How To Get a Digg Story Buried in 4 Short Words

by Patrick Altoft on June 5, 2008

A promising story published by one of our clients was ruined yesterday by just 4 words.

I don’t know who dugg the story or who left the comment but I certainly won’t bother trying to get it on the front page.

By not submitting the story straight away ourselves we left it vulnerable to being ruined by people who don’t understand the fragility of a Digg submission and how the slightest thing can get a great story buried.

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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

Dean 05 Jun 2008 at 9:24 am: There seems to be some confusion about whether you get penalised by the Digg community for submitting your own stories/articles.

This is what you’re advocating here so have you found this to be the case?
Patrick Altoft 05 Jun 2008 at 10:29 am
Find me on Twitter: If you don’t submit it yourself (or get a friend to do it) then you risk having a newbie submit the story and ruin its chances.

Having said that I don’t recommend submitting loads of your own stories yourself unless you are a power user and submit loads of others too.

As with everything on Digg you have to tread a fine line.
More comments from Patrick Altoft
sandossu 05 Jun 2008 at 7:36 pm: A few weeks ago I sent a shout to some of my fans and got a similar comment to a story. He wanted to shout back but by mistake he commented.
This is a big mistake and you understand that the other users will think you’ve exchange votes and bury it.
Kimota 06 Jun 2008 at 6:15 am: Although I always try to refrain from submitting my own stuff, there are times when it becomes necessary. I’ve had a couple of key articles fail because the person who submitted wasn’t very clever about the category they selected or the introduction and title they used.

I have one case where the article was submitted with a description and title that demonstrated the Digger hadn’t even read the piece. He thought he was doing me a favour but as the article was designed to get plenty of exposure,. it virtually killed it.

Now I don’t take risks. If I have a post that I think has potential, I get one of my trusted friends to do the submission.
Paul 07 Jun 2008 at 9:06 pm: I’m taking an eCommunications course and we’re currently discussing democracy and the web. Digg has, of course, come up in the conversation. This post and the comments are another interesting addition to the discussion. Thank you guys/girls.
Mark 09 Jun 2008 at 3:34 pm: We finally got to number 1 after many tries. It took our server down for 12 hours, and then none of the people who did get through ever came back. Digg is overrated.