Digg:The Ugly Truth (Sad But Opened My Eyes)

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I just decided to stop following the gurus advice blindly in some marketing areas..and on top of these..social media marketing
I'd a ton of ebooks, audios and videos talk for hours about how great web 2.0 and social media for marketing purposes.

But I discovered that, ironically, none of these gurus tell you about the truth of the ins and outs of web 2.0 sites?

I started a self driven analysis for these sites, to see which niches and which sites may succeed using them...

I started with digg

First, I do business in a specific niche, and when it comes to digg, the very common advice you get is that"you MUST submit your blog posts to digg, as well as other social media sites" , and you get promises that when you do this, you're just going far above your competitors and will see a boost in your results...

But, no one of these claimed gurus tell the bitter plain truth...

Niches are not equal, and most of the niches we are working on and trying to make money from, will never succeed on social media sites...

And before anyone accusing me of posting assumptions ..did you checked digg lately?
When I checked the top results on digg, I just got an eye opener...

In most of the categories, and as you browse deeper the digg results, you find the fronntpage, and maybe up to the 5th or deeper page, is dominated by stories in specific areas:
-Sex : very dominant, and most of the most popular and digged stories are in this category...

-Relationships

-Politics
-Fun

-Movies and celebrities
-Sports

it is unlikely to find a story that has 500 or 1000 diggs out from these categories...

Well, how then Digg is claimed to be an effective marketing channel for niche marketers?

I searched for my main keyword, and it turned to be a pathetic joke...

Many many stories (like mine those I submitted) are there, with a single digg, that comes of course from the owner of the blog, it was a really sad foundation.. my niche is so popular, and thousands of searches are done on Google and other SE (or this what we go from the robots, I can't now say what is true and what's false)... but on this site.. it is DEAD...
And, I thinks this is applied for most niches... I ave a good knowledge about niche marketing and can identify a niche blog if I see one...

Among hundreds of stories I came across, no single blog that seems to be done by one of us struggling marketers...
Most of them are news blogs, celebrity blogs or corporate blogs, those type of blogs monetized by means we don't use mostly (subscriptions, expensive ads..etc)

Where then all of these niche blogs we spend our lives and hard earned money to build? Nothing..totally absent....

Well, maybe I'm disappointed more than I should be, but I wish if we open a discussion here...

We are a community, and as far as I know, the biggest community of marketer from all levels and backgrounds..

Shouldn't we decide , and for good, what works for us and what doesn't according to our experience?

Why not to discuss openly, and if we find something that doesn't work, dump it all together and leave it to the anti-marketing online society to do whatever they want with it?
Digg hate marketers, Facebook hate marketers, and most of the social media sites are irritant towards marketing activities....and what is sarcastic is..these sites don't even work for us.....:confused:

I wish if there is anyone who has different opinion or different findings than what I got, that they share it here,

If there's anyone who had successfully got results from sites like digg , let's tell us, and if it's possible and won't affect his/her business, let's know how they achieved such a success.

Anyone in??
#main internet marketing discussion forum #digg myths #diggthe #eyes #opened #sad #truth #ugly
  • Digg is good for getting a page indexed quickly. You can get a link on Digg by using it in your profile
    • [1] reply
    • Well, to spread the fun more I shall inform you that digg decided to be "nofollow", which means, most of the time, the links from digg won't be counted as a valued link
      • [1] reply
  • Yeah, I tried to submit a few things to Digg, only to find that they got buried in the Diggs. I even found a video featuring a VERY good cause that only had one Digg (its own.) To be nice, I Digged it and left a comment.

    Which shows how easy it is to get lost on a site as big as Digg. How sad that only the popular stuff gets featured.
  • Digg does help me get my sites indexed.

    Besides that.... not much from what I can tell.

    For the moment it takes to post, I'll keep doing it.

    Twenty Twenty




  • Not everyone is your customer. Not everyone will want to even hear about what you have.

    Only those within your products/services demographic care.

    I'd take 10 buyers over a hundred thousand surfers anyday.
    • [1] reply
    • So your assuming that Digging every peice of content you create is suppose to create publicity and traffic for your site? This is a method that probably worked briefly once upon a time..

      Indexing.

      That's it.. I think your reading too much from people who know too little.
  • The way I see it, it doesn't take long to submit a blog entry to Digg and I have the time to submit my posts on a daily basis. While we're getting more traffic from other social bookmarking sites, Digg isn't that bad. Then again, I get really excited if I get more than two diggs on a post haha.
  • Well, if you've ever made the front page of Digg, you know that it's a major shot in the arm for traffic. I never submit anything there unless I can get a few friends to Digg it and I think it has a chance of making the front page.

    I'd take 100,000 surfers over ten buyers any day. 100,000 surfers will make me about $1,000 in AdSense and at least a couple thou in other stuff. I guess if I were selling a very high-end product I'd rather have ten buyers, but how many surfers would it take to get those ten buyers?

    This is exactly why it's important to provide quality content. Don't piss and moan about Digg not putting your little splog on the front page. It's on you to provide content that other people want to put on the front page of Digg.

    Digg is not the way to market a splog. SEO is the way to go there.
  • As others have mentioned, bookmarking sites like Digg are good for indexing new content faster. Forget about it beyond that (in most cases). You should bookmark, then ping the bookmark page. Then move on to more productive marketing activities. Digg is more of an introduction activity, as in introducing your new content to the search engines. Marketing, eh, not so much.

    For what it's worth, I find that Jumptags and Mister Wong bookmarks get picked up by Google really really fast. Sometimes in mere minutes. Their spiders must camp out there.

    John
  • Well, somebody has had their eyes opened to the truth

    Trying to game digg, it can be done but it's not as easy as some make it out to be.

    Think about the number of sites that are dugg every minute, unless you know how to play the game or are one of the preferred customers... look at many of the top sites, big names and low dig count... paying for special treatment, maybe, no, that could never happen ... back on track, some random site added to the digg mix isn't going to see the light of day.

    And to be honest, most of the stuff submitted to digg by IMers is junk that nobody cares about. I'm not going to digg to find out how to get whiter teeth, sorry, it's just not happening. I'm also not looking for the latest ipod deals, that's why we have bestbuy.com.

    Anyway, I think what some guru has told you is 'How to go viral with digg and make millions' , once again, your not going to go viral with an article about how to make my teeth whiter , maybe if you were a chubby kid lip synching a catchy song in hungarian while brushing your teeth, that might catch my attention.

    If you want to get on the map with digg, it has a tipping point, you need to get a certain amount of diggs to even realistically get into the race so other people see your digg and digg it themselves which starts the whole viral cascade effect. And the content has to be 'good' in some way.

    aside from that rant... ever think about using those popular niches as a gateway? How does Jessica Simpson get her teeth so white? The secret to how Jessica Simpson lost wight! Those types of headlines will catch the attention of sex | celebrity gossip crowd.

    Digg... who needs it. Use it to bookmark your articles and then forget about it. I wouldn't bother with trying to use it as a primary source of traffic until you learn the tricks of how to do it first... and I don't think your going to find those being sold by a guru.
  • That's right...yes. Please quit using Digg. Nothing to see here. Thank you.



    I do not expect to get any Diggs when I leave a digg for my dog shampoo page. I do not expect to get on the first page or get any traffic directly from Digg. I don't even expect any other living human to see my dog shampoo digg. But do I digg my dog shampoo page? Yes.

    (Nofollow simply means no PR follows that link. It does NOT mean the spiders ignore that back link. It also does not mean that back link isn't counted as a valid back link. Also, other search engines may or may not pay attention to the nofollow tag. Google is big, but I have some pages that get more Yahoo traffic than Google traffic.)
    • [ 1 ] Thanks
  • Digg works.

    It's just not a magic wand.

    Like everyone else says: great indexing platform.

    And if you want to work multiple accounts, that can sometimes be worth your time as well.
  • Guys, I think you're doing it wrong.

    Go read how to use it properly on seomoz.com, gray-wolf.com and stuntdubl.com

    Digg is gold if you know what you're doing.
  • ...or if you have a neat little tool that lets you increase your number of diggs and I'm not even into digg manipulation.

    I don't think many people will argue with this point. Digg serves a purpose in the IM toolbelt, it's just not a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow like many have been led to believe.
    • [2] replies
    • Digg's heyday has come and gone...at or around 2007 when they tried to censor the HD DVD key. Anyone remember that? I know I do.
    • Um, no.

      Digg is onto those types of tools. They're not complete idiots.

      How about actually using Digg (not like a spammy marketer) like it was meant to be used. How about making friends with other good diggers. How about acting "social" on social media and not mercenary?

      I know it's crazy, but it just might work.
  • Banned
    [DELETED]
  • Yups, I am using digg to get a fast index from google. There is no more other reasons for using digg.....
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    Digg:The Ugly Truth (Sad But Opened My Eyes)

    I just decided to stop following the gurus advice blindly in some marketing areas..and on top of these..social media marketing I'd a ton of ebooks, audios and videos talk for hours about how great web 2.0 and social media for marketing purposes.