I’ve been reading a lot of diatribes against Digg lately. I’m not much of a fan myself, to be honest. I think too many bloggers write for Digg rather than their readers, but that’s not what this is about. This week it was further cemented in my mind that Digg isn’t necessary for traffic building.
Let me explain.
A few days ago, I posted 45 Things You Can Learn for Free Online at Simply Thrifty. I didn’t ask for anyone to Stumble or Digg the piece because I didn’t write it to be linkbait. I wrote the piece to highlight some great tutorials on the Internet. Then I went to bed.
The next morning as I was checking my stats I noticed a significant increase in readership – a couple of thousand visitors. Someone or lots of someones Stumbled my article. Further inspection noted a little Digg traffic. At 8:00 AM the piece had 30 Diggs, I gave it a little push and it made it to about 65 Diggs before it died in bural. No big deal, Digg wasn’t really my goal and while I appreciate one of my readers liking it enough to submit the post, it didn’t upset me that I didn’t get hundreds of Diggs. But that’s not what this is about either.
The next morning I checked my stats and noticed a HUGE surge in traffic, about 15,000 new visitors. Could this be from Digg? Further inspection revealed my traffic was coming from Stumble Upon, del.icio.us, Meta Filter, Scobleizer and too many blogs and websites to mention. I even received more Twitter traffic than Digg traffic. All in all, Digg sent about 75 visitors my way. Now, I’m not one to complain about new traffic, but when you compare Digg’s 75 to Stumble Upon’s thousands, you can see where I’m going with this.
For me, it’s more important to receive traffic that will keep coming back than a one or two day spike from Digg. It’s more important that my readers appreciate my writing enough to share it with others than to send a note around asking everyone to Digg me. The way to go about this is to write good content. Give people something to talk about and enjoy and they’ll return the favor in kind.
Who needs Digg?
Hi Deborah,
I was so happy to read your article about the various social bookmarking sites. I have been spending a ridiculous amount of time trying to figure out which of these sites are worth my time. Your article really put things in perspective for me. Thank you SO MUCH. It's so refreshing when I run across (I just couldn't say "Stumble Upon" lol! )an intelligent, well written article (and your Blog!) that cuts through the B.S. and tells it like it is. So again, I just wanted to say THANK YOU and tell you that your hard work is very much appreciated!
Sheri Jo
Hello Deborah, I'd first like to say I agree 100 % with your post. It seems now-a-days most bloggers care about digg. Me personally, I could care less if digg didn't exist.
You made a very good point there, digg traffic is major, but most traffic isn't returning. It is better to receive returning traffic, and build a larger reader base than to just get a day or two of high rocketing traffic. Very nice post
First off I found this article from my Twitter account. I am new to the social bookmarking or linking or whatever the official term is these days. I have been blogging for years on a private personal basis. I decided to take my website public and main stream. I have been under the impression that any traffic is good traffic. Reading your post about Digg makes me wonder if traffic is traffic?
I have been using Entrecard (http://entrecard.com/details/3270 )and like your Digg I have been getting a lot of traffic but not sure if it is good traffic. A lot of folks just click through to add there card. I look forward to seeing what others say about your post.
I must say as an added not about social bookmarking. Again, found you on Twitter (admiral70) have never been to your blog but will be adding you to my Google reader. Hummmmmmmm
–JB
Yes, people are gaming Digg now, but it will level out the bigger it gets.
I got some good traffic from digg, but well, it was like a one time thing, no real readers, so, I moved to stumbleupon as well
I prefer StumbleUpon over Digg simply because it brings traffic that is more consistent than DIGG.
I’ve been submitting some articles to Digg lately, both mine and others that I know. While I can’t see other people’s stats on the matter, I can definitely say that I’ve not been successful receiving much Digg traffic, but if someone Stumbles the article it receives much more traffic from there (eg might get 10 Digg viewers compared to 70 Stumble viewers).
Mostly the problem seems to be quality articles that I see by other authors are drowned out by spam in the “upcoming” section. I agree with Scott W here:
http://www.wrevenue.com/2007/11/07/hey-digg-your-upcoming-model-blows-heres-how-to-fix-it/
@ Ritu: I agree with you completely.Digg sucks.StumbleUpon rocks.SU brings loads and loads of traffic even for new blogs.My traffic stats show that SU brings me far more traffic than all the search engines combined.