Can you Digg it? 7 Tips for Bloggers Working with Social News Sites
Social news sites first became popular when Digg.com launched on the Web in 2004. A social news site enables its users to submit news stories and vote on them. The most popular articles percolate to the top of the list and are rewarded with a huge surge in Web traffic. A candid discussion of each article often appears. The most popular social news sites are Digg, Reddit and StumbleUpon, which recently hit 2 million registered users. DotNetKicks is an excellent social news site for .NET programming.
As described by TechCrunch, the theory behind social news sites is that the world can do a better job than a handful of editors to determine which news stories people want to read. The problem is that voting by mass consensus often results in the lowest common denominator. Also, many of these sites use super-moderators, which like super-delegates in the Democratic primary, can result in a few key votes overwhelming the will of the majority. On Digg, this means that the most popular stories are usually about Apple, Linux, and Ron Paul.
But social news sites are becoming an increasingly important marketing and public relations tool for companies and especially bloggers. Even a mild Digg can send ten thousand or more fresh viewers per day to your blog and significantly increase your ad revenue. Though these traffic spikes tend to be short-lived, there is often a residual effect of viewers that enjoy your site and return for future visits. Most bloggers will see a persistent traffic increase with each Digg surge. Hence, it’s important to understand how to use social news sites to your blog’s advantage.
