The Ultimate Social Bookmarking Content Creation Guide (Part 1: Digg)

Social Bookmarking sites have been a great source of traffic and inbound links, however understand the type of content that each community enjoys and are willing to share with other community members is extremely important. One of the best ways to know what type of content has the best chance of going viral is by being an active member in each community. However that can be very time consuming and tedious, so i thought I would create this guide you can follow to help create content specific to each social bookmarking community.

This is a 5 part series that will cover creating content for the following social bookmarking sites. The other parts will be released over the next few weeks so keep checking back.

Digg

People on Digg are very loyal to the other active members in the community, so if you have an active account or are a power user it will help your content perform well. In terms of the type of content that will do well on Digg, it needs to be new, exciting and interesting. If you can be the first to break a story, you can be rewarded with thousands of visitors to your post.

Here is a breakdown of the Digg.com user demographics.

Content-Style

Lists: Usually list-style posts like “# Ways to Improve Your Subject” seem to do very well in Digg. For one, Digg users like quick posts that are easy to scan, so by making quick and entertaining posts in list format, it will cater to the ideal Digg users.

Images: Again referring back to how Digg users like to share and read content that is quick and easy, images are one of the fastest ways to convey your message/point. Also, with the rise in popularity of Infographics, they have become very popular within the Digg community.

Videos: Fun and entertaining videos are always a hit on Digg, not to mention many of the other social bookmarking sites. Because videos can cater to a wider audience, they can be watched by any language and location.

Roundups: If you have a collection or wrap-up that is focused on a certain topic or theme, it can go viral on Digg. For example “The Best Collection of Sports Movie Images” could be the title of a post that gets shared rapidly. Words like “Best” “Ultimate” Greatest” “Complete” can help your roundup post do well.

Tutorials: If you have a post that gives a detailed tutorial on a specific topic it can do very well. Incorporating pictures and videos to help explain the topic will boost the likeliness of it getting hot.

Attention Grabbing: Headlines are extremely important since that is what users see to determine if they will read the rest of the article. Adding (Pic) or (Video) at the end of the post title can also help indicate the type of content it is, which helps the Digg user find the types of content they like, a lot faster.

Topics for Content

New New New: Digg users love to read anything that is a breaking story, brand new, or an upcoming product/news.

Hottest Subjects: Even though Digg has a broad selection of categories that you can submit content to, there are a handful of subjects that seem to perform better than others.

Mobile Phones/Applications
Computer Software/Applications
Social Networking
Current News
Upcoming Products/Events
Controversial Topics
Funny/Humor

Hottest Topics: Don’t get me wrong, the Digg community is huge, but Digg’s users tend to be more on the geeky and tech savvy group. Topics that are technology-focused like the iPhone, iPad, Windows 7, Video Games, etc…perform very well.

Examples of Content That Went Viral on Digg:

You can always visit here to see the most popular articles and posts on digg over the last 365 days. But here are some hand picked posts that went viral.

Other Digg Content Creation Resources: