Digg is a social media website where people gather to express their opinion about Internet posts. The posts may be news items, articles, or opinions, and span all topics. There is a voting structure in place where each participant can give a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” to a post. Thumbs up is given in the form of clicking “digg it”, and thumbs down is given in the form of clicking “bury”. Participants can popularize a post (encouraging friends, family, and colleagues to vote) by clicking “share”, and/or they can comment on a post. In order to participate, of course, one must have a digg account.
You do not need to be at digg.com to vote. When you are reading a post that has a link to digg, you can click on the link, enter your digg login, cast your vote, enter your comment and/or share it. If yours is the first vote, the post gets listed in digg.com under the “upcoming” category. As others visit digg or the post and vote on it, the post moves through the digg categories…And so begins the process of popularizing a post.
Posts are categorized in multiple groupings, too many to mention here, but for example:
- Upcoming (recently added to digg (i.e. 1 vote))
- Most recent (most recently voted on)
- Most popular in the past 24 hours
- Most popular in several vertical markets like Technology, World and Business, and Gaming
Posts are archived by number of days (7, 30, 365).
Alternately, you can go directly to digg.com to learn what others are thinking on any given day by viewing the most popular posts of the day.
Why should you care?
Well, you want to get found on the Internet. You want people to know that you are an expert in your field… and Digg is a word-of-mouth marketing tool; (I prefer David Meerman Scott’s phrase “word-of-mouse”.)
You are in total control of getting found. You don’t need to call in your SEO experts, nor your website experts. Simply write a compelling piece. Tell everyone you know what the piece is about and where to find it. Log into digg and watch your popularity grow.
Your goal is to get listed on the first page in the 24 hour category. It will likely take multiple attempts to reach the goal. In the meantime, you have added content to your website, raised awareness about your expertise, products and services, and people have been “digging” you…All good things!
Visit digg.com.