Your Favorite White Boy

After dropping some science on how to mack Twitter, I thought the time is at hand to school you suckers on strategies to conquer Digg. Getting on the front page of Digg is like the mythical unicorn – everyone one is looking for it and very few actually find it. As the tale goes, if you are lucky enough to get on the front page of Digg, you’re website will crash. They’ll be so many hits, you’ll finally be an internet celebrity. The so-called “Digg effect”.  Or so it goes.

And Digg is a pretty big whale.  One page that was featured on the front page got over 2 million hits.  The problem is that its not just another website.  Its frequent users – those who are most responsible for “voting” articles and/or posts to the front page – have developed a particular personality.  Its important to understand how Digg works so you can use it to your advantage.  Here are some guidelines hip-hop heads, bloggers, artists and site administrators need to remember when they are pursuing the unicorn.

It Ain’t A One Night Stand

Now, you can’t just go on Digg, grab a profile and start Digging your own posts.  As I said, its a community and you need to treat it like one – interaction is the business.  Its like Twitter.  You can’t just go on and post your blog feed.  You need to hook up with other users.  The good thing is that there are a lot of hip-hop heads that use Digg.  So join, check out the articles, Digg the one’s you, er, dig, and see what’s poppin.

Think Like The Digg Audience

Before trying to get all your friends to “Digg” your posts, its important to understand who the audience is that you’re ultimately pitching to – it may be a lot different that your usual blog visitors. By their own advertising/media pieces and other keen observers, a typical Digg user is described as follows:

• overwhelmingly (94%) male between the ages of 18-39;
• College-educated IT and business professionals;
• They like anything mentioning the Daily Show, Stephen Colbert or bashing Fox News.

They are basically your white, college self-described computer geek friend from school.  That’s who will be ultimately deciding on whether your post is worth putting on the illustrious Front Page.  And that’s who you need to tailor your post to if you want to experience the Digg effect.

Digg Likes Hip-Hop, But May Not Understand It

Now, it may seem a daunting task to talk real hip-hop with these (let’s face it) dudes. But not to worry, they’re cool with it; they just don’t understand it – or at least they are highly amused by it. Use that to your advantage. What do I mean by that? Peep the top hip-hop related posts or articles on Digg:

1. Freestyle Rap Battle Translated (3967 Diggs)
2. Rap Lyrics Explained With Charts and Graphs (3885 Diggs)
3. Guy Does Amazing Impressions of Rap Stars (3578 Diggs)
4. Hip Hop Sales Collapsing: “They can no longer fool the white kids.” (3319 Diggs)

What these and other successful hip-hop related posts tell you is that your best bet is to stick to humor, amazing video or explaining events, styles, lingo, etc in hip-hop.  Most Digg users go onto the site for entertainment purposes.  Its not that your 5-part J Dilla tribute isn’t important, Digg may just be the wrong place to post it.

Ayo Technology

Digg users and hip-hop heads have some things in common. Both love gadgets and technology. For example, the recently announced  T-Pain Autotune iPhone app would be of interest to both Digg users and those who navigate the hip-hop online community.  Twitter, the abundance of YouTube craziness and all the online music material are all great places to start if you’re looking to write an article and promote it on Digg.  That, and your favorite rapper does a lot of crazy things on camera.  Write about it and post it first and you may reap the traffic rewards.

Embrace Your Inner Geek

One of hip-hop’s best-kept secrets is that it is populated by comic, movie and sci-fi nerds.  This is another common bond that both audiences share.  On the personal tip, if I never have to hear one more post or Tweet about Afro Samurai, The Watchmen, Lost or Comic-con, I’ll be a happy man.  But this is the kind of topic that is appreciated by the vast Digg audience.   Like Star Wars?  Talk about which rapper would play each character from the film.  Digg gold, I tell you!

Not everyone wants to tailor their content for another audience.  Others couldn’t care less about Digg – they’d rather see their name on Nah Right.   That’s cool.  But using social media like Digg, Del.icio.us and other resources can give your blog or site a huge hit, potentially exposing your content to thousands, if not tens of thousands.

May be worth your time.  I’d love to hear about your Digg experiences.

Tags: blogs, Digg, traffic