5 Ways Learning to Digg makes you a Better Blogger

Learning how to use digg.com as a story submitter and digger of great stories is truly akin to being awash in the good, the bad, and the ugly of web content. With thousands of stories submitted daily, while learning how to participate in a productive manner, you are sure to really see it all.

You'll see stories so lacking in quality that you'll wonder why anyone read them let alone submit them, you'll see complete spam submitted by nefarious types attempting to game digg, and finally you'll see countless awesome and interesting pieces all comprised of different components which lead them to super-popularity status on digg (hitting the front-page).

So while you're involved in contributing to a great site by digging, burying, and submitting, you're really in the front-line of what's being developed in terms of web content. To take advantage of this as a blogger, one simply needs to have that realization.

I recommend creating an excel file, one that allows you to track things like:

• Headlines that caught your attention - Date, digg URL, and whether your response was positive or negative (as in wow, that was catchy or as in geez, that sounds like a used-car salesman type pitch for some serious spam)
• Subject matter that consistently becomes popular - There are some great resources (an example found searching google for "digg popuar story statistics" is this page) which can also uncover some patterns
• Subject matter that gets momentum but faces the fate of getting buried - Try to analyze what it is about these stories that got them canned. Obviously something was right or they would have never started to collect diggs to begin with... but something else just didn't sit well.

After compiling data as you go about using digg, you'll likely stumble onto some of these 5 Important parts of being a great blogger, and likely many more of your own which will prove to be valuable.

• Killer titles are practically a necessity - Stop SEOing your titles to the point where they detract clicks. Write them for humans! Good titles for stories submitted grab attention which helps get diggs. Good titles in search results get clicks!
• A good description can help seal the deal - On digg, a good description can entice a user to digg into the story you submitted. On your blog, taking a minute to write a good meta-description can save the day when search engines use your meta-description as the description shown in search results (this happens a lot, albeit pretty haphazardly).
• Don't submit junk just for the sake of submitting - Sometimes the creative juices just aren't flowing and we bloggers feel a little pressure to "just post something". But blogging about nothing is like submitting junk stories to digg simply because you want to keep your count high and/or consistent. You just waste people's time and cause them to likely look right past your stories (entries of your feed in the case of your blog).
• Don't blow your own horn (often) - One common reason for stories getting buried or people getting flamed is that they submit their own stories. If you've got something great to share I doubt anyone is going to drill you for submitting it, but don't make this a habit by any means. If you have great stories they should find there way onto digg without you submitting them yourself. This basically applies to you as a blogger in terms of not being overly self promotional. Don't cram links to your blog posts all over the comment areas of other's blogs.
• Keep a well stocked feed reader - In order to stay on the pulse of breaking news you can submit to digg, you're going to need a lot of feeds from great sources. This is no different than in blogging. This is not to say turn your blog into news-regurgitation central, but this just means that you need to know the conversations happening elsewhere about your blog's subjects, and you need to have your finger on the pulse to understand what subjects are being popularized. (Here's some other tools for digg which may have blog related uses as well)

Basically, what you'll learn about digg users is what you'll likely eventually learn about your blog visitors. They are savvy individuals seeking high quality content, who are willing to participate if the right content is put in front of them, they can smell spam from a mile away, and because they're flooded with so much information you have to do something different to catch their attention.