Six
or so months ago, it used be easier to get on the homepage of
Digg. Lately, sites have been having problems.
Most of these troubled sites are usually about online marketing or other
business-related topics. It seems that users are
burying these
stories for no apparent reason. A buried story dies with no chance of reaching
the home page and gaining a lot of traffic and attention.
Based on monitoring and reading comments that users leave on Digg, here are
some of the reasons these users are burying stories:
- Domain: Many Digg users don’t like marketing or SEO sites. If you
have a domain name using SEO or marketing keywords in it, they may judge you
— and bury you– based upon your domain name. - Title & Description: You would think that many users click through,
read a story and then vote if they like it. The reality is that many users
just vote based on the title and description alone. If they think something is
too corporate or spammy based on those, that can cause a bury. - Comments: Diggers love to comment about stories on Digg. In many
cases, others read the comments rather than the story itself. So, if the first
comment is bad, others may jump on the bandwagon and also start assuming that
the story was bad.
At the moment there is no solution around these problems, but here are two
ways you can improve your odds of not getting buried:
- Create A Funny Moment: Many Digg users are in their early 20s and
enjoy humor. Even if you are submitting a serious story to Digg, if you use a
humorous title and description, you can improve your odds. If you analyze some
of the most popular stories on Digg, many of them used funny headlines and
descriptions. It’s harder to bury something that makes you laugh. - Relate To Your Audience: As said, Diggers are young, independent
and often not traditionalist. So some stories won’t play well. For example, if
you pitch a story on how high paying jobs only come to those with college
degrees, many on Digg without degrees (and perhaps no intention of getting
one) might dislike it. Remember, the best way to understand how to relate is
to know the audience by actually using Digg itself. You’ll quickly learn what
they like and dislike.
Just like any other form of marketing, succeeding on Digg all about targeting
your audience. If you can appeal to the Digg audience, you can still succeed
even if you run a marketing or business-oriented website.
Neil Patel is
co-founder and CTO of ACS and writes
regularly on social media issues through the company’s blog,
Pronet Advertising. The
Let’s
Get Social column appears Tuesdays at
Search Engine Land.
Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.