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The Digg Effect 

In 5 short years Kevin Rose’s social news website Digg.com has created a verb knows as being “Dugg“. If you write a good article and it gets voted to the front page of Digg you can expect serious website traffic. The social news revolution is upon us as users want easier ways to find quality news articles that matter to them instead of always settling for what editors think should be front page.

So how does it work? When a digg user comes across an article or blog post then like they “digg it“ pushing it higher toward digg’s front page. When they don’t like an article the “bury it“ letting the quality articles rise to the top.  The cornerstone functionality of digging and burying indicates the interest level and relevance of the story. Users are invited to vote for the content that appeals to them, as well as content which they find of no interest. This usability has not only contributed to the popularity of the site, but also inspired the creation of other social networking sites with similar submission and voting systems. This goes way beyond the “Most Read“ functionality common on news websites.

Emerging from this news-and-link aggregate is the so-called ‘Digg effect’ is phenomenon in which larger sites are linked to smaller sites via a common site such as Digg. This interconnection allows greater accessibility to other wise niche or lesser known sites and relevant news sources. But Digg is more than just a story sharing domain: it has the potential to put e-commerce into overdrive by providing an influx of visitors to otherwise obscure sites, thereby increasing traffic significantly and bettering the exposure of a site’s product offerings. As Digg has gained status and visibility in the internet space, it has become an Ideal channel for both advertising and marketing of products, with many companies now relying heavily on the once-revolutionary digg effect to deliver traffic much needed new visitor traffic.

What many hopeful advertisers are happy to discover is that the digg effect does have its quirks.  Take, for example, the Pay Per Click (known as PPC or CPC) ads: While search engines such as Google have documented a huge exodus of traffic into a particular website with the help of PPC or CPC, the behavior of digg users varies in that they rarely bother to click on ads. And logic tells us that traffic is useless for PPC if ad conversion does not exist.  Another potential challenge is that, should an article on your site get “dugg“, the result would be an unusually heavy flow of traffic, one that your site’s servers may not be set up to cope with. This often results to sites becoming unavailable for use, or “going down“ for varying periods of time, from numerous hours to, at worse, days. It’s a simple equation; more viewers equals more bandwidth consumed, resulting in technical issues and unwanted website downtime. While the Digg Effect may generate an exciting increase in traffic, any entrepreneur or business owner should be aware that while the upside may be increased traffic and, ultimately, sales, the downside of downtime could spell disaster to your business. So if you’re blogging heavily, posting articles, and looking for the Digg Effect, first make sure that your site is technically braced to handle what may come next.

What kind of content or quality information are people looking for? How can you ensure that your article gets dugg? Here are five tips on article content that makes them very “diggable“:

1. Post valuable content. That’s always the best way to attract diggers. Writing about topics that can catch the interest of thousands of people will definitely get dugg. On the other hand, useless and redundant information has the opposite effect and a disgruntled digger can bury your article.
2. It may sound biased but it’s true that articles featuring Digg (and the people behind it), Microsoft and Apple are usually dugg the most! It also makes the article easier to find and as long as the content is good, it is a sure digg!
3. This may sound like cheating (just a little bit though) but you can actually post content from an article that has already been dugg and then say that there is “new information“. If there really is new and additional information that will further add value to the existing article then that’s great. But if it’s just the same information just reposted, then anyone who spots it might actually bury it. Put a little controversy in your writing. People love controversy and I could quote dozens of writers who have gained fame just by riling up people’s angst. Remember this: controversy always sells!
4. “How to…“ lists are well-sought after by readers. If your article is writable as a “how to“ list then you can be sure there will always be someone curious enough to look at it. Better yet, if the “how to’s“ on your list are actually useful then getting dugg is a sure thing.

Whether the Digg Effect can drive businesses leads or establish you as an authority on a specific subject, it has become a remarkable phenomenon.There is so much information on the web it’s hard to sift though it all and find what is really relevant to you. Digg leverages the wisdom of crowds and technology to sort it out and create enormous website traffic for the lucky enough to experience “The Digg Effect“.