Check this out, this digg front pager greeted me at 5am on a Saturday morning. I noticed out of the 20 other front pagers there were 7 stories similar.
As you can see, none of my friends dugg. But what is interesting is I cannot see any of the usual suspects. Friends of ours. Kinda sounds like a secret crime syndicate and in a way it is.
The point being, this story hit the front page with no massaging from professional diggers and their voting gangs. Although I do not completely discount the fact that all these accounts are manufactured I think it highly unlikely.
It suggests that a story submitted by an unknown digger, voted for by unconnected, natural diggers, will hit the front page at 30 – 40 diggs.
So what do we do, start a new account incognito and only submit solid “geek” stuff? That’s up to you. But may I suggest this one point if you are creating the stuff yourself. Make it the kind of content to appeal to the “geek” and submit it on the weekend. All the professional diggers are sleeping off their repetitive strain injuries and so the 10 Ways to sell Payday Loans to the Homeless will not be in play.
As social marketers we are communicators, digg is simply the path of least resistance to communicate our message. Yes, our message may be one of persuasion, but it all comes down to communication. We must speak to those who have influence, and I gotta say, a lot of accounts that once had influence have had their power drastically reduced.
Instead of having a moan, look at your content, look at places which will inspire the creation of that content. Crafting of content seems to be the factor which is getting the least attention these days.
Stop with the Twittering and get down to creating some arse kicking content!