I'm often found touting the importance of getting in front of the social tagging audience, whether they be folks at Digg, del.icio.us, Stumbleupon or the secondary sites. Beyond the obvious traffic and links, there are other big reasons to have sites in front of the Digg crowd. I've listed my top 5 below:
- Social Taggers are Early Adopters
On the web, as in the real world, early adopters are often found congregating around specific media sources. In the offline world, depending on the niche, that group might be found reading the Economist, Wired, at Comdex or E3. In the online world, Digg is that source. Many of the Digg readers are searching out the most popular online stories, products, sites and trends. Getting to the front page means being exposed to an exceptional market of people who can help to make or break your site's success (particularly those sites that are viral in nature or rely on a strong user community)
_ - Feedback is Guaranteed
If social taggers enjoy your content, find it interesting, humorous, worthy of dicussion and a visit, they'll continue to tag it and push its popularity skyward. Digg and several others also now feature discussion comments on an entry, enabling direct feedback on the sites themselves. In addition, taggers are vocal, particpatory people. If they find problems on your site, errors in your content, take issue with your point of view, etc. they'll let you know through the standard feedback forms you provide on the site (email, forms, etc). Be aware that like all feedback, 1 out of 10 people who hate it will tell you, but only 1 out of 1000 who like it will send a comment - it's just the way the world works.
_ - Viral Spreading
The taggers are, in addition to being adopters, also folks who share. A cool video, nifty service, useful site, or relevant news item gets passed around virally by the Digg crowd, making it a perfect testing bed for content. If you've got something you think is remarkable, Digg it once, and see if the crowd agrees.
_ - Test Your Server's Mettle
WIth Digg now sending, on average, more traffic than Slashdot in a concentrated period, it's a great way to test how your server can handle 10-20,00 simultaneous user sessions. SEOmoz has been Dugg and we're better for it - now understanding how the traffic patterns flow and how to increase the flow (particularly with a MySQL database) to avoid problems. - Gauge Your Stickiness
With thousands of users coming to your site over the course of 1-3 days, a certain percentage is bound to sift through the rest of your site's content and make a decision about whether to return. Digg traffic can help you see if your site is getting bookmarked, if people are subscribing to your blog feeds and if you can turn a one-time boost into a long-term success.
I know that many of the Digg stories and del.icio.us/popular entries are inane, childish and decidely unprofessional, but that doesn't mean the power of the medium can be ignored. For every 10 Diggers who don't fit the ideal demographics, there's one who does. If your goal is to be recognized as a long-term authority in the online space (on whatever subject you choose), getting "dugg" or "delicioused" or "slashdotted" is an ideal step in the right direction.
Great post. I'll digg that!