Digg Friends with Benefits

Nope, it’s not the FB you’re thinking about. It’s about having the ideal digg friends who’ll digg your shouts and more. We all know that there are different kinds of digg users. Some of them are good for you and your content promotion, while others are simply not interested. There are digg users who are picky with their friends, and then there are those who just befriend anyone they could get their eyes on. I guess being picky for a right reason saves you the effort of having to add too many friends in exchange for better submission promotion. Why add 100 friends when all you need is maybe a carefully chosen 75 or half of it and get the same benefits. Of course, it sounds ridiculous since we all have reasons why we join digg and why we add friends, but if you’re interested in getting more from your “please digg shouts”, maybe filtering out the less responsive digg users from your potential friend list is a better option.

I got the idea from this e-book entitled “Breaking the Digg Code” which I’ve just finished reading. This is not a review of this e-book by the way since I’m only going to share a bit of what you could learn inside. I guess the author of the book won’t be mad if I share a little of his work (which, I believe, was created primarily to boost the readership of his blog).


Digg users who have many friends, send shouts for diggs, submitted to dugg ratio is below 20 percent, are members for more than a month, and digg a lot of stories are the type of people that should pass as a beneficial digg friend. Here are the reasons why:

The number of dugg stories

Obviously if you’re not an active digger, it reflects in your profile. When you see a user who has only 500 stories dugg after being a member since April of 2007, chances are this user is only using digg occasionally. What are your chances then of having your shouts noticed by this guy? Occasionally perhaps. Of course, you also have to check how long the user has been a member. If it’s only two months or less, expect a lower number. Generally, I think you should be able to reach the 1000th digg after 4 months or less of being a member. That’s like a maximum of 10 diggs a day. If you want your submission to get diggs, look for active digg friends.

Submitted to digg ratio is less than 20%

If you divide the number of diggs to the number submissions, you should get 0.20 or less.

Ratio = Diggs / Submitted

Why? Let’s say that user dugg 10 stories today, 2 of which is his submitted content if it’s 20 percent. That leaves 8 more stories where your story could be one of it. That’s an optimal state to be in since not all of the remaining 8 may come from the shouts this user received. It will be shared, perhaps, by the stories in the front page, his finds in the upcoming page, and then the shouts from his friends of which you are one. That’s why it has to be 20 percent or less. The lesser it is, the more possibility that this user diggs what his friends are digging. Never ever make friends with a user whose diggs equal to his submissions (or something near that) for they are only submitting their own stories and don’t bother with the word “community”.

Friendly

You should only “add” diggers with friends. I’ve seen quite a lot of digg users who don’t have digg friends. And, usually, they are the ones who submit stories and seldom digg other’s submissions. You have no use for them. Most probably, they have some fans before you and their requests to be befriended back weren’t answered. Why then should you waste your time on them?

Another, issue that’s worth looking at is the number of friends a user have. I usually try to add those with 300 or more friends and I either get a slow reaction or none at all and I’m stuck to being a fan. I’m guessing that the more friends a digger have the more lousy fans they have too and you could be one of them which keep you from being added back. This is most true for power users who have legions of fans waiting to be kissed back by some ultimate being or something LOL. You have two options for this: either you do something for them to notice you, or stick to those with lesser friends. If you think they’re worth the time, then try to grab their attention by digging their submissions all the time.

Date Joined

One issue with digg is that it’s got lots of spammy and temporary profiles where the user profile gets used for a few weeks only and then poof, off they go to make a new one. It’s part of their tactic to avoid getting caught by the digg authority, I guess. So you have to be careful about adding users who have been a member for less than a month. It’s better to add those that have been in digg longer, such as 2 months perhaps.

Shout Fanatics

This is one important indication that the user you’re looking at will more likely digg what you shouted to him/her. If you’re sending shouts to other people, it’s always a given that you are also digging the shouts you receive. You can see the shout activity of a user through the “history tab” in their profile. There are users who send unusually high volume of shouts per day. Well, they can also be put to good use, I guess, besides their spammy character. If they’re really into it, maybe you can ask them to share your submitted story to their friends after you dugg all their shouts. But then if they’re nagging you like crazy and they don’t even digg any of what you’ve been shouting at them, just unfriend them and report to the digg authority if found “too spammy”.


These are just my ideas of a truly responsive and beneficial character in the digg community given that you want your stories to be promoted and hit the front page. Of course, it’s always up to you if you want your digg experience be dictated by virtues of plain promotional character alone. After all, there are some instances where a user can be a contradiction of these qualities and yet would still prove more than beneficial for you.



technorati tags: digg, social media, friends

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