for several minutes. If it goes below the top 3 quickly enough, it stands a really good chance of hanging around for a few hours. Goes to show that human behavior, even of the democratic type, is quite predictable.

But what I'm really interested in is the anatomy of a "Digg bury" - what exactly happens.

For the longest time, I assumed that for a story to get buried meant that wit would effectively become invisible at Digg.

But this morning has proven that to be false. Immediately when the story hit the front page, I started monitoring it via pMetrics. When I noticed a slow down, I went over to Digg and discovered that the story had been buried (by stupid people, no less;-)

What surprised me was that traffic continued to flow from digg.com and digg.com/all

What can we make of this? Well, I'm not completely sure. I have three hypotheses.

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Most bloggers realize the incredible power of social media marketing to send huge amounts of traffic to their blog in a short period of time. There is no shortage of social media sites available, which can cause some frustration over knowing which ones to use for the best results.

With all of the choices, is it best to focus your social media marketing on one or two sites, or will you get better results with scattered approach that includes a much larger number of social media websites?

Using all (or even many) social media sites effectively is just not possible for most of us. The time requirement for this approach is more than we’re willing to spend. With that in mind, the options are:

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Last week, Performancing's article entitled 10 Articles All Bloggers Should Read (at least once) got over 1,000 Diggs and made it onto the front page for almost an entire day. For those of you who happened to be around, a bunch of us had some geeky fun monitoring the Digg in real time.

But that's not where the real value of a Digg lies. The real value lies in two effects: 1) Establishment of authority and 2) Backlinks.

I didn't realize I was filling such a big need at the time of writing it, but my meta-article on blogging seems to have become an overnight, authoritative resource for new bloggers. From a preliminary investigation, the article is already getting linked to from the far ends of the blogosphere.

So what can we learn from this example of the Digg Effect? I see a clear lesson. The lesson is this: fill a real need and people will eat it up. Think about how many new bloggers are starting each day. Think about all the blog owners hiring new bloggers each day. Well, I did think about these things because it was starting to drag on my daily responsibilities. Having to constantly summarize the basics of blogging and provide tips for improving headlines was detracting from my more important work in SEO. So I put a list together for myself to fill a need. Then I realized that there are probably others with the same need. Turns out there were lots of them.

With all the junk information floating around the internet, many people have grown weary from the search for good information. Since Google doesn't give people the information they really want anymore, one of the fundamental tasks for the blogger is to organize and serve good information. This makes you an authority.

Put together useful lists of resource articles for a broad audience and you'll soon find that your site is becoming an authority. When people recognize it as an authority, you are going to acquire some killer backlinks.

So here's what I learned from the Performancing Digg: not all Diggs are created equal. I've gotten on the front page before and only acquired 7 or 8 backlinks and no residual traffic. But if you make something that a large number of people really need, a timeless resource, it only takes a little nudging;-) and your article is an overnight authority (with lots of residual benefit).

Wanna see a live Digg happening in real time? Well, it's happening right here on Performancing where we track our stats with pMetrics. Just click on the link below and monitor our front page Digg in real time (only while supplies last;-) ->

http://pmetrics.performancing.com/stats/spy?site_id=1

Digg is getting on my nerves. I submitted an article from my wedding blog at digg and it got banned. They said I was spamming them. It was only my second submission from that blog. I didn't know two submissions could be spam.

However, Netscape has been growing on me. Ryan pointed me to Netscape on his college startup blog. Here's a couple reasons why I like Netscape over Digg.

1) Netscape has more categories for submissions. This is great for webmasters that have non-tech blogs. Digg has non-tech categories but not as many as Netscape. For example, the best place for me to submit a wedding post in Digg is the offbeat news category. However, at Netscape, I can submit to shopping, women, or even travel (destination weddings).

2) Netscape is friendlier. More people have added me as a friend at Netscape than Digg even though I've been more active at Digg.

3) I get more votes from Netscape. I think this is similar to reason 2. Netscape users seem more likely to vote for other submissions even without a reciprocal vote. It seems that Diggers won't vote for you unless you vote for them.

4) I submitted and voted on more things at Digg yet my Digg profile page is only a Page Rank 2. My Netscape profile page is a Page Rank 4.

I think what it boils down to is Netscape has a much more varied user base whereas Digg is mostly 22-35 year old males. It could be that Digg users don't want to talk about anything except sex, Apple computers, George Bush's mistakes, and the latest funny picture. :-O

So, if you haven't had much success at Digg, check out Netscape.

Need a little nudge on your favorite social voting site? If you post a link to your Reddit, Digg, Netscape, etc. submission in our new social voting forum we'll vote it up around 9am Eastern time.

Conditions:

1. The link should be a net benefit for the online community (spam will not be promoted)
2. You must post a link to the original article as well as each of the social voting submissions

If you like this idea, feel free to join in on the voting! Hopefully we can all help each other drive more traffic to our sites.

I started things up here:
http://performancing.com/node/6495

Everywhere I register online I am always me. My username is always a variation on "Chris", "chrisg" or "Chris Garrett". Right back to my BBS and Usenet days up to now. The only time I can think of where that has not been true has been Digg.

I have nothing against nicknames, people use them for a variety of reasons, not least because their real name is already taken. That said many people have pseudonyms on Digg because they want to stealth-promote their websites for the traffic boost. The idea is you can seem an impartial third party who just really finds the viagra-pr0n-ipod blog particularly fascinating. This is bad for any number of reasons but I realised it could be killing Digg by removing trust from the community. If you take trust out of any activity surely you are in danger of destroying the social fabric of that activity?

I think Bloggers especially are in danger of killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. So many of us are hooked on the sweet sweet Digg traffic high that we are using Digg for what we can get out of it and the whole system is being subverted. We need to stop this Diggaddiction before we all become junkies.

An addiction in itself is not necessarily that damaging. It's the side-effects of that addiction that trouble me, the ever-increasing desperate attempts to recreate the initial Digg-effect hit. The manic dependency on the high and the temptation to create an army of sock-puppet Digg accounts. The eventual Digg meltdown where half the "people" you meet on the site are fake.

From now on I am going to treat Digg no different to any other online community. I have registered as chrisgarrett (feel free to friend me). I will Digg up your stories if I find them interesting.

This is not me being all fluffy-bunny-blogger-transparent for the sake of it! Of course I am saying all this for completely selfish reasons. I enjoy Digg immensely and find it incredibly useful as a resource. Several times a day I check in with Digg to see what interesting new sites have been posted up and to take part in the discussions. The entertainment and research value of Digg would be incredibly damaged if the promotional aspect gets too much influence.

I just don't want to see Digg full of spam.