How to use Digg effectively

How to use Digg effectively: 10 steps to becoming a Digg pro!

Effectively using Digg can be hard to do, but when done it’s an invaluable way of achieving high Google rankings and driving traffic to your site. As with all in Social Media Marketing success comes with finding the balance between remembering the end game and remembering that it’s a social network – so no spamming or constant self-promo! This ten step guide will talk you through the Digg must-dos, tell you what big mistakes to avoid and help you decide if Digg is a useful marketing tool for your business. See this guide to the best social bookmarking sites if you’d like to compare Digg with other sites such as Delicious and StumbleUpon.

Silicon Beach Training offer a range of Social Media Training courses including SEO Courses and Blogging Training in Brighton, Sussex. We’re also on Digg – come and be our friends!

Ten Steps to using Digg effectively…

Step 1: Get an Avatar and fill in your profile; let’s get the obvious out of the way. If you want to use Digg for business marketing there’s nothing more suspicious looking than a blank profile. Digg is a social network and people make friends with real people. People will decide to be your friend either because you contact them or because they’ve checked out your profile. So it’s important to be authentic: if you’re using Digg for business say so; if you’re not using your first language just say so; if you’re new to Digg say so… Seasoned Digg users can be very suspicious and spammer savvy. Silly avatars and usernames can be fun but I would recommend using your real name and photograph so people know exactly who you are.

Step 2: Make friends. Digg is nothing without a strong network of friends. But don’t just add Mrs Influential and every single one of her friends, pick relevant friends who digg relevant content

Step 3: Digg and comment on your friends’ submissions. Building up a network is the whole point of Digg. It is not a link-building medium like Ezine articles or some website directory; it’s a social network – the links are secondary in this respect. When you add a friend on Digg you are a “Fan” of them until they decide to be a friend back. To get their attention you need to be borderline obsessive to begin with – follow everything they digg (consider an RSS feed), digg it all and comment on it all.

Step 4: Take it seriously, especially if you wish to befriend the top diggers. If you’ve made a handful of submissions, a couple of comments and you’ve added Mrs Influential and everyone she knows (including loads of spammy looking people with no avatars) no one is going to take you seriously. Remember that power Digg users spend around 4 hours communicating and digging, with 100+ submissions each day. Many of these people have been doing it for years. If you’ve dugg a mere 50 pages compared to their 30,000, accept that it’s going to be a while until they are interested in you!

Step 5: Target your friends. This list shows the current most active people on Digg. You can use this to find a couple of power diggers to follow. If you plan on using Digg regularly and submitting lots of content, you need these powerful friends for your diggs to take off. But to start off you also need to target people more on your own level. Try linking your account with Facebook to find existing friends, or send a message out to your Twitter network.

Step 6: Don’t rush. It will take a few months to build up your diggs and your friends. Do not rush this: it’s a mistake to start submitting your own website straight away and it’s a mistake to add hundreds of worthless friends. Add friends gradually, taking time to read their submissions and get their attention.

Step 7: Hold off submitting your own website! Of course for business users getting traffic to your own website is the ultimate aim of using Digg. However, if you do this too soon your submission will merely be buried by the Digg power users. When you start submitting your own blog posts and webpages, ensure this is no more than 1/10 of all submissions. As you’re starting to see, using Digg is a big time commitment – it may not be for everyone.

Step 8: Be the first to submit. See this list of Digg’s top sources; if you want to make yourself known on Digg, try to be the first to submit from these websites. It can be tricky to be the first to submit, but choose a handful and follow their RSS feeds.

Step 9: Choose the right time. Digg is generally most active first thing in the morning; observe your friends and check when they do most of their digging. Use this time for digging your friends’ submissions – they’re most likely to notice it then. Once you’ve got their attention, use this time for your own submissions. Once enough mutual friends are digging your submissions it will start to take off organically. Also ensure that you balance your time – see our Social Media schedule – your Digg use should just be part of what you do. Using Digg effectively will be a huge time-taker to begin with – at least 2 hours per day commenting and digging. But after a couple of months you can maintain your networks in much less time, such as 15 minutes at 9am and 15 minutes again in the afternoon.

Step 10: Use your friends. Do ask your friends to help if you have a blog submission you really want to take off. But only ask once and don’t ask them too often! A lot of users have an email address or IM username on their profile – if it’s there, use it. Don’t be put off if someone doesn’t want to digg your submissions, just find new friends and move on – you don’t have time to waste. Bear in mind that all Digg users have their own agendas and may be similarly ruthless – you’re not going to build up a successful network without being social.

Five Steps to NOT using Digg effectively…

Step 1: Digg rubbish. If you want people to befriend you, to digg your stuff and for that stuff to then be dugg organically you need to digg quality content. If you want to be named as the submitter for a popular story, choose safe and established sources. Digg also dislikes repetitive content; users may bury your submission if it’s old hat and uninteresting. Digg has also been known to ban users for not reading articles that they digg and even banned a top digger who submitted an affiliate site by accident. I’ve even heard that you can be banned for speaking negatively about Digg or digging content that does – anyone know of any examples of this?

Step 2: Submit more than you Digg. It is simply not possible to get your submissions to the Digg homepage without active engagement with the community and lots of diggs of others’ submissions.

Step 3: Submit all of your blog posts. Hopefully the reasons for this are obvious by now – this could lead to power users burying your content or possibly to Digg banning your account.

Step 4: Use a script. Digg is a successful and well-off company, so don’t think about trying to cheat the voting system by using a script (see this cartoon strip demonstration). You will be caught and you will be banned – Digg are far from shy about banning users.

Step 5: Create bogus accounts. This is a tempting way to ensure your submissions get plenty of diggs and to try to disguise your spammy self. However, beware as Digg will monitor you IP address. Someone was even banned for asking collegues to digg a post, as Digg picked up multiple submissions from the same IP address.

To round up: time and sucking up to Digg and its users are two key requirements for using Digg effectively – it may not be for you and at Silicon Beach Training, we’re still deciding.

If you’ve found this post useful you may want to see our guide to the best social bookmarking websites. As well as Social Media Training courses, we offer a range of creative design courses including Photoshop Courses and Illustrator Training.

Related posts:

1. Making the Most of Social Media Marketing – Links
2. Social Media Training: Crazy Cameras and Reputation Management
3. Social Media Training: remember the end game
4. Social Media Training: is Social Media free?
5. How to choose the best Social Bookmarking sites

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Related posts:

1. Making the Most of Social Media Marketing – Links
2. Social Media Training: Crazy Cameras and Reputation Management
3. Social Media Training: remember the end game
4. Social Media Training: is Social Media free?
5. How to choose the best Social Bookmarking sites

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