Digg, Social News, and Social Authority Building

The Internet is changing and the changes are happening quickly. Luckily, the changes are in the favor of entrepreneurs, small businesses, authors, and small presses. Welcome to Web 2.0 and social media.

Learning about and utilizing these new tools and technologies is essential to establish a dynamic and truly connected Web presence. The beauty of Web 2.0 is that it is driven by the people who use it. Unlike today's Internet, Web 2.0 relies more on a site's popularity among the masses. Incorporating social media optimization alongside search engine optimization enables anyone to establish a truly optimized Web presence—especially if paired with a meaningful message.

The tools available to achieve this optimization are numerous but can seem overwhelming. However, once armed with a general knowledge, it is easy to select the tools and technologies to catalyze the greatest amount of Web traffic.

According to Wikipedia, Web 2.0 "refers to a perceived second-generation of web-based communities and hosted services—such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies—which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users." Additionally, Wikipedia defines social media as "the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives. Social media sites typically use technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs to allow users to interact." Thus, Web 2.0 and social media optimization means optimizing one's Web presence in three general ways: Interactivity, Sharing, and Collaboration.

Interactivity
The essential premise of social media is that information (media) offered to users will be interactive. Social, in a word, means interactive and interactivity can be accomplished in many ways, whether it is allowing readers to comment on or share content, subscribe to it so they can have it on hand, or display the content on their own site.

To make online content more interactive, Web 2.0 and social media users can implement these tools and technologies:
* Blogging, using WordPress or Typepad
* RSS Feeds (see Feedburner for more information on RSS feeds)
* Podcasting and Vidcasting
* Wikis
* Social Media News (Press) Releases
* Social Media Newsrooms
* Image tools such as Snapshots

Sharing
Sharing in the "live" Web means that content is offered to others through blogging indexes and media communities; by tagging interesting sites on social bookmarking sites; or by developing mini applications like widgets or mash-ups.

Remember: Anything that can be posted to a Web site will have some type of "media community" in which to share it.

To begin "sharing" content in the live Web, Internet users can:
* Include their Blog, Podcast, or Vidcast in directories like Technorati, Google Blog Search, Podcast.com, or BlogPulse
* Tag their favorite blogs and Web sites on social bookmarking sites like Technorati and del.icio.us
* Share and tag multimedia in Media Communities like Flickr and YouTube
* Use Collage tools or Webcasting like SplashCast Media or blogTV
* Create and distribute Widgets or Mash-ups using services like widgetbox, Open Social, or Yahoo Pipes.

Collaboration
Web 2.0 and social media users need to be willing to give back. This could mean commenting regularly on others' content, joining and contributing to a social networking site, contributing to crowd-sourced news sites, or becoming an avatar in a virtual reality.

Specifically, some of these efforts may include:
* Commenting on others' blogs (using co.mments is a good way to track them)
* Contributing to crowd-sourced news aggregators like reddit, Digg, or Fark
* Creating profiles on social or professional networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, or Facebook
* Participating in microblogs like Twitter or Jaiku
* Posting events in social calendars such as eventful.com, or upcoming.org
* Becoming an avatar in a virtual world like Second Life or There
* Participating in communities or forums like a Yahoo group, a Google group, or starting your own using services like Ning.

Participating in the new, live Web is ultimately about connecting with people. A common mistake businesses make is to apply old methods to these new tools. It has been disastrous for many of them. With a real and conversational message and general understanding of the new social media tools and technologies, anyone can participate in the new Internet and find tremendous benefit from their efforts!

Social bookmarking is a way for internet users to store, classify, share, and search Internet bookmarks. In 2005 and 2006, social bookmarking sites, such as del.icio.us, Diigo, Furl, Ma.gnolia, Netvouz, and StumbleUpon became popular. Sites like reddit, Digg, Newsvine, and the new Netscape portal apply social bookmarking to news items. In 2007, IBM announced plans to enter the social software market.

There are a variety of ways to use bookmarks to improve your overall site popularity. What I personally like about social bookmarks is that it’s easy to do and very similar to other optimization methods I use. The way it works is as follows: A user registers for a social bookmarking site. Once they have an account, they browse the internet. When the individual identifies a webpage or piece of content they want to share with others, they bookmark it. Once that content is bookmarked, the bookmark site keeps a record of the bookmark and waits to see if others bookmark the same content or website.

When others bookmark or vote for the same content, that content increases in popularity and the social book marking site ranks it higher than other content on their site. Some of these bookmark sites also let you see the bookmarks of others. That’s what makes it a “social” bookmark. Not only is the general web populace rating Internet content collectively, but they can also see what others are book marking.

What’s even better is that you can use a site like Social Poster (free) found at http://socialposter.com/generator.php to post multiple bookmarks from one location. You will need to register for each of these sites, but once you do the submission process is simple.

After book marking your home page on each of these sites, consider book marking specific content of channel level pages of your site. Creating deep links into your site can enhance your overall Google rankings. And of course, make sure to use the proper link text in your site title and description.

One final word on social bookmarking. Now that you know how to bookmark your site, the next logical step is to make it easy for others to bookmark your site. To do this, simply add a Social Bookmark applet (free) to your site by visiting AddThis.com. They offer a small piece of Javascript you can add to your site in the form of a button.

When users click on the Bookmark button, they can select their specific book marking tool and book mark your content. This makes the process of book marking simple and easy to do.n its own terms.

The Internet is changing and the changes are happening quickly. Luckily, the changes are in the favor of entrepreneurs, small businesses, authors, and small presses. Welcome to Web 2.0 and social media.

Learning about and utilizing these new tools and technologies is essential to establish a dynamic and truly connected Web presence. The beauty of Web 2.0 is that it is driven by the people who use it. Unlike today's Internet, Web 2.0 relies more on a site's popularity among the masses. Incorporating social media optimization alongside search engine optimization enables anyone to establish a truly optimized Web presence especially if paired with a meaningful message.

The tools available to achieve this optimization are numerous but can seem overwhelming. However, once armed with a general knowledge, it is easy to select the tools and technologies to catalyze the greatest amount of Web traffic.

According to Wikipedia, Web 2.0 "refers to a perceived second-generation of web-based communities and hosted services such as social-networking sites, wikis and folksonomies which aim to facilitate collaboration and sharing between users." Additionally, Wikipedia defines social media as "the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences, and perspectives. Social media sites typically use technologies such as blogs, message boards, podcasts, wikis, and vlogs to allow users to interact." Thus, Web 2.0 and social media optimization means optimizing one's Web presence in three general ways: Interactivity, Sharing, and Collaboration.

Interactivity
The essential premise of social media is that information (media) offered to users will be interactive. Social, in a word, means interactive and interactivity can be accomplished in many ways, whether it is allowing readers to comment on or share content, subscribe to it so they can have it on hand, or display the content on their own site.

To make online content more interactive, Web 2.0 and social media users can implement these tools and technologies:
* Blogging, using WordPress or Typepad
* RSS Feeds (see Feedburner for more information on RSS feeds)
* Podcasting and Vidcasting
* Wikis
* Social Media News (Press) Releases
* Social Media Newsrooms
* Image tools such as Snapshots

Sharing
Sharing in the "live" Web means that content is offered to others through blogging indexes and media communities; by tagging interesting sites on social bookmarking sites; or by developing mini applications like widgets or mash-ups.

Remember: Anything that can be posted to a Web site will have some type of "media community" in which to share it.

To begin "sharing" content in the live Web, Internet users can:
* Include their Blog, Podcast, or Vidcast in directories like Technorati, Google Blog Search, Podcast.com, or BlogPulse
* Tag their favorite blogs and Web sites on social bookmarking sites like Technorati and del.icio.us
* Share and tag multimedia in Media Communities like Flickr and YouTube
* Use Collage tools or Webcasting like SplashCast Media or blogTV
* Create and distribute Widgets or Mash-ups using services like widgetbox, Open Social, or Yahoo Pipes.

Collaboration
Web 2.0 and social media users need to be willing to give back. This could mean commenting regularly on others' content, joining and contributing to a social networking site, contributing to crowd-sourced news sites, or becoming an avatar in a virtual reality.

Specifically, some of these efforts may include:
* Commenting on others' blogs (using co.mments is a good way to track them)
* Contributing to crowd-sourced news aggregators like reddit, Digg, or Fark
* Creating profiles on social or professional networking sites like LinkedIn, MySpace, or Facebook
* Participating in microblogs like Twitter or Jaiku
* Posting events in social calendars such as eventful.com, or upcoming.org
* Becoming an avatar in a virtual world like Second Life or There
* Participating in communities or forums like a Yahoo group, a Google group, or starting your own using services like Ning.

Participating in the new, live Web is ultimately about connecting with people. A common mistake businesses make is to apply old methods to these new tools. It has been disastrous for many of them. With a real and conversational message and general understanding of the new social media tools and technologies, anyone can participate in the new Internet and find tremendous benefit from their efforts!

In the recent past years Social Media Marketing and Social Media have dominated and defined Internet marketing. The popularity of social sites like MySpace and social bookmarking sites like Digg has caused this push. Social media has two main components, user generated content and the networking capability allowing you to form groups of friends and others that you can share content with.

Sites like MySpace, Zubby, and Facebook allow users to create profiles using text, videos and pictures to design their pages. These can then be shared with a selected group of other people in a special "friends" network and if the user wishes these pages can be shared over the whole social network.

Sites like Digg, Flickr, Associated Content and YouTube allow users to submit links to their favorite news articles online, pictures, articles, and videos then vote on the content that others have submitted. The most popular content is displayed on the front page of the site and the other pages are available to the general public to browse through. These drive traffic to the site and to the pages that are bookmarked.

There are many different ways to use these types of sites, either together or alone.

The use of these types of sites to promote your products and services is what is known as social media marketing. The types of traffic you get once your content is discovered and becomes well known in social media are primary traffic and secondary traffic.

Primary traffic is the direct traffic from the site that you used to make your site popular. If you are using a site that has fairly heavy traffic like Digg to promote your site you could get a large amount of traffic in a short amount of time so you need to make sure your site can handle the traffic, otherwise it may crash.

Once a site becomes popular on a social media site it gets talked about. When people talk about these sites they post links to the site which draws more traffic to the content. This indirect traffic is the secondary traffic. It is the secondary traffic that continues to flow to your site after the initial surge of direct traffic slows.

The benefits of primary and secondary traffic coming from social media sites include exposure to your site initially. Once your site is known by the general public then organic traffic will begin and repeat visitors start to show up, as long as you have something to entice them to come back.

Natural links to your site are beneficial because they are given by people or companies who have nothing to gain from your business venture. These are generally from relevant sites increasing the likelihood that visitors are going to be genuinely interested in your products and services. These links improve your search engine rankings and improve organic traffic.

Social media marketing allows your site to get exposure in a larger site and to a larger group of people. If your traffic levels off you can use social media marketing to jump start your traffic and work on taking your search engine traffic to the next level.

The alternative for increasing your search engine traffic is using pay per click advertisement. Using pay per click campaigns can help you to sustain increased traffic from the search engines but this traffic comes with a price tag.

Using social media marketing is free and can increase your traffic and your ratings in the search engines. Getting your site notices a couple times a year in the social media arena can make your site popular enough to bring in traffic throughout the year.

As you know one of the most important and significant social network is Stumble Upon. Beside of Digg.com its importance is amazing for those of you who want tons of free traffic. I decided to use only two social networks on my site. Digg, because it is the widest, most spread and most efficient one. And then Stumble because it is –wait for the word- permanent. According to my personal experience if you get stumbled by users, you will get traffic permanently.

Let me show you some little comparsion to Digg. If you get dug, maybe you can do it to the front page. Maybe not. But whatever happens, you will be popular for no more then day or two. Your article will appear on main pages of Digg, but this so called dig effect is just temporary. There is plenty of articles about this effect and always one conclusion: this traffic can only harm your website. Hosting providers are usually not prepared to provide sufficient traffic for so many visitors and your site will be probably down. This is like a thunderstorm. But we would prefer just some weak rain, which would persist for some longer period.

And this rain is Stumble. What I usually do is that I stumble my own articles. But my site is quite new and I wanted to observe the stumble effect a little bit more in detail. I signed up to Subvert and Profit, where you can buy stumbles (and diggs as well). I decided to buy 30 stumbles (for this post). It took about a week to get them, but after that period I can’t stop wondering. I had about 50 to 80 uniques per day before. After my small investment I already have 200+ daily. And your question is obvious: will this trend continue or stop the very next day?
To answer this question we have to compare Digg and Stumble Upon more in detail of how visitors come to your site. Digg.com is a great website where all visitors can choose what articles they are interested in and they click only those which are considered to be interesting (title of the article is the key). On the other hand, Stumble users install a plugin to their browser and then click so called “stumble icon” to show next interesting page. But they never know what will appear – they can just choose the appropriate category. And that’s the difference. With Stumble you don’t have to have some amazing title of your story. It’s all about content – if the first visitors – users of Stumble- come to your site and find it interesting, they will stumble your article. Content is the key.
What is the lesson of this article:

If you want the thunderstorm, use Digg stimulation, you will get more than 20 000 unique vistitors per day, but after day or two, this will be over. It is one time business.

If you want the permanent rain, use Stumble upon. Invest some money to get required stumbles (thumbs up) and enjoy the coming visitors for a long long period.

Warning: Stumble and Digg visitors are certain group of internet users who don’t click on ads. If you want to spend for example 100 USD to promote your website via Stumble or Digg, your returns will be no more then 10USD. Social traffic are often webmasters and they really know that it is just an advertisement. Don’t expect any profits.

The last and very important question: Is it better to buy Digg (or other social things) or to buy backlinks? If you want tons of traffic immediately, buy social traffic. But for your permanent growth, it is better to buy quality backlinks and get traffic from Google. It is all about time. In long period, backlinks are more precious. Some people may like digg effect and stumble effect when they sell ads impressions. For all pay-per-click oriented webmasters I have only one advice: Invest to backlinks and create unique and quality content for a long period.

An examination of the social network called Digg and how it can be used as part of a successful search engine strategy.

One of the newest places to submit articles that you have written is Digg. This is a huge social network whose readers actually despise anything that looks like marketing. You probably won't last two minutes on this site, which has a "burial" feature that kicks overt displays of advertising right off the sight. However if you are very clever about the way you position yourself on Digg you can use it as a marketing tool to bring more visitors to your site and that may mean potential link partners and advertisers. If you are successful at posting writing on Digg then you will likely experience a ton of traffic being brought to your site.

Digg is all about user powered content. Everything is submitted and voted on by the digg community. After you submit content, other people read your submission and Digg what they like best. If your story is popular and receives enough Digg vote, it is promoted to the front page for the millions of visitors to see. So how can you turn this into an SEO tool?

The first challenge is to get people to give a Digg vote to your posting. This means having an article on the top page or linking to someone who has a story on the top page. However even after you manage that you need to have a fantastic title and summary or the savvy, marketing hating readers on Digg may not even glance at any URL that is attached.

The main way that Digg can be part of a good SEO strategy is in driving a lot of traffic to your site quickly by getting in the top ten read articles on the first page of the site. This creates the kind of buzz and credibility for your site that just cannot be bought using keyword articles only.

Internet marketers are going crazy over this new social network called Digg and for good reason too. Using Digg correctly can send tens of thousands to your website virtually overnight.

This is how Digg works: People register with the site, and thus join the Digg community. These registered users then submit newsworthy or rather "Digg" worthy content. A short summary of the news item is written about the content. You can submit nearly anything to Digg; this includes videos, stories, blog entries, funny pictures - Anything!

What then happens is "Registered Users" then "Digg" the story or whatever has been submitted. The "Digg" is actually a vote for the content that was submitted to Digg.

The stories with the highest number of "Diggs" make it onto the front page of Digg. Stories can also be "Buried" which will send them shooting down to rankings at Digg.

Digg stories are then kept in the up and coming section for around 12 - 24 hours.

If the story does not receive enough "Diggs" it is then sent to the Digg homepage. If the story starts to get "buried" it will automatically disappear.

Writing a good story that gets a number of Diggs, and by number I mean a few hundred can produce tens of thousands of page views which will mean thousands of visitors and potential customers to your websites.

To produce a popular story you need to write about something that will help people, actually, writing about Digg itself is a very popular subject and frequently makes it onto the top spot.

This is a form of viral marketing, get it right and your site will do incredibly well, get it wrong and nothing will happen. Site promotion like this is a far, far more powerful way of gaining popularity and backlinks to your site than traditional Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) Techniques.