AAVR Magazine

6 Ways to Prepare Your Article For Digg Success

For those readers who don’t know what Digg.com is, it is what is called a “social news” site. It is intended to be a forum where users submit content that they think is interesting, (they “Dig” it) and other users vote on those stories based on how relevant or cool it is. In this way, we use the wisdom of the group to “Dig” through the internet and find interesting, relevant content. Over time, Digg has expanded past their original tech focus and is a general-interest site. At the same time, it has become popular with webmasters and marketers as a tool to garner visibility and traffic for their site. While AAVRmag.com has never actually made the front page of Digg, we’ve visited it a few times and feel qualified to tell you what you need to succeed.

1. Always post your story in the form of a numbered list.

When writing your post, realize you aren’t writing for the New Yorker. While long, researched, quality posts are great for upholding editorial standards of your little blog or web site, that stuff don’t fly out in Digg-land. This isn’t an insult directed at the Digg readership, it is simply a fact. Most of the time, when people visit Digg they are on stolen time at work, waiting for a bus, or having sex with their spouse, meaning they have mere minutes to consume the information that you are providing them with. A numbered list means that not only can they read short, bulleted information, but they can also pick up where they left off if they have to switch back to an important-looking spreadsheet or discreetly hide their iPhone under a pillow.

2. Look through the stories with the most Diggs from 2 months ago. Emulate, paraphrase or simply copy the story.

Like the aforementioned spousal intercourse, why try something new when you know exactly what works? Someone else has already done the hard work or research to create a post that was popular with the Digg audience. Why not just steal it! Take several clever pictures posted in the photo section and post them to your blog in a megapost with a clever title! Take the news story and paraphrase it, or simply write a blurb and link to it! Copy the entire post and just reformat it to fit your blog! Chances are with the number of people that visit Digg daily, someone hasn’t seen it yet. At the very least you’ll get tens of visitors and boost your search rankings!

3. Mention any of the following topics in a critical or laudatory manner: Apple, Nintendo, Ron Paul, Microsoft, The United States, Family Guy, Al Gore.

If Digg were a shopping mall, it would be like cult classic movie The Warriors, with gangs of nerdy fanboys roaming the halls menacingly.

Some would be politics nerds, some audio nerds, some video game nerds, and even a few muscle car geeks. All would be brandishing their “nuanced” opinions like blunt weapons. Most of this mall would be empty except for the food court, which would have 5 taco bells, an organic vegan burrito store, and a massive “board” where they would all gather and bicker until they caught fire. See, Digg users will risk death to defend their candidate, computing platform, economic system, video game device or otherworldly deity. And by death I mean tired fingers and sore eyes from staying up posting all night. The good news is, angry flame wars= more Diggs.

It is funny, but it is also true. Nice-guy content doesn’t get nearly the attention that controversial content does. Try and experiment. Submit the same article twice, one with the title “5 Reasons Apple Sucks” and another with the title “5 Fair Observations About Apple Computer”. See which is more popular.

4. Get a job with Cracked.com. Write a somewhat humorous article. Submit

I don’t know what it is with these guys. They’ve had a few funny posts, but they have the Digg Midas touch. They could write an article called the “6 Things You Might Find in an Infant’s Diaper” and it would make the front page. Riveting content from Cracked that has oddly done well on Digg includes: 6 Singers Who Are Mistaken About Their Raw Sexuality , The 7 Greatest Home Shopping Screw Ups of All Time , and The Top 7 Secrets to Writing a Cracked.com Top 7 List. Go ahead, click the links, I’m sure they could use the traffic. I’m not bitter or anything. Maybe I should just man up and read the last one.

5. Create a tie-in to a celebrity death, holiday, tragedy or other calendar-appropriate occasion.

Is it too soon? Is it in good taste? That’s not for you to decide. Let the history books judge you. The truth is, no one cares about the aged until they are gone. I don’t recommend putting that in your Grandparent’s Day card, but the truth is that posthumously, celebrities are as sanctified as relatives. As soon as someone dies (Tim Russert, George Burns, Johnny Grant, Sir Edmund Hillary) suddenly everyone remembers they exist and wants to remember why they were famous. A good webmaster/editor should have stories on hand for anyone that seems scheduled to kick the bucket in the next 6 months, including Liz Taylor, Magic Johnson, Jeff Wiggle and Lindsey Lohan. You can do your research at http://www.deathlist.net/ .

Similarly, calendar events are looked at with that level of importance. No one cares about the history of Independence Day, Veterans Day or Arbor Day until they are sitting in their cubicles with their briefcases packed like elementary school kids at 12:30 waiting for the early dismissal email from the big boss lady before the three day weekend. Even if the holiday is associated with a tragedy, you can write a humorous post. Hey, if they can build a giant titanic slide, why can’t I profit from a disaster? (side note, I know it is way off topic, but you can check out the titanic slide here. WTF?

“Measuring 33 feet in height and 50 feet in length, this awesome slide captures the feeling of the real giant. Adding to the realism of this ride are the famed triple screw propellers and rudder. One could almost believe the ship is sinking! Who will survive the slide down?”

This was a major disaster! 1,500 dead! I can’t wait until I’m an old codger shaking my head and disbelief as my grandchildren ask me for tickets to ride the World Trade Center Drop of Terror ©. )

6. Mention Digg, The Digg Community, Kevin Rose, etc.

You know how when your friends show you their dumb photos and the whole time you are just hoping there is a picture of you so you can see how your new haircut looks? Well, everyone is like that. And there is nothing Digg users love more than scandal about their own community.

If there’s nothing interesting to report, it’s okay to make it up—it will take hours for it to be “buried as inaccurate”, and by that time you’ll be rolling in the adsense dough. You can write about how unfair the ranking system is, lament the lack of tech news on the site, or criticize the level of discourse.

So there it is, six simple ways to game Digg. Now, I’m off to write my next article, In Memory of Tim Russert, Cracked.com’s Top 6 Apple Events That Changed the World and Didn’t Make the Front Page of Digg.

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