Welcome to another video in a series I've been doing for MarketingProfs. This video on social network site Digg is a look at the site from the inside-out... with the goal of educating marketers on this new social networks.
This video is geared to give you a visual overview, tell you why you should (or shouldn't) care about Digg, and give you broad analysis of how the technology could help in other situations. You don't have to sign up for 50 different networks, just let me do it and guide you through the latest, hottest options around.
I am sure that many of you have heard the name or see the tags around the internet and at the bottom of every blog post. Digg is a social news aggregator that relies on the community of "Diggers" to filter, share and vote on the top news. The site is categorized, but remains largely geared toward technical audiences.
Users of the site submit content by clicking on the Digg icon or submitting it through the site itself. Users add a description of the content along with the URL and tags for reference. Freshly "Dugg" content filters to an "upcoming" area where other users vote it up. Content that has a lot of diggs in a short amount of time move toward the home page at a faster pace (diggs*velocity=popularity).
Here is an Inside//Out look at Digg.com:
Key takeaways for marketers:
- The Digg community is very active and can drive a lot of short-term traffic (MarketingProfs has seen up to 10 fold increases).
- Digg, like any social network, has its own policing system to control content.
- It's advisable that marketers not Digg their own content.
- Blogs, newspapers, magazines and video sharing sites leverage Digg to share content with a wider audience.
- Malicious companies do set up fake accounts to Digg things for clients. This is not advisable to any marketer anywhere.
- Adding Digg code to your site is easy. Just head to this page and use any of the pre-built options provided.
- Digg also has a cool visualization toolset if you are interested in seeing how active the community is.
Look for a new Whiteboard//Session video Monday where I cover how Digg actually works. If you have anything you would like to see featured in the future send me an email.