Okay, okay, last week's Whiteboard Friday was a bit frivolous (although I gave you all fair warning before you clicked play). This week we've tried to give you a bit more signal and a little less noise with the on-screen debut of our very own Digg Guru, Matt Inman.
Matt's as close to a professional Digger as you can be while still having a life and getting other work done (no offense, Neil), so he's here to share a few up-to-date tips and tricks for building successful, Digg-targeted content.
Happy Friday everyone and, to those of you in the US, enjoy the long weekend!
This week's musical guest is Mudvayne performing Dig (Everything & Nothing Mix).
In other news, use of the word "um" has been banned in the united states due to overuse by 20-somethings who aren't used to being on camera.
Nah. You did just, uh, fine.
Really, good insite and good to get a bit more of your personality.
I always notice that when I do it, but until I read your comment, I didn't even think about it :) Makes me realize that I'm way too self conscious on video...
I happened to read your comment while waiting for the video to start. I'm not sure I would have noticed if you hadn't called attention to it.
You did fine on camera. Better than I'm guessing you think.
My guess is the bait and switch tactic works. ;)
Just so you all know, when I say "top 10 lists" I mean "top [x] lists," I just picked 10 because it's the most common.
Yeah, Top X Lists are a bit played out but can still work if done well. Also, I've noticed that the bigger the number, the more work it looks like you've put into it and the more likely people are to digg it. For example, if you have Top 60 Something that looks pretty impressive. For the most part though, Top X Lists could probably be broken down into 3 or 4 good solid posts (you'd need to expand upon each point of course) that stand a better chance at being dugg these days than a Top 10 List that you streched for and probably should have only been a Top 6 List or something like that.
Nice work for your first appearance, Matt.
You missed one, though. When you're surrounded by enemies, you can sometimes spin around fast, pumping each of them up a couple of times to freeze them, and then go back and blow up the first bad guy. Wait, what are we talking about again?
Well-played, Dr. Pete. Well-played indeed.
I love this place, seo advice AND crime fighting techniques
You guys always find the best / relevant into music. You must have one heckuvan audio algorithm. My favorite was last week's "Friday I'm in Love" :-)
Cool video! I am glad I became a premium member, you guys put out some great stuff! Thanks!
It's a good video but I've got to disagree with you on a couple of points. First of all, you technically have 48 hours to go popular. After the first 24, it's nearly impossible but it does happen. Also, I've found the hot in all categories a much better indicator of what will make it to the front page or not. You can make it without the story being "hot" but it often serves as an early warning system to let you know you're doing well.
The major point I would disagree with you on is the Digg This button. I've seen no correlation between using Digg buttons and votes being discounted. Digg makes those tools available to us and in fact promotes their use. It would make no sense for them to punish a site for using them. What I have seen is a dampening effect when there is no referral at all. When you just copy and paste a stories url as you suggested, it is obvious that someone has asked you to go digg the story. I don't have any scientific evidence for this (although that would make for a great blog post and probably diggbait) but I think logic is on my side on this one.
Lastly, I've been wondering about the "link bait and switch" as well. In fact I was going to try it but getting dugg provided enough links and traffic that I'm just going to keep the site up and running on it's own.
All in all though, very good video. Well done!
I just did a bit of research and it appears you're right about the referral thing. Apparently if there is no referrer it flags is at a potential for manual review, however I've still seen submissions get discounted that are massively referred from a single URL. I suppose the best technique is to have them go to the digg site, browse through upcoming, and then click on your story to be dugg.
It's definitely best to have them get there via a digg page, like your submission page for example. However, as I'm sure you know, people tend to digg stories that already have a lot of diggs so once your story gets 20 or so diggs, it might still be a good idea to put the button on the page. It helps remind people to go vote for you and it alerts them that it's already doing well on digg and they could help put you over the top.
I think this also goes back to the topic of content environment. In my experience, diggers aren't as likely to digg something when they suspect it was made specifically to get on the digg homepage. Having a "digg this" button might make them less inclined to vote up a story.
You know, that's a good point. I hadn't thought about that before. Time for me to do a bit of testing I suppose. Thanks for the conversation!
Interesting conversation. I was wondering about the referral thing when you mentioned it Matt. I was thinking a lot of diggs happen directly from the original article, though now I'm thinking it's more the submission that would naturally come from the original and the diggs would come more through seeing the story at Diig.
With more and more tools like Firefox extensions isn't it likely that more diggs will come external from the Digg site and if so they'd be coming from the URL of the original article?
On the recent post of mine that got popular on Digg I had three Digg/Reddit buttons. The post was long, so I had to put the buttons in the beginning, in the middle and in the end of the post. The post was dugg pretty well (I think partly to this reason).
Then again, I did get one comment about "three buttons?!" and being a "Digg w***e".
Great to see your face Matt =) You are so cute!! Great idea about taking ideas and tag-lines from offline.
Agreed on all aspects of this comment. :)
yeah, the bit about offline sources is very vallid and harks back to a recent post about observing and including keywords on billboards and other offline media that your market associates with your product or service due to habitualization and exposure.
In the video you make the point that sometimes it is better to drop several links, rather than just one. This appears less manipulative and more useful. I agree this is true if you are dropping a link to SEOmoz or another site with SEO or marketing in the URL. Those are big red flags to Digg. (See #6 on my YOUmoz post.) If you are not linking to a marketing, SEO, or commercial website I don't think that a list of links is necessary.
For example, Digg seemed pretty happy about this link I dropped to your drivl post.
haha, touché - and thanks for adding that comment :)
I think I need to ask my boss for a RAI$E!!! ;)
Thanks for the tips Matt. I'd heard the advice in the past about looking at headlines at the checkout stand at the supermarket though not specifically in relation to Digg. I read the headlines now while waiting in line and can see why they work well.
Considering diggers being conscious of the packaging of a story do you think it's only to do with the domain/company name or do you see any correlation with the look of the page? Will a better designed page possibly get more or less diggs?
Better designed pages often get more diggs, from what I've seen, but ultimately it's the commercial vs non-commercial tone that they're really finicky about.
That makes sense. Thanks. I figured if they're digging often enough based on a title an description then those that clicked through might be swayed by a nice aesthetic.
With the commercial vs non-commercial do you see it more as a maketing = commerical or does it apply to all commercial sites? I can see where having ads on your site would turn diggers away, but what about an ecommerce site that happens to have some good articles or a site selling services that also has a blog?
Really useful stuff for us Matt, thanks for sharing some of your wisdom.
I have a bunch of headlines from Womens mags on my blog if anyone is interested.
I keep meaning to do the switchbait thing, after I blogged about it a month ago, but there never seems to be enough reason to do it as you always feel cool content should be on your main blogs.
One day I will do it and report.
Useful to know about the death of the top ten list. Maybe this signals the rise of the top 23 list.
I love the way Digg evolves with the market conditions, it's like a living, breathing Rubiks Cube.
Great video btw, lots of juicy morsels.
It's Top 22 List.
nice stuff matt! Good Ideas about digg - dugg.
Thanks,
Great Digg Intro...great video....thanks matt
Long weekend here in the UK too. Enjoy all. Thanks for the insights Matt. Enjoying the variety (not that we don't want you back, Rand!). Scott, Jane et al, when're we going to see you guys on whiteboard Friday?
I must protect my secret identity if I want to continue my costumed crime-fighting career.
Oh yeah. Good point. That's important.
You could at least enlighten us about the tunes though, you know we love it. OK, I love it...
You've gotta read the fine-print. dude. Look at the bottom of the post, right below the YouTube link. I wouldn't leave you hangin' like that.
Read the post???? Why would I do that?
OK. I see now. Good tunes. Thanks!
*giggle* that sidebar made my whole day =)
<I especially dig the secret crime fighting identity protection need for thingey. Hah!!!>
Some people like to act in front of the camera and some prefer to direct from behind the camera. And then there are those with secret identities to protect.
Great advice Matt. I'm gonna try that switch thing.
Great Video Matt.
I'll go even further (not because I have to, but because it's frustrating when people doubt you when you're not lying). I'll come back to SEOmoz and post links, rankings and few analytic screenshots in my blog from some of our work.
After I illiststrate that I'm not lying I'm going to be very upset at all those insults - despite how I understand your skepticism.
Read my comment above, I'm not calling you a liar, I'm just saying the way you chose to argue was pretty weak. If you think diggbait is a poor online marketing strategy you should have show me some examples of better ones instead of saying "I fly a car made of diamonds and wipe my butt with 50 dollar bills, so everything I say is GOLDEN"
:)
Ok, I see your point, in the style of commenting, I usually type out what's on my mind and then click post, so my comments are snapshots of how I'm feeling at the moment and could usually benefit from more structure (that's why blog posts are great). I never said diggbait was a poor online marketing strategy by itself (that would be a stupid claim to make), I said specifically that I know lots of SEO's who put too much time into it when it dosen't mesh with the overall marketing and business strategy of the site so they don't recieve optimium ROI.
The reason I thought the blog jabs were directed at me personally is becuase you've visited my blog before and I even joined your mybloglog community (seomoz and you're oatmeal person one). So you can see why I got defensive on the blog post insults.
I wasn't trying to diminish your advice. Tactically speaking it's wonderful. I was just enriching the conversation by commetning on the other end of things. I think you're right about the better examples, so I'll work on some ROI based examples and post them in my blog.
Matt's not calling you a liar, though you seem to be attempting to spin it that way in order to display what you truly are: an egotistical bragart.
In the VAST MAJORITY of comments you post on SEOmoz you go out of your way to talk about how great you are, your company is and how busy and almost successful you are. Whether you are the best or most financially successful SEO in the world (and you definitively are not, there are many out there who would put your clients and your bank account to shame), the fact that you seem to go out of your way to be a narcissistic prick speaks volumes.
You're not upset at insults, because there have been none up until now. You've been upset that nobody's giving you the egotistical handjob you're clearly fishing for. Quit your whining. If you're happy with your success, be happy with it, don't cry for validation from us. Take your ball, go home and brag to someone who's impressed by it.
hmm.. that's an interesting comment. I don't care about vanity. No matter how good at something you are there is always someone better, perfection can never be achieved, it only exists in theory.
I THOUGHT THE BLOG POST INSULTS WERE DIRECTED AT ME PERSONALLY, considering I saw him visit my blog on mybloglog and I joined his personal community as well as the seomoz.
That's why I got upset... UNDERSTAND????
Ego is a funny thing if you want to get philisophical about it. (I'm absolutley not comparing myself to anyone special just making a point).
I think most of the people that have done great things have big EGOs, because of the extreme self-confidence it requires to be successful. Everyone I've ever met that was successful had an ego (I know anedotal example, but I'm not sure how you could find statistical information on EGO percentage to success quickly). It may not be ideal, but it's reality.
Human beings are attracted to conflict so when there is no conflict, there is no drama, and no plot or interest in what's going on. I make conflicting comments and add my point of view in that manner on purpose to add intrigue and increase the conversation. I honestly don't care about impressing people for vanity reasons.
By being a person who causes conflict, who "stirs it up", inevitably someone will get mad at you and not like you. I've had many intense conversations online that even had insults in them, that ended with good results and with both of us contributing postive things to conversation and reading each others blogs.
I hold nothing against anyone here.
Concerning your "be happy with your sucessess", I am - I remember being in the ARMY, I remember being very poor (wasn't very long ago). Here let's have some more humility. I remember drinking myself into an oblivion and puking for 12 hours the next day. My first company went out of business and I lost everything, destroyed my credit and I never graduated college (dropped out the last semester, I was majoring in mathematics).
I don't care about vanity. I am overly confident, but that's my personality. What's wrong with being myself and commenting on what I think in the manner I enoy reading the most???????
Nice tips, although your focus seems seems to be cenetered around spending lots of time and effort on getting on content designed soley for digg.
For most commercial sites, I don't think making the homepage is the all emcompasing thing or that it's even worthwhile for them to spend too much time tracking digg. I think it's more important for them to setup a content creation strategy with SMO that continually builds repeat traffic as well as links and visitors without overly focusing on the sensantional one time digg hit or redirect "linkbait and switch" methodoligies.
It's true that the linkarati or webmasters control the link structure of the web so you have to create dual purpose content, but it's important for your strategy to balance ROI and not to get too lost in "ego" over trying to beat out all the other content or spending too much time on traffic manipulation that won't further your real online business plan.
I'm not sure I understand - what's too focused on digg? The vidcast itself or my marketing strategies as a whole?
It's a vidcast about Digg, so of course the focus is going to on how to leverage digg as a source of traffic and links.
If you're saying my overall marketing strategy is too reliant on digg, I'm not exactly sure how you can speculate on what marketing tactics I use. SEOmoz, with its half million backlinks, is one of many sites I've helped build and market online. I employ a wide variety of tactics, digg just happens to be the most exciting one.
Ok, this is going to a be a bit pointed, but it's really a complement. PLEASE don't take this the wrong way. I know the world isn't about money, but still - How much money do you get paid for creating all that traffic and linkage for SEOmoz and other sites???
The market value for the traffic you're creating (how much you'd have to pay for someone else to duplicate it) should be making you well over a half million dollars per year (that refers to you personally). SEOmoz doesn’t need any more traffic or anymore links. If you monetized the traffic you already have you'd be earning enough to retire in less than 3 years.
If digg is your hobby, great! Marketing tactics are great! What I was indirectly getting at is that lots of SEO's and online marketers focus on the exciting aspects of digg, social networks and doing lots of time consuming tactics at the loss of ROI. You should be very wealthy already, but I don't think (guessing here) you are and I would venture to say it's because of your focus on technology and individual marketing tactics instead of on scalability and how to effectively shape your over all business strategy to work with your marketing strategy for optimum ROI.
I'm not rich, my site is new and you've never heard of me. I don't get anywhere near as much traffic as seomoz (although we're growing nicely for a 4 month old site). THIS IS NOT TO SHOW OFF, I'M VERY FAR FROM WHERE I WANT TO BE AND I'M SURE THERE ARE LOTS OF VERY WELL OFF SEOmoz READERS, but I'm on salary at $120,000 per year plus bonus, I own a third of the company I work for (so with this profitability who knows what could happen later on) and on top of that I have some personal sites that make me a passive income in the thousands of dollar range per month (I'm gearing up to launch a filmmaking community which should be REALLY cool).
I think that's more then the average SEO makes and I never go to conferences, haven't been doing this professionally for very long (comparatively). I'm completely unknown, and I've never had an article hit the front page of digg, (had a few monster stumbles). I see lots of other SEO's spend hours and hours crafting articles for digg, doing elaborate strategies for link bait, they may get traffic, but loose site of the larger picture.
I am good at what I do and have ranked sites in competitive markets like pr, but more importantly my clients continue on, because they MAKE MONEY. If they're making money online and are able to be successful by showing a huge ROI on their SEO investment that's the most important thing.
We have monetized our traffic (premium membership), and you seem to be making the assumption that all my linkbaiting on digg has strictly been for SEOmoz. I market a bunch of websites, some that are fairly new and need the massive link juice to give their domain some authority. I'll be the first to agree, SEOmoz doesn't really need more links. We've got the rankings we want and we're now focusing on turning those rankings and traffic into money.
Regarding what I should be making, the 500k a year seems like a convenient figure to throw out there simply to support your theory that SEOmoz's business tactics are misguided. It'd be like me saying "well if you knew what you were doing you'd own two ferraris and a private jet!"
It's funny, I was actually talking to Scott earlier today about writing a post next week about SEOs and their lack of humility. It seems like the majority of SEOs I talk to have ever-expanding salaries, rankings, and client demand. Their salaries are always at least twice the industry average (or 3x, depending on what day of the week I ask), and they usually upgrade themselves to being a "legendary" SEO within a month of having some wordpress blog and a few lukewarm posts. I'm not accusing you of lying, I'm just saying that if your method of debating with me is to throw your salary out there I'm going to take everything you say with a very fine grain of salt.
My salary wasn't meant to be impressive. I put it out there so I won't be perceived as a hypocrite for saying how much I believe you should be making from your traffic. I'm not lying about my salary and it makes no difference to me if you like my posts or not, they're getting a good amount of links and attention without your endorsement.
Only a fool would refer to himself as "legendary" and I don't care about ego battles. I understand the motivation behind being skeptical, but I'm actually not lying. I know that doesn’t mean anything to you, but I'm really not. I specifically compared what the MARKET VALUE for the traffic and links you're building would cost if you were to purchase them. Maybe I shouldn't have added the personally in there.
To quench your skepticism, I'll tell you what. In the next 2 months if you watch my blog I'll mention 3 of my most recent clients in case studies and they will include an ISP who resells our product with over 3,000 clients, an established print magazine, and a major real estate company with national recognition. Those 3 clients alone would justify a larger salary than mine. Now I think that's fair, right??? Is there anything else you need?
Keep in mind I wasn't calling your posts lukewarm (I've actually never read your blog and have no idea who you are), I was just citing that as an example of how a lot of SEOs exaggerate.
I'm not asking for you to prove yourself to me, I'm just saying for future reference don't throw your salary out there as a way to argue. It lessens your credibility.
At the market rate for link buys, an hour or two of time to put together something that can generate hundreds or even thousands of links seems like a pretty decent investment.
I suspect Solomon wanted to merely state that he had received results without getting on Digg. Frankly speaking, I have had results,too. So it means that, though social marketing may be great, there are other ways to get results. Digg is just one of them.
But taking current marketing situation into account, creating great content and promoting it via social networks should be as easy as optimizing meta tags back in the days (97?)
Btw, I don't think Solomon was trying to argue about anything, just adding more points to the vidcast, than it had (likewise, you didn't say that there are other ways to promote your content or about creating content for your target audience in mind, and only then promoting it on social site).
The video is specifically about Digg, so I don't think anyone cares that Matt didn't mention other ways to promote your site. If Matt said, "I'm going to talk about how to promote and market your site's content" and then proceeded to only talk about Digg, I can understand the complaint.
It's like me posting an entry about cows and readers getting mad that I didn't talk about horses.
Except that he went into detailed tactics without giving any background on when or why you may want to consider using them. Tactics don't exist in a vacum and when someone recommends using linkbait and switch, redirect domains and other digg tactics it's imperative that they give some context to when they recommend using those tools. I was pointing out that I BELIEVE many SEO's go overboard on using fancy digg tactics while neglecting to work out a consitent marketing strategy that produces a good ROI. Can you see why I went there? Ofcourse the video was on digg, but just listing tactics without any base or any information (at least in a basic sense) warrants a discussion in that direction (at least I think so). What do you think? (I'm being nice no biting my head off)
I can see your point, but the purpose of the Whiteboard Friday videos is to concisely provide information while (typically) using visuals. Matt could have gone on for about forty more minutes about Digg, but we want to keep the videos short so people can watch them quickly (after all, it is a Friday).
We can go into more detail about the etiquette of Digg (how, when, when not, etc) in a blog post or article.
Neat!