Need Social Media Success? Don’t Start With Digg
Digg is seen as the “Grand Daddy” or the “Big Kahuna” of Social Media Networks. It has the ability to send an enormous amount of traffic in a given direction.
However, since the major algorithmic update in January, it’s been much harder to get your Digg submissions to the front page. Also, it’s not unusual to see stories in the “upcoming” section with 300 - 400 Diggs and they still don’t hit the front page, and I saw a story today with 1010 Diggs and it was still in “upcoming”! Back in the old days, we could get almost every article onto the front page, now the odds of getting a submission to go “popular” are less than 50%.
Getting your story a significant amount of Diggs is hard work and very time consuming. Preparing an article or piece that you think will work takes hours and hours of tweaking and can cost a considerable amount of money. All that work will be wasted if the story gets buried or expires, which is statistically more than likely to happen.
Even many of the top submitters have stopped submitting to Digg to protect their high “popular” percentage and continue to appear to be successful on Digg.
However, there are many other Social Networks that can generate large amounts of traffic and are much easier to find success with. I’ve listed the top few other networks you should try:
1) reddit.com
2) del.icio.us
3) buzz.yahoo.com
4) stumbleupon.com
5) fark.com
6) Propeller.com
Using these networks, you can generate as much traffic - if not more - than an average front page on Digg. Also, it will require considerably less effort and your failure rate will be far lower than on Digg.
Give it a try, submit ten articles to Digg. If you’re lucky, two of them will become popular and send, say, 40,000 visitors. This is basically just an average number that you’ll probably get for a couple of regular stories becoming popular.
Submit the same ten articles to the other sites, and if you know what you are doing, there is a good chance that you’ll have an 80% success rate. I bet you could get at least 100,000 visitors. Getting a hit on Propeller can net hundreds of thousands of visitors too, so that one certianly shouldn’t be avoided.
I’m not saying forget Digg, just focus your efforts on the other networks, as you can have much greater success for less money, less time, and a lot less heartache.
I’ve had a lot of comments asking why I didn’t put Mixx on the list. Here is the reason: I’ve never had a decent amount of traffic from Mixx, the most being around 1000 visitors. It requires much effort to get your story to the popular section of any network, and your effort is best spent elsewhere.
9. July 2008 at 18:15
good advice. it’s always best to diversify anyway, so you’re not caught up in any one proble.
thanks for the reminder
9. July 2008 at 20:19
What about Mixx.com?
9. July 2008 at 21:33
Thanks for the helpful info. I was using Digg more than the other sites.
9. July 2008 at 22:16
Great sites, just now finding out about Buzz.Yahoo doesn’t seem like my niche will do well on there however.
10. July 2008 at 05:58
Great advice, and timely too. Everyone should be aware of the alternatives to social media services other than Digg.
10. July 2008 at 06:02
Submitting to social media SUBMISSIONS is like gambling unless I’m mistaken. Please provide more evidence that it’s worth the time or proven techniques to consistently get you traffic. Again, I’m open minded and would appreciate more evidence to “social media SUBMISSION effectiveness.” Social media does work but submitting…?
This is not a high impact activity unless you have something very newsworthy (eg. exclusive or fresh information). Even if you do get traffic, how do you do something of monetary gain with it? If it’s not worth the time, then we’re back in the 90s where people excited over something like their “hit counter.”
“if you know what you are doing, there is a good chance that you’ll have an 80% success rate. I bet you could get at least 100,000 visitors.” - Respectfully, you have demonstrated in this statement what the key issue is.
10. July 2008 at 06:04
Stumbleupon has been good to me.
10. July 2008 at 06:04
i too was focusing on digg more than the other sites. but did not rule them out completeley
http://sandiegopchelp.com
10. July 2008 at 06:05
I had signed up for del.icio.us but thought this is not very good and best is digg. But your story was really an eye opener. I will definitely go for the other one along with digg.
Thanks for good advise.
10. July 2008 at 06:20
I’ve read that submitting a new site to social bookmarking sites like these is a good way to get it indexed by search engines. There are even guys advertising in webmaster forums who’ll do that for you, for a few bucks.
10. July 2008 at 06:20
@vemrion I love the design and UI of mixx.
10. July 2008 at 06:23
I am glad they made it more difficult to get to the top. They did so because advertisers exploit the system for their own personal gain or that of their clients (shady stuff). Social media networks are about communications from people to people, not people to business (or vice versa), that’s what ad space is for.
10. July 2008 at 06:59
THANKS FOR THE great article, It is very true, much harder to get on the first page of digg.and its not the top 60 users who are getting at the top every time either. I would have mentioned one more site that you didnt write about, which is http://www.opentopix.com , which is growing quite fast
10. July 2008 at 07:40
Really? Isn’t it just all about which site has the best news, not the easiest method to get your story to the frontpage?
10. July 2008 at 08:05
stumbleupon.com good for entertainment sites but not for articles.
10. July 2008 at 08:25
thanks nice info
10. July 2008 at 08:54
Thanks for the tips. I agree with Vemrion, I think Mixx should be on this list……. Also I think Diigo is pretty good as well.
10. July 2008 at 14:29
I’m a newbie in the world of online writing, but I’ve found that the trick to a successful article is more about the content of the article than advertising your work.
Research the interests of your target audience, make sure your grammar and spelling is spot on, and don’t blather on endlessly about a topic.
Make it short.
Keep it sweet.
Put it to work.
10. July 2008 at 16:29
Great advice! I too was spending a lot of time focusing on Digg. However, I think it is important to note that you need to be involved in these social bookmarking communities by having connections, or else no one will see your article. It will just get lost on these sites as well.
http://www.rockfishinteractive.com
10. July 2008 at 18:17
u forgot abt mixx?
11. July 2008 at 04:23
Wish i coulda read this earlier. I HAVE been trying hard at Digg. Ah well, learning is really a continuous process. Thanks for the info. BTW, does anyone use socialmarker.com? I think it’s an automatic socialbookmarking submission site?
12. July 2008 at 02:32
Great minds think alike.
12. July 2008 at 06:54
To get it to the frontpage on Digg you need to know what kind of stories the community loves to read - so you want to check what are the top listings and look for similar stories - Geek tech, stuff, odd news etc…
if your aim is simply to get a better search engine ranking or top Goolge listing within a very short amount of time no votes are required at all. it’s just that powerful and Google loves it…
13. July 2008 at 18:55
Agreed. Digg is over-rated.
http://detentionslip.org
21. August 2008 at 22:07
I am new to Digg and think I’m going to take your advice on this…. thanks!