I came across a post last month by Rebecca at 10e0 called Is Digg the Google of Social News Sites?.
In the post Rebecca points out some interesting traffic data.
Top Social News Sites Based on Unique Visitors in August 2009:
- Digg (17.4 million)
- Yahoo! Buzz (7 million)
- Propeller (800,000)
- Reddit (670,000)
- Mixx (660,000)
Digg was a hot topic in the social marketing field a couple of years ago, but has since disappeared from many marketers playbooks as they instead prefer the “interactivity” of Twitter and Facebook. Yes Digg is a different channel than Twitter and Facebook and some will argue that Digg is not “conversational” like the other two.
That is true, expect that most social media marketing campaigns have very little if any interactivity. Most Twitter and Facebook campaigns are simply providing a link to take you elsewhere on the web. Digg does the exact same thing.
Just as Google is the dominant force in the search space, and no SEO expert would every tell you to ignore Google, Digg is the Google equivalent in the social news space. If your demographic matches Digg, and you are using one of the other social news sites you are missing out on a huge traffic potential.
Ignoring Digg just seems rather goofy advice. For one thing, submitting to Digg takes mere seconds. If you don’t have seconds to click a Digg This button, you need to manage your time better.
Second, if you’re in pursuit of long-tail results, that few seconds may just result in some surprising results.
And finally, Digg links will also increase the number of backlinks to your blog or website. Since every link helps, taking the few seconds to submit a site to Digg will pay off in that way too.
I think the marketers who are ignoring Digg have some serious tunnel vision, and aren’t thinking laterally.
I think ignoring Digg would not be easy either. It is one of the top social bookmarking sites and it does have relevant and fun stuff in it.
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Andy Michaels
http://www.andy-michaels.com