How to Become a Digg Top User (without doing anything shady)
Mar 6, 2007 by Chris Winfield | Social NetworksThe more powerful the user is that submits your story to Digg – the better chance it has of making the homepage. Despite the fact that Digg removed Top User rankings last month your place in the line is as important as ever. Why?
- Friends – the more friends you have, the more diggs you will get. Many people digg all of their friend’s submissions – the more popular you are the more friends you will have.
- Trust – for the most part the top users are looked at as more trustworthy and for good reason – they have earned it.
The more stories of yours that hit the homepage and become popular – the easier it becomes for subsequent stories to become popular. The more powerful your account is – the easier it will be to get your stories to the Digg homepage (resulting in increased traffic, brand awareness and most importantly – links).
Here are some ways to make this happen:
Make your profile standout. If you are just starting with Digg and setting up an account I would recommend starting your username with a number or a letter high in the alphabet. The reason for this is that when people look at other user’s friends – your username will be at the top of the list. Let’s take a look at Digg’s top user DigitalGopher’s friend listing:
As you can see the user-names that are at the top of his listing start either with a number (3monkeys) or the letter “A” (Aidenag). Why would you want to be at the top of people’s friends lists? Because many people add friends based on other users and being at the top of the list will increase your chances of being added.
If you already have an account setup then be sure that you have a cool and unique picture in your profile. Your picture
becomes synonymous with your user-name. When someone sees your picture you want them to automatically know your user-name. By default, your picture is just a silhouette of a face/neck/shoulders:
Look at how it looks when you are in a line with others:
You all look the same. Differentiate yourself. Find an icon that will standout. Here are some Flickr Creative Commons searches you might want to try: Wild | Colorful | Scary. Here are a few examples of ones that really stand out:
Add Friends: And not just any friends. You want friends that are active and influential. You can start with the Top User’s list (it still exists – just not on Digg’s site). Look for people who Digg (a lot).
Out of these five – Digg user mrbabyman would be the best one to target as a friend due to the fact that he diggs the most and is still very active on the site.
Get really good with breaking news: One of the best ways to get homepage stories before you have a strong profile setup is to be the first to submit breaking news stories. Diggers are really, really fast at breaking news so you have to be armed with your own weapons. Two cool free tools are:
- Rasasa: This program integrates with your online messenger (Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Google Talk) and it delivers you news from your RSS feeds as an IM message.
- KnowNow’s elerts: You add RSS feeds to this and a background service hosted by KnowNow starts monitoring your selected channels. As soon as new information is added to these channels an eLert is displayed on your toolbar or deskbar.
These two tools will give you a bit of an edge over a traditional RSS reader’s lag time. All major news organizations have RSS feeds and most make them very easy to grab. Here are two other really good ones that aren’t so easy:
Use RSS for other mainstays: There are certain websites/blogs that I consider Digg mainstays – I would recommend adding these to your RSS reader and submitting good content from them whenever you see it. Examples of these sites would be Engadget, Lifehacker, Space.com, TheAppleBlog and The Consumerist.
Find unique sources: One of the keys is submitting content that noone else is. Study what people like and then find sites that fit into this mold. Sorry – I can’t list any of these here 
Know what Diggers like: Some things that are very popular on Digg:
- Apple’s iPhone
- Linux (especially Ubuntu)
- TV shows: Heroes, 24, Battlestar Gallatica
- Barak Obama & Ron Paul
- Nintendo Wii
- FireFox
- Digg (especially Kevin Rose)
Know what Diggers DON’T like: Some things that aren’t popular (often hated):
- RIAA
- George Bush (and Dick Cheney)
- Microsoft
- Fox News (especially Bill O’Reilly)
- Hillary Clinton (she seems to be gaining hate steam)
It’s good to know what people like and what they don’t because you will have a much better chance of getting a story to the homepage that way. One word of advice – don’t submit any stories from foxnews.com, they won’t stand a chance.
Add Comments: In order to make yourself more known to people – start adding comments. I suggest focusing on comments in the Upcoming Most section. The stories in this section have the best chance of making the homepage and you will have a better shot at being one of the first commenters. If you leave the first or second comment on a story that becomes very popular, more and more people will see your username and check out your profile and are more likely to add you.
Use Bookmarks: Set up bookmarks for the submit URL, your friends submitted stories URL (that URL would be: digg.com/users/yourusername/friends/news/submitted) and your own submitted stories so you can track (that URL would be: digg.com/users/yourusername/news/submitted). This will allow you to access these quickly and easily whenever you need them.
Stay Active: In order to make yourself known you will have to stay active and give back. If you can go through and digg your friend’s stories (that you like) a few times throughout the day (especially on the days when you are going to be submitting something important to you). I have seen it many times where people take breaks from Digg and their account loses a lot of power.
Use a High Speed Connection: Digg is a very heavily traficked site and Digg does move slow. If you are still on a dial-up add a bunch of extra time to everything above 
50 Responses to “How to Become a Digg Top User (without doing anything shady)”
Feel free to leave a comment...
and oh, if you want a pic to show with your comment, go get a gravatar!
Nice Post. I still can’t drive much traffic to some of my sites that I post on Digg but I’m still learning the tricks and I know this will help. I just need a group of friends on there that will digg my article that I put up there. That’s my problem right there.
Hey Chris. Thanks for the endorsement of KnowNow eLerts, but I notice the link refers to “KnowHow” not KnowNow.
I am glad to see you are finding the tool is useful.
Hi Chris,
Good to know Rasasa helps you to be in the light without being shady!
Cheers,
Maarten
Thanks lnahinu – Digg is a terrific site and resource but you definitely have to understand it first..
Sean M. – thanks for the heads-up about the link, I fixed it.
Maarten – you know it!
Ahoy Chris! Excellent article you did and thanks for choosing my icon, the Sunflower (I can thank the default pictures Apple includes with every Mac for that). I did a similar article a while back, http://tech-blot.com/2007/01/35-tips-to-promote-yourself-in-the-digg-community/
Dude, #1 on Digg. Great post!
Anything in favor of Atheisism and against religion (Extra points if against Islam) will get your story to the top within minutes.
The Firefox KnowNow toolbar doesn’t seem to want to work with Firefox v 2.0.0.2
Any updates or fixes?
Thanks.
Very good article.
Thanx , actually you gave nice information, I first need to change my Avatar / display pcture at dig
I have to say, good tips for the new users. The only thing that I did really different from what you described was insteading of submitting what I knew Digg users liked, I was trying to submit what they would find “interesting”.
At first I started with Linux-related news, because at the time no one was really active in that portion of the site. Later, I moved on to other topics, but I really made it with Linux-related news.
Nice article, Digg has so much influence now that getting on the front page can really boost traffic levels along with a crap load of links.
I like what you have to say about adding friends, those people that have a lot of friends really have a lot of control on the site.
Great post! I am new to blogging, so all this kind of information is very helpful.
Thanks a lot.
Josh:
We have a new eLerts version in the wings which includes Firefox 2.0 support, plus personal channel filters and other features. If you would like to be a beta participant send an email to beta@knownow.com.
I disagree with your last point. I’m on a 256k connection, and I’ve managed to get over 500 stories promoted to the front page. No high speed connection needed, trust me.
What Everybody Ought to Know About Being a Top Digger…
[Chris Winfield](http://www.10e20.com/author/chris) from 10e20 wrote an interesting article yesterday on [how to become a top Digg user without doing anything shady](http://www.10e20.com/2007/03/06/how-to-become-a-digg-top-user-without-doing-anything-s…
Seems ridiculous what you have to do to get noticed on digg. Thanks anyway for the tips, they are exactly what I was looking for.
April
Daily SearchCast, March 8, 2007: Microsoft Enters Its Third Era Of Search; Ask Raps Yahoo On Paid Inclusion; Send To Car BMW Feature For Google Maps & More!…
Microsoft’s search chief is leaving, opening up a third era of search where Microsoft will really have to prove it can compete; dust off the debate time, as Ask’s CEO questions Yahoo still doing paid inclusion; Google Maps has a new "send to ca…
SearchCap: The Day In Search, March 8, 2007…
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web:……
Maybe Make It 999,999 Users On Digg…
I see Digg now says has a million users. Well, as many are pointing out, at least 1,000,000 registered accounts that may or may not have actual active users. How many really use Digg as active registered members is known only to Digg. But as I watch Di…
it is good
The biggest hint I can give is friends. Digg your friend’s stories is great, but check your friends list for activity. Are accounts dead, inactive or do they just Digg stuff you’re not into. So kill them from your friends list and get new ones that you like and see over time if they like your content. I’ll never post this on Digg as a tip, but if you guys see it here, then enjoy. I have lots of friends from the early days of Digg like: aaaz, but they’re gone now so instead of having 1000+ friends I try and float at around 400 (active Diggers).
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thanks a nice tutorial i banned on digg 11 times but i am on a new way i am using http://www.laadi.com now and its giving me very good traffic you know what difference i saw in laadi.com and digg.com… when i post my stories on digg my google ctr is always very low : below than 1% but here in laadi.com my traffic is also gaining and ctr are also good thanks to this new site.
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[...] How to Become a Digg Top User (without doing anything shady) Author: Chris of 10e20.com Great advice on how to build your profile and trust level at Digg. [...]
Good tips, but I think most people miss the number one rule of doing well on digg:
Be the best digg user you can be!
Be an active participant and contribute value and you’ll do just fine. Try to game the system and you won’t. If you look at these tips, that’s what they’re encouraging…just speeding up the process a little.
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[...] How to be a top Digg user? Interesting article, especially the mentions on the shady practices and why you shouldn’t do them. [...]
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it is so hard and harder to become a top user now.
[...] http://www.10e20.com/blog/2007/03/06/how-to-become-a-digg-top-user-without-doing-anything-shady/ [...]
yea it is really hard to be a top user now
i wish i could be aware of it ……. months ago
Thanks for the post Chris, I enjoy and learn many things, you are right we must understand how it works first then we can leverage it!!great work man
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[...] How to Become a Digg Top User (without doing anything shady) Author: Chris of 10e20.com Great advice on how to build your profile and trust level at Digg. [...]
Great article… but it seems that the Top user list does not work anymore (the one you linked to)
Thanks for this share. This will surely make a part of my knowledge that will make me the next top digger
Thanks mate
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