Digging Out

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

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"

Happy Holidays

The Digg Coach will return Dec. 27th.

Digg Headlines

"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:"

It's In The Mixx

"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."

Why Digg Is Important To You

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

"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

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

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

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

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

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!!!!!!!