the real value of digg most marketers miss out on

finally updated my blog again.

it's something that's been in my head for a while but haven't really had the chance to write it out.

I'm sure some of the more savvy marketers have definitely realized it before, but it seems like it's never talked about, which absolutely perplexes me. I was pretty amused that in the "best examples of viral websites" thread a while back, digg was never mentioned.

 

Spot on as always and indeed easily overlooked who's 'fooling' who. Nice post!

 

i don't really think it's about fooling? it's because digg has created such a special place for itself that everyone wants a link back.

 

Hence the apostrophes. Us webmasters think we can manipulate/fool Digg but in the meanwhile it's the other way around.

 

webmasters are being fooled, in a sense. they think they're "cheating digg." this isn't the case at all. webmasters are doing exactly what digg wants them to do; they're linking to digg, linking to digg aggressively, encouraging people to sign up and use their service, etc.

it's an incredible marketing plan.

...

I have a feeling someone is going to read my blog post and think "wow, she's right ! I'm off to make my own digg" which is pretty silly and unfortunate but it happens all the time. you should learn from other sites' strategies and deploy them into something unique, not just clone them. that's how you'll make serious money.

 

I completely agree! I just recently started using Digg (amongst other sites) on a few of my blogs, including my personal blog, and I've only gotten one digg... but I'm seeing they're getting plenty of clints

 

The post and comments here make no sense. Digg sends enough traffic even to stories that don't make the front page to outweigh the traffic you are sending them. You hit the front page and they've sent you enough for a year of digg links on every post on your page. On top of that Digg posts get indexed very well in SE's so if a post sends you 20 hits you might end up with 200 / month from their page being #1 in google etc. Sure they benefit from the backlinks and you benefit from the long term benefits as well as short term traffic.

Cheers.

 

my point wasn't that they don't benefit, my point was that overall, people send more traffic to digg than digg sends to them. you may be the exception to the rule.

even if having digg on every page was beneficial, that doesn't mean their marketing methods aren't incredible. that was the primary point. digg offers something of value to webmasters (sometimes it delivers, most often it doesn't-- but you're free to disagree). the fact that they do that made their site go viral, and any marketer should be able to learn a tremendous amount from that.

 

I don't think people send more traffic to Digg than Digg sends to them is where I disagree.

 

Once you hit the front page proverbial jackpot you may come out as the winner between your site and Digg but fact of the matter is that a lot of sites link to Digg and never make it. Even individual blog posts etc. So it's many to one and one to not-so-many - it will always be in Digg's favour. It's like gambling in many ways with links and/or traffic being the currency.

And it's not just traffic we're sending or links we're building - Digg has probably been the fastest growing tech Brand along with YouTube in the last 24 months. That's worth infinitely much more to them than that bit of traffic they sent you. Digg hardly makes a profit and yet are valued in the many millions because of the strong brand built virally.

 

even if you do disagree with that, that wasn't the major point of the article

I still personally believe that your experience as a webmaster is different from the experiences most webmasters have and this is affecting your judgment.

 

I didn't disagree with the rest of your article.

 

You don't have to hit the front page to see nice traffic from Digg. Worthless traffic IMO but that wasn't the topic. As far as value, it's all relative. The last time tech companies were valued based on the same principles the bubble exploded and lots of people went broke. Anyone paying millions for Digg will be hard pressed to see anything resembling a ROI. Funny business those companies built to sell are.

 

that traffic isn't worthless

 

I already learned that lesson long ago so the no buying Digg traffic was just a bandwidth burner.

 

The best benefit from Digg would be the hope that some of the extra traffic link to your site thus building lots of natural links.

 

Great article (and blog!). Thanks for posting it. I also found the "Wikipedia Links" and "Long Tail Traffic" articles really interesting and helpful as well.

It is hard not to agree that Digg has created an awesome self-propelling marketing machine. It would be interesting to know from someone like Kevin Rose whether this was intentional or just a very sweet side effect.

 

It depends... i never use a digg backlink! I just add the histories by myself.

But oh yea! Digg is one of the best viral marketings ever... it just keep growing everyday.
And i've been getting good traffic from digg search, even more than google LOL.

And yea, it's a really good viral marketing as EVERYONE on dp has tried digg once! Imagine how much people send a history to get it to the front page!

And as users signup imagine how big the digg e-mail list is... imagine if they want to sell something someday?

What i enjoyed mostily from this post is:
You need to learn to make webmasters believe there’s some incredible benefit to be had by linking to you.

You just told WHY digg is famous... kmon now everyone knows the secret!

Ur blog is so cool, keep it up!

 

I didnt see the little dig icon in your blog...

 

I addressed that in one of the comments. the blog's still pretty new. haven't had time to modify wordpress in the ways I wanted yet.