How To Blog» » Social Networking

Making Digg Work For You

Blogboy — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 08:59:39 +0000

Practicing these tips will help make your blog popular on Digg

Know Your Digg Goals
If your goal is to make the front page, good luck. More than 50% of the front page is controlled by less 100 people. You need to think smaller from the start and work towards the homepage. Start by thinking about how to get X number of Diggs. Set realistic goals and analyze the results.

Write Digg Descriptions.
Everyone says content is king and that is mostly true. Writing Digg worthy descriptions is very different from just writing good content. People other than your Digg friends have to want to vote for your entry. Make those 350 character work for you.

Make Digg Friends
Without some popular friends on Digg, you simply won’t make it very far. It isn’t simply good enough to shout out a Digg entry because a lot of those get ignored, especially during the busy part of the day. If you have popular Digg friends you can IM asking them to digg you goes a lot further. People look at what other popular people are digging and often times Digg just to be part of the crowd.

Comment on other People’s Diggs
You want to be recognized and people want to to be noticed for their own efforts. The best way to do both is comment on Diggs. The more you comment without being an asshole the more friends you will gain and the more people who will reciprocate your efforts.

Be Patient
Keep working Diggs for several days if you are getting traction. Some Diggs will simply take time to get going. Other Diggs will go nowhere and you should move on, but even then check back occasionally for new comments.

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Digg This!

Blogboy — Sun, 04 May 2008 16:39:36 +0000

Digg is probably one of the best tools you can use for driving Traffic right to your sight, but it is not for the timid. Getting Diggs is like selling cars. When I started selling cars I was on the used lot and my Sales Team Manager told me something the first day which has held true any time I have sold things. Bill told me, “Brad selling cars is like getting pussy. If you don’t ask them to do it you aren’t getting it.” Getting a Dugg is a lot like getting pussy too.

I have been following a couple of posts elsewhere. There seems to be a lot of bloggers that want the traffic Digg can bring but aren’t willing to ask for it. Instead of getting pussy, most of them are pussies. If you aren’t willing to promote yourselves, then why the fuck should anyone else waste their time promoting your worthless ass? If you want to be popular do your own part in making it happen.

If you are worried about looking like some self promoting ass with no more manners than you have guts, then join a Digg team. Hell if you are willing shout to your entire friends list a dozen times a day for the team I might even let you join mine. It will never matter how good your content is if you are the only one stroking yourself. If you want to be noticed in the ever expanding blogosphere then you need to be proactive and quit waiting to be sexy on Digg.

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The Power of Twitter

Blogboy — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:32:35 +0000

I promised a post not so long back on how to make the most of Twitter for blogging. In the mean time a couple of big name blogs ShoeMoney and ProBlogger have gotten into twitter pretty hard and can give you their takes on the networking with your fans side of it better than I can so I would suggest you read their tweeting adventures.

What I am going to bring to the table is a different take on the subject and one that has been doing well for me. Using for those using WordPress there are several different plugins available to you, but I have two favorites, MyTwitter, which I am new too. Then, there is the old reliable TwitterTools from Alex King. Twitter tools does it all creates a digest post of your daily tweets, creates a post when you tweet, creates a tweet when you post, and gives you several configurable options. The one problem it has is it only functions as a stupid widget making it about useless for me since I don’t want it in my sidebar. This is where MyTwitter comes in. I have only found this in the last few days, but it will allow you to place the content anywhere you want it. I actually haven’t decided where I want it yet, but you can damned well believe it will be somewhere useful.

Okay I know some of you are probably thinking so what good is Twitter any how I run a couple of blogs that have absolutely nothing to do with my personal activities throughout the day. Well that goes back to one of the most important feature of TwitterTools, the ability to create a tweet when you post. If you make a couple of posts per blog a day and it creates a twit each time, you will notify every one of your followers you have posted something and if they are interested may go for a look even if they don’t normally read that blog. Furthermore you can use the tweet aggregate function to list you other posts on your other blogs to each and every reader creating a direct a passive stream of directed traffic. If you use the daily digest mode or create a post every time you tweet, you provide new content.

I prefer the digest mode on one of my blogs, but not all of them to avoid repetition. Using that along with AutoMeta which creates some of the meta information, SimpleTags which creates tags, the AutoSocial plugin which submits all my posts to Del.icio.us I get a full SEO friendly post that ends up drawing me organic traffic that I didn’t have to work for at all.

There has also been somewhat of another revolution in the Twitter market of recent days and that is the battle over desktop widgets. This is just one more place that people can see your blog links and effectively get to them. Expect as this battle heats up and innovations made almost daily, that this will become one more way to drive traffic to your site.

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Socializing - Traffic Building Part 3

Blogboy — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:46:55 +0000

Digg

Every blogger should have a Digg account, no matter where you blog. If you don’t write crap for blog content, it won’t long before someone starts Digging your posts. You are going to need an account to help with the self promotion and respond to people Digging your work. As you build your network you can shout out not just your cool new finds but the ones elsewhere to your friends. Digging others is almost as important as getting dug yourself, since people do profile the people Digging them, especially when you’re among the first to Digg a new page or the other user is just getting started. On that same note you should be profiling the people Digging you and reading their work, not just to be nice either. You reap what you sew in social networking. Popularity snowballs on Social Networking.

Stumbleupon

Just like with Digg every Blogger should get a Stumbleupon account. At first you should be asking your friends to your posts not to mention if you use FireFox you can get a Stumbleupon toolbar that will let you quickly add your own posts. Once you start building your network there expect the same kind of profiling from your friends there to occur as it did on Digg.

MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog

MBL and BC are very similar in terms of the way they look on the surface. As you can see from my sidebar I think you shouldn’t get one without the other. You can basically create networks of users the same way you do in the other programs but that is where we start to diverge from them. You can actually see in real time which other members, not just the ones from your network are visiting your blog. MBL gives some nice statistical tracking data when you register your blog(s) but lacks the same sort of rapid friend building you can do in BC. BC also lets make announcements to the people of your network which comes in handy the way it does for Digg.

In the end if you want to develop a following and are writing quality posts none of these tools are things you want to be without.

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