Social Media Optimization, Before You Kill Yourself - Digg and Conclusion
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Bury Effect: The Other "Digg Effect"
There is another effect that is literally death in social media. It is the opposite of the Digg Effect. Hopefully, it won't take your traffic away (unless Digg blacklists you), but will just make your appearance on Digg a non-event.
Simply put, in 2007 Digg became a problem for websites. Several commentators noted that it was getting nigh impossible to get on the front page of Digg.com. Many noticed that instead of being "Dug up," they were being buried.
For those that don't understand what I am getting at, there are two (actually three) important buttons when it comes to Digg users. One, which we all like, says "Digg it." The second, about which we can probably afford to be ambivalent, says "Comment on it." The last, which we definitely do not want to encourage others to use on our posts, says "Bury It." A buried piece never reaches the front page.
Before You Kill Yourself
So before you dash off to do social media optimization, let's look at some reasons why pieces get buried in Digg and how you can keep from cutting your own throat (figuratively of course). The first is something that works in SEO and seems to fail in Digg; it is your domain name. If your domain name is key word rich, it is likely to be buried because it may be considered "spammy." There is little you can do about this particular factor, except to soldier on despite it; or would you rather damage your SEO for your SMO?
A piece might also get buried when its description sounds like PR. Finally, if there are several bad comments (I mean really mean, cutting comments), some voters won't even bother reading the piece and will just bury it in haste to see it disappear.
Note that some voters vote before even reading the article (heck it's a community), so expect some fickleness. However, some things can help you get on Digg's home page. Chris Winfield of www.10e20.com (an SMO consultancy) says six types of content are more likely to make it to the homepage than others. They include:
- Lists
- Videos
- APIs
- Tips
- Tools
- Images
Digg, like any other site (and all social media sites), needs to be studied and understood before it is used. Check back next week for the next part in this three-part series!
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