I don’t mean that diggers don’t like blogs this way. I’m familiar with this feature on Digg, but I mean that I have very often seen comments that clearly told that “this is a blog and I don’t want to see it on digg” (something like this, I can’t recall the exact place and time). I just think that many diggers think of a potential promotional campaign of a site when they see a blog. I hope I made myself clear! But anyway: nice guideline!

So further content could be used to drive subscriptions, as long as it’s exclusive to rss or newsletter subscribers. That makes sense, thanks

@buzzdroid, in this context I do regard for myself a subscriber as a conversion. Subscribers are your long-term value plan

@Andrew, anything with perceived value to the reader eg. audio, video, members-only forum, archive, exclusive content, money-off voucher, consulting, a secret, newsletter, …

What *are* some other alternatives? I’ve been thinking about this and so far have just come up with contests and free stuff as incentives go.

Is a coversion an adsense click? Forget it. Digg users do not click. Plain and simple. You are much more likely to get clicks from less scrupulous readers that find your blog via traditional methods.

Is a comment on your post a conversion to you? Again, not likely with Digg users, most tend to comment back at Digg, that’s where they are most comfortable and have control within their own community.

Is a conversion a subscriber? You might impress a digg user enough to subscribe as this is actually the least offensive and least labor intensive actions of the choices. This is indicative of the number of clicks received on your feed icon in the above example.

All in all, Digg is hype.

Diggers digg some blogs, but don’t digg others and mark them as spam.

db

Here are the top 15 outbound clicks:

enginepuller.com/engines/114/Thomas%2… 466

feeds.feedburner.com/SpeakingFreely 106

catb.org/hacker-emblem 104

blogburst.com 23

home-office-guide.com 20

newstons.wordpress.com/2007/02/07/6-t… 19

10e20.com 18

wolf-howl.com 17

learningcenter.sony.us/assets/itpd/re… 17

seo-theory.blogspot.com 16

abhilash.us 16

bitty.com/manual/?contenttype=rssfeed… 15

andreasviklund.com 11

newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/subext.a… 11

wordpress.com 10

Enginepuller was from a link in the comments. Next was the feedburner link, large orange graphic, then the hacker emblem, blogburst chiclet, etc.

Not a very good percentage of outbound clicks. I can almost bet that the hacker emblem clicks were of the ‘WTF is that’? variety.

Accumulation of inbound links though is an entirely different story. Yahoo showed an increase of over 4k links in two days. I’ll certainly take links from Lifehacker and Gizmodo.

The piece that was Dugg ended up with over 2000 Diggs. Comments are still coming in as are backlinks from other blogs, etc.

Hmm, I definitely see your point, but what’s more important – Digg user “trust” or Google “trust” through more backlinks? To me, the Digg demographic just doesn’t convert well (too young, too open source “free” minded (although Apple supporters are the most indulgent individuals in the tech area right now)) where as the less informed users from Google do convert much better on the whole.

I think there is a fine line you walk with Digg – no matter how useful, too many front page stories and you are accussed of gaming. Only get one or two stories and the traffic increase doesn’t seem to convert over time. However, by monitoring backlinks and referrals in, you can see traffic coming from newer sources and generally a bump in the Google SERPs.

I’d like to see some actual conversion numbers from someone who can relate an increase in converts to Digg. That might be an excellent case study. Great article though – got me thinking which is the sign of a good post.

Still, I dugg this just to see if the world would implode.