This week on MochiLand we tracked down a Digg expert, Jeff Gorndt, to offer some tips on succeeding with Digg that can be applied to marketing your game. If you have a Digg game marketing story to share, let us know in the comments! -Ada

Ada asked me to give a few pointers on how to get things on to the front page of Digg.com. Though I don’t really consider myself an expert (Though at one point I had a 65% popular ratio with over 100 stories submitted), I’m happy to help out however I can. I’m going to try to paint as complete a picture as possible, so some of it might bore you. Skip to wherever you want out of the article.

What is Digg?

Digg is a social media site based around users submitting and voting up news. It has hundreds of thousands of visitors a day, the vast majority of which don’t go any further than the homepage.

Why Get on Digg?

Well, if it isn’t obvious already, the main appeal of getting on Digg is sending its users over to your site. In my experience, getting to the front page of Digg sends no fewer than 15,000 people, and as many as 150,000. I’d say you get around 50,000 average. The Digg traffic alone is not main appeal, however. The site acts as a gathering point for Internet power users, who take what they find on Digg and distribute it elsewhere, usually forums or blogs, which in turn sends a large amount of traffic.

So How Do We Do It?

There’s no simple algorithm to getting on the front page Digg, and the complex algorithm that DOES power it is secret. Here’s a list of the commonly assumed factors, as well as what you’re aiming for in parenthesis after them:

  • The number of Diggs (more is better, obviously. Note, however, that digging from the same IP counteracts diggs and can get you banned)
  • The amount of time a story has existed (The more diggs in a shorter amount of time is better. Also note that most stories CANNOT get to the front page after 24 hours)
  • Where the diggs are coming from (It seems that Digg users that have been registered for a long time but have very few diggs have the most powerful diggs)
  • From whence are they digging the story? (Most people believe that diggs coming from outside the site going in hold more power than internal diggs. It’s also widely believed that a digg coming from an embedded button is the most powerful)
  • What category is the story in? (Less popular categories require fewer diggs. Playable web games is a very unpopular category :D )
  • What domain does the story point to? (There seems to be a threshold here. For a long time my site required ~100-120 diggs to get on the front page, and then one day it dropped to 40, after which it started climbing again.)
  • Is the story being buried? (If so, who’s burying it and why they say it should be buried also affects it.)

These are just 7 of the many factors that affect Digg. Almost all of them are under your control and pretty exploitable. Unfortunately the first requirement isn’t completely under your control. So now let’s take a look at…

What People Want to Digg

Unfortunately there’s no clear cut answer to this, either (May I be praised for writing an informative article that delivers no information.) I will give my experience though:

  • Something that gets started within 15 seconds of getting to the page. No long intros or credits.
  • Something that doesn’t last more than 10 minutes (Or has a breaking point within 10 minutes of starting).
  • Something that relates to topics already popular on Digg (Usually the same topics that’re popular anywhere else on the internet where people consider themselves well-informed: Atheism, Linux and Libertarianism.)

But even a story that contains all the right things will be lost in the crowd, unless you know how to…

Title Your Story

Titles should be either extremely short or extremely long to be eye-grabbing around average-length titles. Diggers love to see numbers, celebrity references and pop culture references in Digg titles; they’ll click them just because they’re something they already know. For example “15 Ron Paul Look-Alikes on American Idol (Made from LEGO!)” will go extremely far on Digg just by the title alone. For a long time we directed our content based on good Digg titles, we’d pick a title and then create content that could be made that fit it. However, even with the ideal title you still need diggs, and to do that you’ve got to get the right stuff in front of the right eyes, so you should…

Be Powerful on Digg

What does it mean to be powerful on Digg? It means that the Digg community is interested in things that interest you. And that means making lots of friends. Here’s a list of tips on making active friends:

  • Be active yourself – Digg lots of stories, particularly in the category in which you want to be powerful.
  • Seek out other power users – Friend everyone you see digging stories from your category, particularly if you’re getting them in Upcoming.
  • Make powerful friends – Friend all the diggers that get to the front page consistently, particularly if they’re in your category.
  • Impress people – Leave funny/informative comments on stories and people will follow you.
  • Be notable – Have a funny name and a funny or eye-catching avatar.
  • Give diggs – Answer shouts from your digg friends. They’ll notice your diggs and help you back.

Eventually, once you start getting some stories on to the front page, people will start coming to you to be your friend, and you won’t have to worry about this anymore.

What to do once you’re on the front page:

First of all, hope that your server doesn’t go down. Digg traffic can put a real load on. Second of all, set up the page in such a way as to keep those people there and clicking. The big shortcoming of Digg is that often people want to be in and out as quickly as possible, so they’ll come to your site, play your game, and immediately go back to Digg. You have to find out how to keep them there, such as offering them a free full downloadable version of your game if they register.