If Darwin’s concept of “Survival of the fittest” is applied to blogging, less than 1% of the 50 million blogs would survive. If you want to see this theory applied on the internet then look at digg. Digg has consistently produced and maintained the hottest news stories on the web. Powered by Digg’s users is not just a catch phrase but the foundation beneath Digg’s success. But whenever a blogger submits a story there is a one in a hundred thousand chance (same as winning the lottery) that it will make it to the Digg homepage. Here are the top 3 reasons why this happens.

Articles are judged by their titles
We all know a book should not be judged by its cover but all of us do it anyways. Generating funny and creative content simply isn’t enough for Digg. If your article does not have a powerful title no one will take a second look. Your submission title must be compelling enough for readers to click. In fact, if you don’t get enough diggs in the first hour chances are your submission will simply slip into the endless pages of Upcoming submissions and will fade away with just one (or two if you are lucky) diggs. Look at the top posts on the Digg homepage – they have short and compelling headlines. You will want to click them after one glance which is all your submission is going to get as more and more content is submitted to digg every minute.

Look at what you are competing against
Digg is meant to bring out the most popular stories on the internet. That means all sites are competing with each other to get their stories ‘dugg’. When a blogger submits their posts to Digg, the article is competing with news articles from CNN and BBC or product releases from Google and Microsoft or submissions from A-list bloggers who already have hundreds of readers ready to click Everyday more sites are adding a Digg This button to their stories and videos. When you submit a YouTube video of yourself eating cereal, it is competing against a video of 10 cats playing the piano at once (just made that one up). Who do you think will get Dugg? This means don’t submit all your articles to Digg. Wait for the one that you are really proud of, that you want to show off to the community. If you think you might be too passionate about the new article you wrote, take a step back and think “If I read this on another website would I submit it to Digg?” If you answered yes then go ahead otherwise sit back and keep trying.

Network of Friends on Digg
Only a small percentage of Digg users actually make it to the front page. Almost always it takes months to build a network of friends on Digg and numerous failed attempts to get to double digits. A close look at the top Digg users shows that the more half of the Digg’s successes are from the top users. SEOmoz clarifies this in an article titled Top 100 Digg Users Control 56% of Digg’s HomePage Content. My advice to you is to start building friends and have tons of patience. It might take up to a few months to gain popularity and trust among the Digg crowd that others will also vote for your submission.

A special note to fellow bloggers, Digg does not have to be the end of the road. Try submitting items to BloggingZoom and the rest. If your story eventually gets picked up by Digg be prepared for a jump in traffic and hopefully your hosting server will handle the load. Best of luck to all the would-be Diggers out there. I will see you on the Digg main page.

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