Get traffic for your website - episode 6 - get more traffic from Digg and Reddit
Welcome to episode 6 in my series on how to get traffic for your website. In this episode I'll be looking at social news sites such as Digg and Reddit and how you can get traffic from them.
The difference between getting traffic from mainstream news sites and getting traffic from niche news sites is more significant than you'd assume. Not only is it a more lucrative concept but the gains can be seemingly massive.
Quantity of traffic
The first thing to address is the quantity of traffic that sites like Digg and Reddit can deliver. Being frontpaged on a niche news site can send hundreds of users, whereas Digg can send 20,000. That's a big difference, especially if your server can't handle it (or if you pay for your bandwidth by the megabyte). Literally thousands of people an hour and that's a lot to take.
Quality of traffic
The quality of traffic from these sites is quite low; more than likely they'll sit on your site for 2-5 seconds before going elsewhere. However you are dealing with tech-savvy users so expect comments (and expect to be hacked if there's an obvious vulnerability).
It doesn't take much to get some visitors
Unlike niche sites that only offer hundreds at the best of times, a good submission on Digg that doesn't reach the front page will still receive a 200 or so visitors anyway. So you don't have to reach the homepage to see some improvement (although 200 visitors isn't exactly anything to call home about). Still, every little helps if you've got nothing to begin with.
#1 - Offer a quantifiable reason for reading your content
"The 10 best Photoshop tutorials" or "64% of users hate OSX". Offering a flat out statistic helps give numerical value to your post. Readers will know exactly where you're going with it and you're not asking them to think. Using a good title that quantifies your post will give you a great advantage over others - people will Digg you just for your title. So if you're saying "12% of Americans couldn't find France", people who think that message is worthy will Digg it without ever visiting your site.
#2 - Offer discussion
Interaction is key when you're trying to pick up support, so offer rational but insightful discussion around a topic. Mainstream news site users are self-important know it alls (I know because I am one) and offering them opportunity to voice their opinion always works.
#3 - Watch trends and avoid them
As with all things that become popular, the underground pushes back against them hard. So if loads of Photoshop tutorials start becoming popular, or "Top 10..." seems synonymous with success, avoid it at all costs. These users are smart and can see when people are trying to piggyback on trends and they'll push you away. Avoid trends because the users will push back against them - including your submission.
#4 - Research your topic carefully
As I said before, users on mainstream news sites like these are smart. There's also a lot of them so if you say something incorrect someone will pick up on it - and that's not good. You'll look like a fool and no one wants that.
#5 - Add the widgets to your site
Add the "Digg this" button to your site to help you pick up Diggs (and prod readers into submitting your content for you). Quite often users will click through from Digg/Reddit, like your content but not go back to give you their vote - including the widget on your site will prompt them to register their support. It's simple really.
As with all the other systems, for this to work you ideally need to be an active participant in the site for your submissions to have any chance of survival. But it's time well spent, 20,000 visitors in one go can do very good things for you. Very good things indeed.
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