10e20 Blog

Jeff Graham from USA Today is one of my favorite tech reporters. He’s not just someone who reports on trends, he actually gets in the trenches. I’ve known him for years and always enjoy speaking with him. So it worked out when I brought up the issue of the power of social new sites (like Digg) a few weeks ago and he said he was going to be meeting with them shortly at Web 2.0.

Today his profile piece called Readers want to know what you Digg ran and it’s about the rise of Digg and has a great interview with CEO Jay Adelson. Jeff also focused on the power of Digg for marketing purposes and search engine rankings. I spoke to Jeff for awhile about this (but had to give him a lot of info off the record):

It’s not just the masses who are digging Digg. Businesses have discovered that mentions on Digg can directly translate into higher website traffic and visibility in search engines.

Social media sites such as Digg are “great influencers,” says Chris Winfield, president of 10e20, a firm that works with companies on search marketing campaigns. “Getting a bunch of Diggs is huge.”

Another marketer who I really respect, Seth Godin is also featured in the article:

Seth Godin, a veteran marketing guru and author, devotes several pages to “Getting Dugg” in his upcoming book, Meatball Sundae. “It doesn’t cost anything, and it’s a great way to get your message to a large group of people,” says Godin. Digg, he adds, “dramatically amplifies” an old standby for most effective advertising: word of mouth.

Check out the full online version of the article here. Also be sure to read the sidebar interview with Jay. Snippet:

Q: I spoke with one marketer who said his way is to respect the system. He put up a page for a client offering, for instance, 10 things you never knew about vacuum cleaners. Did he play within the Digg rules?

A: One man’s spam is another person’s treasure. If we all learned something about vacuum cleaners, that’s great.

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