5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Make an “I Got Dugg” Post

Getting a story to the frontpage of Digg is an accomplishment. It means that your article (or other form of media) was good enough in the eyes of Digg’s users to be seen by all – at least for a couple of hours. A lot of bloggers take the Digg traffic in stride and move on to their next topic while quietly enjoying the boost in visitors and revenue Digg sent their way. I’ve noticed a growing trend, however, for bloggers to make followup posts to their Digg frontpage stories gloating about their success and often throwing in some half-baked “tips and tricks” for getting your own stories dugg as well.

I’m not going to group all “I Got Dugg” posts into a negative category. Some of them – although very very few – actually provide insight on how the Digg effect helps/hurts a site, what sort of demographic Digg presents, and how one can take advantage of the surge of visitors (example). But most of the “I Got Dugg” posts are little more than gloating. So to be safe I’m asking all bloggers refrain from making “I Got Dugg” posts, and I’m even providing this nifty breakdown of 5 reasons to take my advice.

1) It Makes You Look Amateur

It doesn’t matter if you are an arbitrage guru pulling in millions through cunning campaigns or a domainer with a portfolio slam full of 3 letter .com’s (pronouncable!!!!!!), if you make a blog post cheering about the 30k uniques Digg sent your way the day before, you look like an amateur. Perhaps it’s just me, but the first thing that pops into my head when I see an “I Got Dugg” post is the image of a 15 year old kid jumping and shouting at his computer screen as he watches his AWStats slowly update during a Digg.

Can you honestly imagine a real professional who has real experience getting excited enough over a Digg to post about it later? Maybe one would mention it in passing, but to create an individual post dedicated to proving your worth through your Digg success through the use of graphs and referral screenshots shows readers that success is new to you.

2) It Waters Down Your Previous Success

Building on the first point, creating an “I Got Dugg” post gives users the impression that success is new to you. Unless being unsuccessful is some sort of gimmick you’re using, it’s not a good idea to lead users to believe that before your blog appeared on the frontpage of Digg that it was unsuccessful. You don’t have to lie about your success, but you always want to project the attitude of success. What I mean by this is that you as a blogger have to have confidence in yourself and allow that confidence to flow through your blog. By creating an “I Got Dugg” post, you’ve basically shown the reader that your Digg experience was so sublime that it dwarfed your previous success as a blogger. That’s not what you want to do.

3) It Opens the Door to Griefers

My friend John Chow can tell you first hand what being too open about your Digg experience can do. By writing about your overnight success via Digg, you create a lot of enemies extremely fast. First there’s the people who now consider you a “spammer” (see point #4). Next you have your competition who despise you for getting a 1-up on them even if it’s for a short amount of time. You also have an entirely new group of alienated readers that you yourself created by showing off your success. “I Got Dugg” posts can easily turn a good portion of your readers against you as their view of you changes from an enlightened source of information to a vote-mongering Digg whore.

All of these people hate you. Typically a hate-filled mob is able to win out against a single person. John was able to establish himself after he was banned for Digg. You may have a harder time.

4) It Labels You as a “Spammer”

Digg users have a much more broad definition of the term “spammer” than most – according to Digg users any and all content created with the purpose of performing well on Digg is spam. They ignore the fact that for content to perform well on Digg it must be good in general (there’s no magic secret to getting Dugg … just write good content). In any case, by creating an “I Got Dugg” post you’re showing that you were at the very least aware of the Digg effect. This also implies that you have some knowledge of how to game the system (even though there’s no gaming … just write good content). Because of this many Digg users will consider your article, and possibly your entire blog, to be spam.

You don’t want to be a spammer. The only way to really avoid this label is to write as if you are blissfully unaware of the Digg effect and that your only goal in life is to create delicious content for the user, which it probably should be anyway since the easiest way to get Dugg is to … just write good content.

5) It is a Waste of Your Time

You could be spending the time you wasted making an “I Got Dugg” post writing another entry that your users would actually appreciate.

Enjoy your Dugg article, the traffic it brings, the backlinks it generates, and the discussion it sparks. Just please do so quietly.