Social Bookmark Phenomenon

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Digg - One of the more recent phenomenons in the world of the internet are social bookmarking sites. An example of such a site is Digg. Digg can be used to keep track of your favorite sites, to see what sites other people are keeping track of, or to promote one of your own sites, and let people know that it's on your list.
Digg users can let people know they like a story, they can blog a story allowing people to "read more" or to "digg it" themselves. They can share the story , or they can bury the story if they don't like it. When stories get a lot of diggs, they appear at the top of their sections if they have more diggs then everyone else. Of course, then there's old stories that have a lot of diggs. These are sorted out because on the front page of digg, it brings you to the most recent... those sites that are new but have still been "dugg" by hundreds of users. Then there's a bar where you can sort by the top diggs in the last 24 hrs, or top in a week, month or year. As you can see, Digg is designed to provide users with recent updated and relevant content.
You can certainly create quite a buzz if you can provide hip relevant content to your site, and if you currently get enough traffic to get you a few "diggs". But there are a few things you must know.

• There is NO shame in digging your own content, or promoting a button for others to click on to "digg" your site.

• Digg users sort through digg, and often only read the title, and then the brief description, if they decide to click on the title, before they even look at your article.

• If you want to compete with the top Dugg stories in your category, (which you'll need to do to get massive traffic), you'll need to have ways to get a lot of traffic to begin with.

So that begs the question: "How can I increase my diggs?"
Doing so can be a fairly difficult process if you don't use other methods to generate traffic.

• When you're first building your site, don't expect a lot of diggs.
  
• Plan on building various systems to get you traffic.
  
• Use traffic from other social networks to get you more diggs (more on this in a future post)

These systems of traffic can start with all of the things I've talked about in this post about how to increase online traffic using a traffic exchange system, as well as a few of the things I talk about in my newsletter. Since Diggs are so focused on short term results, gradually trying to build it when you do not have these systems in place, isn't that beneficial. You probably will see a lot of posts which don't have many diggs at all, but giving people the option to digg your site, and digging your own articles is still beneficial. If you can generate extra visitors to your website, even if small to start with, and you have things like RSS feeds on your site and autoresponders to allow readers the opportunity to come back to your blog. It's worth your time.
Before you can expect enough traffic to get a significant amount of diggs (which will lead to a significant amount more)

1. First you must build your site in a way that allows every user to generate credits that will go towards more users. This includes things like traffic exchange recommendation, other social exchange buttons, rss feeds and "subscribe buttons", unique content, widgets from sites like blog rush (which require a solid amount of unique content first), and a flow of traffic that you will get from article directories, press releases, link exchanges, backlinks on other popular sites, videos, etc.
   
2. In addition, you will want to sign up to digg, search for content related to your blog, and add these digg suers to your friends list. Then add their friends friends which is as easy as viewing their profile and clicking "add friend" on all of the friends listed on their page, no new windows need to be opened.
   
3. Now when you have a group of friends, you're going to want to digg a bunch of their sites that they have submitted, as many will do the same back to you if you do. maybe even blog their content and digg the post that is about the news item they submitted to digg.
   
4. If you notice someone has blogged your content "help them help you" and digg their post.

Now you can add more of these social exchange sites to your blog, and do similar things and you will start to build a group of members and friends via these exchanges, which will lead to more diggs, which will lead to more site views, which will lead to more "propells" and "stumbles" and "furls" and other social exchange adds, which will in turn lead to more views and as a result more diggs, etc...



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