There seems to be regular repitions of the types of article that are featured and rated highly on Digg.com’s Technology section (as a web developer it is rare that I wander from this section). It’s not hard to spot patterns of these repetitions and so I have listed them here.
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Tip #1: Create Top / Bottom X articles
For example:
- 3 Ways to Fix Twitter
- The Top 20 Facebook Apps
- 60 Beautiful Examples Of Night Photography
- Yahoos! Five Biggest Mistakes.
It seems Digg top authors’ understand that lists are great especially when their readers only have an hour at lunch to read their favorite RSS feeds. I personally love lists, so I am all for this style of blogging.
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Tip #2: Overstate your title
For example:
- Kevin Rose of Digg: The Most Famous Man on the Internet
- AMD’s best Dual core ever?! Phenom X2 6500+ Kuma reviewed!!
- Is holding out for Windows 7 a gamble worth taking?
Is Kevin Rise really the most famous man on the Internet? Does a review of a new processor really deserve not one but two explantion marks? Is holding out for the next Windows OS a gamble worth taking? Of course not.
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Tip #3: Include emotiviely charged adjectives in the title
For example:
- GMail adds themes to its Awesome feature list
- 13 Thrilling ways streampunk art hijacks Hi-Tech
- Windows 7 Touch Control Makes Media Centre Interface Awesome
- 16 Mesmerizing Mirrors with Radical Reflections
It seems that to be noticed articles need to be awesome, thrilling, mesmerizing. Why not just accurate, informative or thought-provoking as many are?
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Tip #4: Write anything about the iPhone
A nice and easy one. Write anything about the iPhone. E.g. details of a firmware update, list ‘essential’ iPhone apps, how to unlock your iPhone etc.
Of course you can mix and match any of these points to create a powerhouse Diggable article e.g. “30 incredible fonts for iPhone apps that will make you an award winning designer”.
Note: Going through this list you will have noticed that, rather cleverly, I have employed these very tatics in the title of this article. The proof is in the pudding; i’m not sure how many Diggs I will get, but if it is more than a few then maybe these techniques do work.