My first introduction to Digg was in late 2006 as I was researching different ways to get link backs to client domains. Upon entering the site, I thought it seemed like an easy way to get couple of links. Of course, I quickly realized that was naïve to think since I was posting stories that had no chance of going anywhere on Digg.
The more I heard about the amount of traffic Digg can send to a website, the more fascinated I became with it. So, I spent days reading about the service, learning the ins and outs, and talking to some close SMO friends. Everyone was talking about how top diggers had a stronger chance of getting their stories to the first page of Digg, while regular users had very little or no chance at all. That was true. Experimenting with my own account, my best stories had less than 30 diggs, in a time when you needed close to 70 diggs to make it to the first page. Of course, things are more complicated nowadays with stories requiring as much as 200 diggs sometimes to make the first page.
The amount of traffic Digg sends is great for most sites. Getting 40,000 to upwards of 70,000 visitors in the span of two or three days can provide great exposure to most domains. More valuable than the immediate traffic though are the site link backs that are a result of the exposure and interest in the topic you posted. There is also a good relation between hitting the first page of Digg and good increases in RSS membership subscriptions.
Because of all the benefits, I was determined to figure out a way to make the first page of Digg without being a “top digger.” I tried many different techniques; some worked while others failed.
As of January of 2008, we made a decision at Invesp to no longer offer social media optimization services and closed our last SMO contract. Since then, I have debated sharing some of the things we learned during that time period. However, since it has been months since we have done anything with Digg, I decided to start sharing some of the tricks I learned. You will find that most of the information in this report may be well known facts, but this report will bring structure to it. Following these techniques, we had a success ratio of 63% of getting our stories to the first page of Digg.
Before we start
- Unfortunately, I cannot reveal the profiles of the users we used since they are still active with the community.
- As we reveal some of the techniques outlined in this report, I am sure Digg will take some steps to adjust the algorithm to account for some of the suggestions. There are ways to deal with these changes which I will be announcing shortly.
Looking at Digg from the outside
In order for a story to get on the first page of Digg, enough people must “digg” the story, reaching a specific number of votes within a 24 hours period. How many diggs does it take for the story to make it to the first page? No one knows for sure. What we do know though are the factors that impact whether a story makes it or not:
1. Total number of diggs the story receives in a 24-hour period
2. The breakdown of the number of diggs a story receives in a 24-hour period from friends vs. non-friends of the story submitter
3. The category the story is submitted in
4. Other competing stories in the same category within the same submission timeframe
A story continues to collect votes until at some point within the first 24 hours Digg promotes the leading story to the first page. On the other hand the story can get enough buries to disappear, or may receive few diggs and the story disappears after 24 hours of submission.
Looking from the outside, Digg seems to run some batch jobs that evaluate the top stories in each category and determine whether they should be promoted or not. I have not spent time analyzing the intervals these jobs run at but it seems that they run at 30 minute intervals. It is also possible that the last run of a Digg promotion job determines when the next batch should run.
My challenge
As I decipher the Digg code, I will take you to a journalistic account I kept throughout the experience.
Challenge: Can you take someone who has never used Digg (far from a top digger status) and get most of the stories to the first page in a minimal amount of time?
The greatest hurdle you will face during this challenge is community involvement. Any digger, (top or beginner) must rely on friends and community members to promote their stories. There is no way around that. But being a part of the digg community is actually quite a rewarding experience. The question is can you minimize the amount of time you have to invest in community building before you start seeing your submissions on the first page?
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