Blog Training and How-To Guide for Business Blogging

Another tip from our expert blogtipper at BusinessBlogWire, Easton Ellsworth.

This week, we'll share some easy ways to boost your blog's traffic using 3 of the most popular social media websites: Digg, StumbleUpon and del.icio.us (AKA Delicious). This post focuses on Digg.

What is a social media website and why should you care?

A social media website is simply a place for people to share text, audio, videos or links with each other, plus their opinions about those things.

Sharing = social.
Stuff = media.
Sharing stuff = social media.

For example, YouTube is a social media site focusing on videos. It's a video sharing site.

When you share stuff at a social media site, you draw attention to yourself, which can lead people to your blog. And when someone (doesn't have to be you) shares something directly from your blog at a social media site - a photo, a video, a blog post you wrote, whatever - it leads people directly to your blog.

So what about Digg?

Digg is a very popular social media site. It focuses on the most popular news being shared on the Web. It is also a great place to share interesting or useful articles, images, audio files or videos you've discovered. The Digg community especially loves whatever would excite the mind of a young adult male who uses the Internet a lot. If your post would cause someone to say, "Wow, now that is really cool," or maybe, "Wow, someone had way too much time on their hands ... and I like it," then it would probably get a lot (maybe even many thousands) of Digg users to visit your blog.

Look at Digg's most popular stories for the last 7 days to get a taste of Digg culture.

How do you write especially for the Digg crowd?

Digg users tend to have extremely short attention spans, so make sure your headline and introductory sentence grab them by the brain and yank them into your blog. Don't let them get bored.

Less Diggable Headline: Marketing Tips for Success
More Diggable Headline: 240+ Extreme Marketing Tips You Can't Live Without

Less Diggable Intro Sentence: The other day I was sitting at home reading a book when I had this thought about doing a post on marketing tips.
More Diggable Intro Sentence: Here it is - the greatest list of extreme marketing tips you'll ever see (247 and counting!).

If your blog post becomes very popular at Digg, it can mean that you may receive thousands or even tens of thousands of extra page views to your blog in one day. That's a great thing. But ...

 ... That huge spike tends not to return. Such is Digg. Digg users are a fickle bunch, always hungry for more oohs and ahs, and so easily bored.

So how do you get Diggers to come back?

Easy. Give them something extra - a link to an older post on your blog that relates closely to the one they've just read, plus a bold invitation to subscribe to your blog's RSS feed or bookmark your blog and return frequently to get more of the same stuff they found so interesting. Nothing gets a Digg user to come back like the promise of more.

How do you tell Digg about your blog post?

It's so easy. The best way, hands down is this. Get to know someone who already has a well-established Digg account. Ask them to submit your post to Digg. Done!

Because your friend has more Digg experience and authority than you, your post is much more likely to get the snowball effect of positive votes it needs to get boosted onto Digg's Holy Grail: the front page. That's where the thousands and tens of thousands of instant visits happen.

Plus, it won't seem like you're just saying your stuff is cool because, well, you're the one who wrote it. Digg users tend to think that's lame.

For reference, here's the link to submit an article to Digg: Submit to Digg. You must have a Digg account to be able to submit articles to Digg. It's free to sign up.

How often should you "write for Digg?"

Not that often. If you tried to make every blog post you wrote just for the Digg crowd, you would probably go crazy. Digg is a game of darts and you're blindfolded - even though you can throw in the right general direction, you can never guarantee that you'll hit the bullseye.

But if you focus perhaps one or two posts a month towards Digg traffic - or one or two a week, depending on how closely your blog topic matches with Digg's core audience - you're likely to see your long-term traffic and subscriber base grow.

So that's it?

Of course not! I need your input to make this post a better resource. What experiences have you had with getting traffic from Digg? Have you ever received a huge spike of blog traffic from Digg? If so, how did you do it or how did it happen?  What tips can you share to help other Know More Media authors use Digg to increase their blog's traffic?