The Digg Coach

Digging Out

2008-02-01T00:01:00.000-08:00

When I started this blog I did not realize that I was painting myself into a corner by focusing on Digg. I had many plans for the Digg Coach but have now decided to take a different path.

I will no longer be updating this blog but will, instead, be opening up another one of my blogs as a TV/Social Networking blog.

Within the next week I will be changing my blog, Arabelle's Alley, into focusing on TV as well as Social Networking. I invite you to join me there.

Thank you.

Top Diggers

2008-01-28T00:01:00.000-08:00

The Digg world was in disarray this week.

As you may be aware, Digg recently tweaked the algorithm it uses to determine which stories make the front page. This might not seem like a big deal to most, but some of the top Diggers were up in arms and staged what they referred to as a near “revolt”. Several of the top Diggers expressed concerns that the new algorithm makes it more difficult for their submitted stories to make it to the front page, amounting to what they construe as punishment for their success.

Its been estimated that approximately 30-50% of the top stories on Digg are submitted by top Diggers. As such, many of the top diggers feel that they have “built this site from the ground up” and are mulling a move over to other social news networks such as reddit and mixx.com"

Digg Submissions

2008-01-11T16:46:00.000-08:00

"A while ago people would submit every story they wrote to Digg. Not just to get it voted up, but because "just being on Digg" was apparently good for SEO. I wasn't always convinced of this but I heard it so much I started to believe there might be something in it. Still, I didn't follow the practice.

Fast forward a little while and Digg reorganizes the way pages are generated, particularly where member profiles are concerned. One of the effects of this was that fewer pages per story were created, and the knock on effect was fewer links just for being on the site.

Now today I get a question from a reader who has been following commentary about a social media marketing video that is doing the rounds that recommends you submit stories to Digg just because Digg has great pagerank."

For All Diggers

2008-01-05T16:43:00.000-08:00

"The issue has been building up for a few weeks now. It’s taboo, of course, to discuss Digg.com in a negative light, but there have been “closed-door” secret meetings amongst diggers recently. Via GTalk, it’s a hot topic among active diggers. A couple of weeks ago, Tamar Weinberg posted Why Nobody Should Buy Digg. It details some of the circumstances behind recent bannings and the apparent turnaround in how Digg handles them. In short, they don’t. If you’re banned, Digg won’t talk to you. They won’t talk to anyone else about you.

Regardless of how many hours (days?) you put into Digg or how many great stories you contributed over that time, if you get banned, you no longer exist. The question is, why?"

Top Digg Words

2008-01-02T16:59:00.000-08:00

"Digg,a social networking Top 40 of what people are reading, can make a campaign or idea go viral. Want some advice on how to wire your Digg posts for tippability. An analysis below of the top 25 words of Digg from Corporate Rants (overall hint -it it's new or you have an exclusive , it will hunt)."

Digg Comments

2008-01-01T17:09:00.000-08:00

"Although the general opinion ofl Digg faithful can't be judged based on comments on one story, can it be said that there is a Digg revolt in the works that is led by a group of individuals who are fed up with Ron Paul stories, crazy videos and a broken comment system?

If the comments on that story are to be believed, a revolt could happen.

As one commenter put, "I think Digg has been the social site that went downhill the most in 2007." Is it true? Did Digg really go downhill in 2007? Obviously, I tend to disagree with this sentiment and I truly believe that Digg was the best social destination of the year. But why have so many disagreed?

Consider these comments on the Digg page (all of them highly dugg by fellow members)"

Digging Ajaxonomy

2007-12-31T11:29:00.000-08:00

"If you have been using the popular service Digg you know that it is very easy to submit a story and to see it start to gain traction just to be buried into the dark abyss. What I find particularly frustrating is that you don't know how many people buried the story and the reason for the bury. If you have seen Digg Spy you have noticed that the application does show buries, but you can't just track data for a particular story.

After much frustration Ajaxonomy is now releasing a Bury Recorder application. How the application works is you take the story's URL (This is the URL of the page that the "more" link on the Digg upcoming/popular pages takes you or the page that clicking on the story title takes from your profile i.e. http://digg.com/[story]) and put it into the application and once you click "Watch for Buries" the application will start recording any buries that the story receives."

Diggers Digg

2007-12-30T00:01:00.000-08:00

"During this past year, a number of oddities emerged in the world of tech. First, Microsoft was forced to live through an unbridled flop, Apple was enjoying its meteoric rise as the most successful company of the year and social networks gained even more steam. On the back of that, the world's favorite social network, MySpace, quickly gave ground to Facebook and companies like the ill-fated Netscape tried to take on Digg.

And it's that site -- Digg.com -- that emerged this year, not necessarily as the most popular social site (it's tough to call it a full-fledged social networking company in the vein of a Facebook or MySpace), but as the best destination for people surfing the Web.

Don't believe me? Let's take a look at some other social networking sites to see why they couldn't make the cut."

Digg And Publishing

2007-12-26T16:42:00.000-08:00

"I’ve only had a post reach Digg’s homepage once, back in 2006, and I see no great loss if it never happens again. Why would I forgo those thousands of visits? Because Publishing 2.0, like most commercialized blogs, is essentially a trade publication (to use traditional media labels), and just as my content has little relevance to Digg’s niche audience, so too does Digg’s audience have little value to Publishing 2.0.

What I’ve just said might come as a surprise to many niche blogs and traditional media publishers who play the volume game when it comes to selling the value of their online audiences. Many tech blogs report audiences measured in shear volume, i.e. hundreds of thousands or north of 1 million, and those numbers are goosed by avalanche traffic from Digg."

Happy Holidays

2007-12-22T14:05:00.000-08:00

The Digg Coach will return Dec. 27th.

Selling Digg ?

2007-12-19T15:16:00.000-08:00

"It’s been a little more than a month since the last rumors surfaced about social news site Digg trying to sell itself for at least $300 million. A reliable source just confirmed the company’s plans, noting the company has hired Allen & Company, a tiny but influential private investment firm, to help broker a deal."

Digg: New Features

2007-12-18T12:17:00.000-08:00

New features coming to Digg:

Customizable Alerts

Groups

More here."

"Follow these 3 “simple” steps to get on DIGG front page and rocket your traffic"

After Diggs

2007-12-17T00:01:00.000-08:00

"So we’ve had a good night sleep and the first thing we did when we woke up was obviously jump out of bed to check yesterday’s statistics and see the damage Digg.com had done to our little blog. Just before we fell asleep, we had counted 1300 diggs, at this moment the number of diggs is a massive 2256!

Once the picture post hits the frontpage and doesn’t get buried, changes are you’ve just created a nice PR5 domain. Not just because of the linkjuice Digg passes on, but there are tons of sites out there that publish the popular stories from the Digg front page. Popurls.com is one of many for example. Also a lot of .edu sites have mirrors up in case the Dugg site crashes. (We did once yesterday, but a few Apache tweaks sorted that out.) All you do is wait for the next Google update to come around and you’re more than likely going to receive a nice PR.

The Stumble Effect

2007-12-15T16:49:00.000-08:00

Bloggers and webmasters out there who watch their traffic as closely as we do have been amazed by the “Stumble Effect”. Many know about the sudden burst of traffic that comes from the “Digg Effect” when a submission reaches the front page of Digg (or even better, if it reaches the “Top in All…” section on the frontpage). This is normally a day of joy (or terror if your server bombs) followed by limited tricklings of traffic.

Stumble has a different, more steady infusion of traffic that it can send to a website that gets stumbled, especially if it is hit by multiple top users. The effect is sustained, but more importantly, can be rejuvinated by a thumbs up and/or review by the right person/people.

Digg, on the other hand, has the advantage of having “controlled” traffic. Anyone watching their posts as they’re submitted and rising on Digg can pinpoint if and approximately when their page will go popular. You know when the traffic is coming and you know when it will stop."

Digg Headlines

2007-12-12T07:02:00.000-08:00

"Instead of forcefully making a boring topic appear interesting, this digg user took something that would guarantee attention (Google founders) and related it to a quite uninteresting topic. The result is a Digg headline that probably got enough *blind diggs* to make it popular and it ended up getting 562 diggs (as of writing this article).

I have to admit, when I saw this headline I was in a hurry as well and gave a blind digg before I had time to read the page itself.

The only problem with this linkbait (although to be fair it was just a test) was that it could have been done much better (in terms of optimizing the landing page and in attracting links, if the digger had set up a page on their own site instead).

If you want to do some linkbaiting for your website but are having trouble making your content *interesting*, stop forcing the issue. Instead, follow this simple 3 step process:"

Digg: The Game ?

2007-12-09T14:23:00.000-08:00

"So just how exactly is Digg.com a hidden game? Certainly, it has no

swordwielding heroes who save fantasy worlds from evildoers, but it

does have more characters than in any video game. With millions of

users, Digg has a wide array of personalities contributing to the

community. This makes it like a massive multiplayer online roleplaying

game, just without the slaying of monsters. There is a clear goal: to get to

the front page, and there are obstacles: not getting dugg up and having

to keep trying multiple times. There is fierce competition between all

Diggers for that top spot. Sometimes, they even attempt to discredit

others’ posts by commenting on poor grammar, false information, and

duplicate stories. Strategies are used to defeat other players and they are

numerous. Just as many plans for Digg domination through friendship

exist though. Seeking out the different users and adding them to the

“friends” list is among the most popular and most successful methods.

In the end, a win is only when a story has hundreds of diggs, regardless

of how you go about it. Everyone is striving to be the best at what they

do and this keeps them coming back to Digg for more."

Digging Photobucket

2007-12-06T05:47:00.000-08:00

"It seems like Digg users have been asking for–and Kevin Rose promising–a category for images and photos forever. Well the long wait is now over and you can finally uploaded your favorite lolcats image.

At the Digg blog, Kevin Rose announces the launch of image support and also better organization of existing categories. Here’s what Digg users are waking up to today:"

"
Social news site Digg is a love-it or hate-it phenomenon. Here at ReadWriteWeb, we love Digg, but I've got to admit that new competitor Mixx is worth a real close look. Mixx announced today that it's taken a strategic investment (meaning a small one with a bunch of influence anyway) from the giant newspaper the LA Times. It's just the latest in a series of deals that the little company has signed with outfits including USA Today, Reuters.com and The Weather Channel."

Let's see what you digg on Photobucket!

A very special integration for Photobucket -- with Digg at http://digg.com

Digg's Algorithm

2007-12-01T05:19:00.000-08:00

"You already know how Digg works. Post a funny picture of Kevin Rose or a tribute to Apple's greatness and there you have it -- you're on the front page. You're not wrong. But social media maven Muhammad Saleem says there's actually a little science to Digg as well. In a post on Search Engine Land, Saleem explains how Digg's algorithm does and doesn't work. He should know. Most of his recent Digg submissions have garnered several hundred votes. Good stuff, only it runs way too long. Here's our slimmed-down version."

I learned something new from this article. Several items of importance actually.

It's In The Mixx

2007-11-29T18:36:00.001-08:00

"It was very strange to see that every time I was reaching 50 diggs a group of users was starting to post bad comments like “Blog Spam” or “copied and pasted from here …link…(to another profile)”.
And it was stranger to see that others were having the same problem.
It’s clear that many blogs have been banned because of such comments.
So, it happened that several popular people on Digg to leave the website to find another heaven.

Besides that, Mixx knows how to attract the ex-diggers on its website and it created a special place in the forum, called Digg Refugges, dedicated “For those of you who have been a victim of the heavy hand of digg.”

Mixx is working non-stop to improve the website by adding new features every day, and announcing them on the blog.
The Facebook application, Customizable Mixx Buttons and the Mobile Mixx version for the iPhone are just a few of the last enhancements."

Digg Or Mixx ?

2007-11-24T14:17:00.001-08:00

New startup Mixx, which went in to private beta just two months ago, may be finding itself with the right product at the right time. Digg users, including top contributors, are showing an increasing amount of frustration with the Digg community, and many are leaving.

"In fact, every headline that reaches Digg's home page receives an average of 129 links, according to search marketer Neil Patel, and each of those links can push an online business' traffic closer to the coveted top spots in Google or Yahoo!'s results. Digg is by far the greatest source of links and traffic among social media sites: A popular story on the site gets as many as 100,000 unique visitors. Sites like StumbleUpon, Reddit, Newsvine and Propeller can each add between 5,000 and 10,000 more."

Digging Candidates

2007-11-22T15:59:00.001-08:00

Digg quietly launched its "Digg The Presidential," section Tuesday. So far, the activity on the page has been underwhelming.

What's really most odd is that Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton's profile was the only candidate as of Wednesday morning not to be added, and it wasn't added until late in the day. When it was, Clinton's favorited items were press releases.

And she didn't have many friends either. As of late Wednesday, she had 80 friends on Digg. Obama had 4,249 friends, fellow Democrat Dennis Kucinich followed with 3,366. Ron Paul had 7,694. The closest Republican behind him was Mike Huckabee with 393 friends. This Quantcast audience profile gives a hint as to a partial reason for these numbers. "

Digging Rupert Murdoch

2007-11-21T11:49:00.001-08:00

"It looks like the first step to me, he's certainly "got his foot in the door" as it were. The Wall Street Journal has now "integrated" with Digg to allow users to read Wall Street Journal articles for free."

"Ben Cook created a blog with a single post and submitted it to Digg. The post reached Digg's front page, a deluge of visitors ensued, but what's next? High search engine rankings and a continuous trickle of visitors, Ben Cook explains."

Blogging Digg

2007-11-20T11:29:00.000-08:00

"Have you ever noticed that some blogs seem to rise to the top of Digg over and over again?

You might think that they’ve discovered some magic formula for getting attention, built a “Digg culture” on their blog, or they just get all of their friends to Digg their posts.

And they might.

The most successful blogs don’t try to manipulate readers into voting for their posts. They just give them what they want.

It’s all about focusing on your audience. If you want to be on the front page of Digg, write about topics that Diggers love, such as Ron Paul, Apple, or blogging."

Digg: Take A Tour

2007-11-19T09:48:00.001-08:00

"Digg is a place for people to discover and share content across the web, from the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog. Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users.

Every article submitted to Digg has a count of how many Diggs the story has received. You need to be signed-in to Digg a story. For every registered user that clicks "Digg it" the count goes up one. If a story reaches the tipping point, then it gets promoted to the homepage. "

Take the tour here.

Why Digg Is Important To You

2007-11-17T08:41:00.001-08:00

1. Digg receives over 18 million visitors per month, growing over 500% since September 2006 (according to Compete.com)

2. Content submitted to Digg, that makes the Digg home page, can receive over 10,000 unique visitors in 1 hour.

3. The average submission making the home page receives over 100 inbound links.

4. Links can be attributed to bloggers picking up popular stories, influential media personnel, government websites and digg mirrors & clones.

5. Note that only 0.7% of all Digg submissions make the home page.

5. The top 100 users have a large influence on home page content. 56% of all submissions making the home page are contributed by those users.

6.Digg receives an estimated 75,110,000 page views per month.

Discovering Digg

2007-11-15T09:33:00.001-08:00

"The labs provide a broader (and deeper) view of Digg. A lot of stuff gets submitted to Digg every day, so good things can sometimes fly right past you. Labs projects look beneath the surface of the Digg community's activities."

The Digg Blog

All the latest Digg updates.

Tour Digg and discover how it works here.

Digg Suggestions

2007-11-14T06:25:00.000-08:00

Derek Edmond has an interesting article called "75 Suggestions, Best Practices, and Resources for Digg.

"Examples of What Can Work Well on Digg

* Lists work well (Top 10 Lists, 25 Most Important, 17 Best, etc)
* Tutorials, how-to guides etc seems to work (as relevant to the community)
* Offbeat News, Humor can work (as it is deemed relevant to the community)
* Important newsworthy events seem to work (but make certain be the first to report and always submit the original source)
* If your content does not appear to be appropriate (but you really want it to get to the popular page), you need to figure out how to position your material so that it will be perceived as valuable by the Digg community
* Remember whom the audience is that you are trying to contribute to. You will not be successful if you do not understand the community."

Daily Diggs

2007-11-13T14:22:00.000-08:00

Not much time to Digg? Don't feel like searching for articles?

Here's the easy way.

http://digg.com/users/sweat1951/history/favorites

Every time I digg an article I save it to my Favorites. I can then have all the articles in one place and can post this one link.

This link can be used repeatedly as favorites are updated daily too.

Submitting A Story To Digg

2007-11-12T13:57:00.000-08:00

When you click on the Digg button after reading an article you may be taken to a page where you will see that you are the first person to Digg it so you must submit the story. It's very simple.

1. You will be asked for the the article's URL.

2. You write a brief little bit as to what the story is about.

3. Scroll down to categories and choose the appropriate one.

4. Scroll down and you find one of those boxes where you type in the code which shows you aren't a bot.

5. You may come to a page that says similar stories have been submitted. None of them will be the one you're entering so scroll down and hit the Submit button and you're all done.

Why Digging Is Important

2007-11-11T07:42:00.001-08:00

Let's begin by explaining why Digg is so important to everyone.

In one word; exposure.

Remember the Save Jericho campaign? It's a prime example. Jericho fans would Digg any Jericho post and the Diggs would number in the thousands.

Once a submission has earned a critical mass of Diggs, it becomes “popular” and jumps to the homepage in its category. If it becomes one of the most popular, it qualifies as a “Top 10”. If a submission doesn't receive enough Diggs within a certain time period, it eventually falls out of the “Upcoming” section.
The system only works when users actively participate on a large scale, so make sure to do your part and Digg content that matters to you!

Basically, the more Diggs an article gets the more people who will see it. I'm not talking about 10, 50, or even 100 Diggs-it often requires thousands. Do you want a network to stand up and notice fans? Do you want more viewers to your blog/website?

The promotion and burying of stories is managed by an algorithm developed by Digg. There is no hard number of Diggs/buries to promote or remove a story. It's based on a sliding scale that takes several factors into consideration, such as number of Diggs, reports, time of day, topic submitted to, Digging/burying diversity, etc.

One of the keys to getting a story promoted is diversity in Digging activity. Until the algorithm gets the diversity it needs of users Digging the story, it will remain in the Upcoming section. That way, the system knows a variety of people will be into the story. This means we all need to digg a variety of topics and not just the few that are only of interest to us.

Here's an article that will explain more.

Introducing The Digg Coach

2007-11-10T12:33:00.000-08:00

Terocious and I would like to thank everyone who attended Digg Chat. It was a lot of fun and we'll do it again soon.

Everybody had great ideas during chat so this blog was born from those ideas. Terocious and I will be working together to bring you information, tutorials, and various pros and cons of using Digg. We hope this blog will be a central location where you can find anything you would like to know.

This is a blog for every fan of every show and anyone else who wants Digg information. Leave us a comment if you would like to ask a question or have a suggestion. We welcome any Digg articles you may run across.

Many thanks to Terocious for the beautiful header and for the title. I was struggling trying to find just the right name for this blog when he popped up with a title and picture.

Since this is a new blog please bear with us as we grow and add more articles.

Welcome to The Digg Coach!!!!!!!