In the past six months or so of serious blogging, I wrote several posts that were deliberate attempts to bait Digg and generate a blog post that hit the front page. I thought it might be interesting to clarify these exact posts, what my thinking was, and how successful they were. This is in chronological order so you can follow how my mindset progressed. Hopefully, it will suggest some criteria as to what makes a Digg-worthy post (or not).

Zune: Why Apple Should Care (6 diggs) was my first Digg encounter (someone else submitted it).

Ten Must-Haves in Any Romatic Comedy (2 diggs) died on the vine, but I still think it’s pretty good.

Apple = Cat, PC = Dog (10 diggs) got a fair amount of attention on Reddit, but not much on Digg.

Is Battlestar Galactica Getting Too Political? (8 diggs) also fizzled out. It wasn’t specifically written for digg but I thought it was worth a shot.

At this point, I hadn’t hit the right combination of opinion, pictures, and stupidity, so I got more aggressive. My next posts were: When Hot Actresses Go Ugly and When Great Actors Go Flabby (Or Skinny) (2 diggs). Neither got anywhere.

I finally hit the Digg front page with: Seemingly Stupid Apple Moves That Were Actually Brilliant (882 diggs). I deliberately poked fun at Apple and included the value judgement of “stupid.” This one took my site down.

My post about my site getting taken down became my second front page digg: Digg Destroys Webomatica (839 diggs). The second time was not as fun as it was completely unexpected, and it also ground my server to a halt.

At this point, I cooled off on Digg and went back to writing about whatever the heck I felt like. I did continue submitting some stories I thought would be suited for the Digg audience, such as: Apple IIe: Childhood Games of Frustration (9 diggs) and Computer Animated Movie Cliches (6 diggs).

My third front page Digg: The Best And Worst James Bond Films I’m particularly proud of, as it wasn’t specifically written as Digg bait yet garnered about 928 diggs. It represented the culmination of watching all the James Bond movies and reviewing them - a lot of hard work.

So here are some general Digg-bait tips:

• A good headline is key. I’d recommend deciding on it before you even write the post.
• Apply a value judgement (sucks, stupid, best, worst).
• Pick a subject that will resonate with the Digg audience (Apple, movies, video games, hot babes, computers, Kevin Rose, Steve Jobs).
• I still like lists. But instead of the headline “Top Ten” you could just go with “Best” or “Worst”.
• I haven’t had much luck, but I think the question mark (?) is an underutilized come-on.
• Monitor your story. The biggest hump is the first handful of diggs. Once you’re past 30 diggs it will move to more public pages where people start digging anything.
• I didn’t do any mass emailing, paying people, or asking users to please digg my story. Too much work.
• If your blog runs on WordPress, install WP-Cache. You may want to notify your host once you see the mass digging begin. Check if you’ll be liable for overage charges before baiting Digg.
• Make sure you can live with your post and the reputation you’ll garner. Some diggers will deliberately berate and bait you based on the content of that one post. It will be much easier to respond to these intelligently if you really stand by what you wrote.
• Don’t get discouraged. As you can see, I spent a lot of time writing articles that went nowhere. Whether or not your story is noticed probably has a lot to do with factors not under your control.

I’m sure others out there have had more or different Digg experiences. Any tips? Please post links to your examples of Digg link bait!

Read more movie reviews at Webomatica: Movies!

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