Which Country Has The Most Bloggers?

Singapore very well may have the most bloggers in the world. I been curious to discover which country has the most bloggers? I have been blogging for close to two years and have met bloggers from many countries. So, I was curious to discover which country has the most bloggers. The numbers are really shocking. Initially, I thought that United States would be ranked fairly high in these stats, but as it turns out… this is clearly not the case. Singapore produces some interesting results. In 2006, according to Google, the word “blogging” was sought after most by residents who lived in Singapore, more over any other country in the world.

Singapore Is Number One For The Word: Blogging

To really get a feel for the people who live in Singapore, I wanted to find out more about the people who live in Singapore and compare that information to other countries who pull up on this list, even more compare this information to United States, which I must mention doesn’t even pull up in the top six listed above.  

Population In Singapore Details

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, it is reported that in 2006, the following information:

• About 145,000 males and 130,000 females ages 15 to 19 years old and comparable numbers for males and females ages 20 to 24.
• Ages 25 to 29 break the 150,000 mark for both sexes.
• Ages 30 to 34 increase by an additional 100,000 for both sexes. Around 225,000 each.
• Ages 35 to 44 are at or near the 250,000 mark for each gender and then steadily drops back down from there.

Now, its been years since I have been in grammar school but the population numbers are shocking compared to that of the United States in 2006.

The United States has more female babies compared to Singapore’s entire reported 4,492,150 population all together in 2006. Yet, the word “blogging” is more widely searched from residents in Singapore compared to any other country in the world.

For sure, this can not be. But it is true and to help aid my research even further I wanted to find out which country searched for the word, “blogger.com” most in the year of 2006. And once again, Singapore takes the prize.

Singapore Is Number One For The Word: Blogger.com

What is more amazing is not only does Singapore produce the most inquiries in the search engines for the word, “blogger.com”, they totally dominate. They double and triple the proceeding regions ranked 2nd through 6th.

Now honestly, these numbers don’t reflect the total number of bloggers who live in Singapore. These numbers reveal the population numbers in 2006 for Singapore and compare them to the population numbers in 2006 for the United States. Further more, these numbers look the volume of inquires done in Google for the words “blogging” and “blogger.com” in the year of 2006. These numbers don’t tell me that there are actually more bloggers in Singapore compare to any other country in the world. But it sure is a good indicator that residents who live in Singapore have a very strong interest in blogging!

By the way… this may be an article you might want to Digg! Seems like good Digg material, doesn’t it? lol

It’s Google’s Way or The Highway

I have made a major mistake. And I don’t want you to do the same thing. There is a very thin line between making money online and search engine optimization. Unfortunately, with this large crowd of bloggers who are all about making money online these same bloggers are also typically all about search engine optimization. And for what the reasons may be, I don’t know… but the two seem to go hand in hand. More likely its largely because, in order to make money online your site has to be search engine friendly and optimized so that you can score tons of traffic from the search engines in order to make money online.

In the last two days, I have been doing a lot of reading. I want my blog to continue to grow in popularity. I want my blog to continue to rank well. And from discovering what I have learned over the last two days, I am very surprised to see my site ranking at all in the search engines. Honestly, I think the only thing I have going for me is the massive amount of content I produce and publish.

I want my other blogs to continue to make money online for me as well as continue to rank in the search engines. I have been doing well. But, I want more. The amount of money I make now, just isn’t good enough. I don’t want to be rich… but I do want to live better. Again, after discovering what I have learned in the last two days, I am surprised that I am making even a dime.

There is a mile long list of things I have been doing wrong! This article is very important for you to read. And I only hope that: a.) it will help correct the things I have been preaching in the past and, b.) it will teach you how to really open up the flood gates with maintaining a healthy and successful blog. Prepare yourself, because this is going to be a long article! (*sorry!)

It all really sums up to this statement:

It’s Google’s way or the highway….

You can agree or disagree with the things they say. But all in all… if you don’t comply with their Webmaster Guidelines and TOS, you will pay the price. In this article I am going to try my best to keep things short and sweet. I know that the attention span of bloggers (including myself) is limited. People like articles to be short and sweet and to the point… It’s going to be very difficult to do that in this article but I am going to try my best.

Text-Link-Ads, ReviewMe.com, PayPerPost.com… they are BAD!

According to Google Webmaster Guidelines, you are not supposed to participate in programs that attempt to sell links towards gaining or increasing Google PageRank. This is even listed as their “Basic Principals”. Meaning… hello!!! this is a no-brainer!

Don’t participate in link schemes designed to increase your site’s ranking or PageRank. In particular, avoid links to web spammers or “bad neighborhoods” on the web, as your own ranking may be affected adversely by those links.

- Google Webmaster Guidelines.

If you choose to participate in these programs, you will pay the price! It doesn’t matter what your opinion is. It doesn’t matter if you feel it is right or wrong… the bottom line is simple: If you choose to participate in these programs, you will get penalized if not banned from Google. Plain and simple. I am not here to tell you if this is “Right” or “Wrong”, I am just here to tell you how it is. Google do not look highly upon people who use these programs. I speculate that the famous John Chow has been suffering from this issue for weeks. Earlier this month his site took a huge hit in the SERPS. Granted it bounced back up but his ranking have been adjusted again. John Chow blames the second occurrence of this loss in the SERPs because his site wasn’t accessible to the Googlebots when they attempted to crawl it. He blames his site being down because of a WP Plugin he attempted to install causing a MySQL overload, thus crashing his site. His fist occurrence was blamed on a Google Algorithm update. I believe that John Chow has been fighting a long up hill battle to stay alive in the SERPs and has been sweating like a stuffed pig to keep his site from getting completely banned. [See Footnotes #1]

DOFOLLOW, IFOLLOW, NOFOLLOW, BLOGROLL

The rel=nofollow. Man, I am ignorant… or was at least. But there is a difference between being ignorant and stupid. And stupid, I am far from. Ignorant… at times, yes… and about many things. But again, I am far from being stupid. I have been given a brain to learn with, thus I can break free from the levels of ignorance on the rare occasions I actually get my head out of my ass. Which… isn’t too often! 

If you’re a blogger (or a blog reader), you’re painfully familiar with people who try to raise their own websites’ search engine rankings by submitting linked blog comments like “Visit my discount pharmaceuticals site.” This is called comment spam, we don’t like it either, and we’ve been testing a new tag that blocks it.

- Official Google Blog 1/18/2005

The rel=nofollow tag is here for a reason. It is important to understand what it does, what it represents and how it can effect you if you choose NOT to use it. There is a HUGE movement of bloggers who are protesting the rel=nofollow tag. These people are called the DOFOLLOW or IFOLLOW groups. I am sorry to tell you guys this, but these people are doomed. It’s the equivalent of an ant colony standing up against a gallon of gasoline and a lit match. The DOFOLLOW groups will never over power Google. Google will pour enough fuel on their colony to power a Boeing Jet across the country. If you are a DOFOLLOW blogger, I would strongly suggest to stop because you may get burned.

…remove the evil nofollow attribute from your comments.

- SemioLogic.com

The rel=nofollow tag has been in place for at least two years, maybe longer. And it is not evil. It was designed to protect you! I did some digging on the rel=nofollow tag. I wanted to trace it back to its origin and figure out what it is, why it was created and why it is used. What is ignorant about the DOFOLLOW crowds is the fact that with just a little time and effort, the rel=nofollow tag can be investigated. Just as I have done. The conception of the rel=nofollow tag was developed to help protect bloggers from comment spam. The rel=nofollow tag was created to protect you, not harm you… So, we have the DOFOLLOW crowd that feels the NOFOLLOW tag is harmful when in reality of things, it’s the complete opposite. The rel=nofollow tag was developed to protect the individual blogger who suffers from the everyday practice of spammers, specifically the ones who take advantage of the comment systems found on most blogs.

Rel=nofollow was created to shield you and protect your blog and your content from being robbed of its juice. People are so concerned with who they link to, or making sure their links are reciprocated, etc. With the rel=nofollow,  you don’t have to worry about all that. The popular and funny parody to rel=nofollow is to that of having protected sex using a condom. Wearing a condom, you can screw pretty much anything that walks (two or four legs) and is warm blooded and significantly lower your risks of catching a sexually transmitted disease. With the rel=nofollow, the same principle is involved.

Effective as of June 27th, 2007. My site is officially a NOFOLLOW blog. If I lose readers because of this, then they weren’t truly my friends in the first place. I am here to help you become successful blogging and being a DOFOLLOW blog is not the route to take. Sorry.

• I will no longer participate in linking contests for the purpose of increasing PageRank.
• I will no longer engage into activities that promote or associate with linking contests for the purpose on increasing PageRank.

These activities include, Technorati Faves Exchanges and programs on a similar caliper. These linking contests as they may seem to be for increasing awareness of your blog, they can also be perceived by Google as a means of trying to increase your PageRank. Secondly, participating in these programs causes harm to your PageRank. The more external links you have on each page require a huge amount of internal links to balance them out.

The blogroll is one of the most common ways to drain your site of it’s PageRank. The blogroll I have, without using the rel=nofollow tag will drain my link juice quicker than an H2 Hummer can drink gasoline. My choices are to a.)Remove my blogroll or, b.) assign the rel=nofollow tag to the links in my blogroll. And I have chosen to keep my blogroll because I want to share with my readers all the other blogs that I read and visit. The purpose of my blogroll has been adjusted. I will admit that my blogroll was being used as a tool to try to leverage PageRank. The old saying, “Ignorance is bliss” is not really valid in the world of Google. They don’t care if you are ignorant, stupid or simply rebellious… if you don’t comply with their rules and if you don’t understand how their search engine works, then you will pay the price. [See Footnotes #2]

Duplicate Content That is of Your Own and Other’s

Duplicate content is a no… no… and it is in many ways almost equally as bad to duplicate your own content as it is from duplicating other’s content. It is obvious that stealing other people’s content is wrong… so I am not going to go into a lot of detail there. Only thing I will say about this is: Don’t Do It!

Don’t create multiple pages, subdomains, or domains with substantially duplicate content.

- Google Webmaster Tools

Now, aside from that, there is a major issue with bloggers duplicating their own content. The problems are as follows:

1. Bloggers aren’t aware they are doing it.
2. Bloggers are aware but don’t see it as a problem.
3. Bloggers are aware and see it as a problem but don’t know how to correct it.

Duplicate content generally refers to substantive blocks of content within or across domains that either completely match other content or are appreciably similar. Mostly, this is not deceptive in origin.

- Google Webmasters Help Center

 

Bloggers duplicate their own content by allowing it to be published in multiple areas within their blog. Most blogs (commonly Wordpress) have many sections where you can find the same post. The post itself is located on its own page (the post page), however, that same post commonly can be found in the category page, archives, page, home page, tag page, yearly archives, monthly archives, weekly archives, daily archives, etc… by the time it is all said and done… that ONE post is published in 10 or more places.

On June 10th, 2007 when I did my website make over, I came into the design being aware of this. I will include a reference in my footnotes about it. It is important that you don’t duplicate your own content. Once again, Google Webmaster Guidelines has specific documentation regarding this. In addition to their reference, one thing that Google doesn’t speak of but makes perfect sense is their Googlebot. Again, this piece I have known for awhile, my site’s redesign reflects this as does my other site that I just redesigned yesterday. See footnotes on that too.

Google says, let the Googlebot freely crawl your site and they will take care of properly indexing it for you. But the truth of the matter is this: The Googlebot is like a typical domesticated dog. The Googlebot is smart because it can do things, (like sit, rollover and play dead)… but it is stupid, just like a dog, because you can’t teach it certain levels of logical thinking. Meaning, you can teach a dog to fetch a stick, just as you can tell the Googlebot to fetch a site, but you can’t tell a dog to make a decision on fetching a certain stick if all the sticks look the same… and the same goes for the Googlebots… “You can’t expect the Googlebots to fetch your content in the right place” and 9 out of 10 times your content is indexed in Google incorrectly. Ideally, you want your post page indexed in Google. But commonly what happens is the archive sections, category sections and tag sections get indexed instead and your actual POST PAGE gets put into the Supplemental Index. All in all, it is up to you to teach the Googlebots (and all the other bots out there) where your content is located and how you want your content indexed. The use of Robots.txt files are great towards combating the ADHD Syndrome of Googlebots. Also the use of Sitemap.xml is needed as well. [See Footnotes #3]

Summary:

I follow and respect rules. Especially the rules that paint a picture and draw a map clear as day on how to rank well in Google. I may or may not lose readers from publishing this article. I may or may not make some people mad. I can’t say that I don’t care… because I do. This article is a document that illustrates what I am about and what I believe in. This is my road map (or part of one to say the least) to success with ranking well in Google. You can either follow it, or don’t. As far as me… you can love me or hate me and as far as my site, you can either like it or leave it. I am not the type of person who covers up mistakes… I learn from them.

This is a NOFOLLOW blog. This blog complies with Google’s TOS and Webmaster Guidelines. I will no longer participate in ReviewMe.com, Text-Link-Ads, and the others. I will not participate in any programs designed for tweaking, leveraging, manipulating, or changing PageRank. I do not duplicate content, steal content from others…. my content and everything I publish is creative and most importantly, unique. Part of the purpose of this article is to illustrate where I stand in the blogosphere and to try to help the thousands of other bloggers who want what I want. My intentions are NOT to burn any bridges or hurt any feelings. My intentions are to HELP everyone by publishing information that will hopefully be taken into consideration so that we all can continue to push forward in our ventures of gaining success and popularity in the Google search engine.

 

 

Footnotes:

1. Text-Link-Ads. A Scam? | Text Links and PageRank, Matt Cutts | Google Webmaster Guidelines | Google SERP for Make Money Online | Live By The Google, Die By The Google, John Chow | Google Updating Algorithm, John Chow 
2. Preventing Comment Spam, Official Google Blog | Stop The Spread of Viral Skank, Link Condom | How a Blogroll can Kill Your PageRank, Andy Beard | How To Add the rel=nofollow To Your Wordpress Blogroll, Avinash
3. Google Webmaster Guidelines | Duplicate Content, Google Webmaster Help Center | Adding A Sitemap To Your Blog, Garry Conn | Make Wordpress Search Engine Friendly, Wolf-Howl SEO Blog | Search Engines Unite on Sitemaps Article Discovery, Search Engine Land *Thanks to CyberCoder For The Reference | The Google Sitemap Generator For Wordpress | Blog The Internet, redesigned for SEO

Big Blog Brother 2007 - The Summer Blogosphere Contest of 2007

I am a pretty huge Big Brother fan. I have been watching the CBS televised reality show since 2004 and I have been addicted ever since. CBS will be airing their 8th season of Big Brother starting July 5th. And to give us bloggers something to do while the show airs, I have created the Big Blog Brother 2007 Contest. Now, even though this content is running around the same time as the CBS reality TV show, Big Brother, please make no assumptions, because this contest is totally difference and unrelated. Again, this is of course Big Blog Brother! It is a virtual contest to see who will be crowned as the Blogosphere’s official Big Brother!

What Is The Big Blog Brother 2007 Contest?

The Big Blog Brother 2007 is a contest where bloggers all over the world can participate in a huge global contest to achieve the ultimate status of being the Big Blog Brother of 2007! Participants in the contest will need to be prepared to fulfill challenges to stay in the game. Challenges will consist of small writing projects, the most comments competitions, the most Digg competitions, etc… If you are a blogger, if you are competitive, if you want popularity, if you want traffic, if you want money, if you want to be #1, then you will want to play Big Blog Brother 2007. But be prepared to bring your A game! Because in order to be crowned as the Blogosphere’s Big Blog Brother of 2007, you are going to have to work hard. The competition is going to be fierce and the challenges are going to be tough! If you are a blogger who is looking to join in a friendly and competitive game… Join In on the Big Blog Brother 2007 Competition today!

How Do I Join? What is Required?

Below is information on how to join and what is required to play.

• To Join, drop a comment below.
• Please write a brief post about the contest on your blog.
• When you comment below, include the URL to your post.
• If your comment doesn’t post instantly don’t worry…it got held for moderation.
• You need to have a YouTube account and a digital camera that can record video. You will need to have high speed Internet access in order to upload video.
• You need to have a Digg account.
• You need to have a Technorati account
• You need to have a MyBlogLog Account
• You need to have a blog site. (dot Com, Wordpress.com, Blogger.com, etc… it doesn’t matter as long as you have a blog that you call home)
• You need to have about 2 hours per week to play. The great thing about this game is the fact that I know bloggers have lives outside from blogging. So not much time is required per week to participate. Minimum Approx. 2 hours per week.

What’s The Prize? When Does The Contest End?

The grand prize is $250 dollars. The contest ends and the winner will be announced on Sept. 23rd 2007. Participating in the game is a prize in itself. You can expect to get a lot of traffic to your blog and gain a huge number of new readers. Does this sound like fun!!!

Stage One: SIGN UP!!!!

If you want to play, drop me a comment below. There is no cost to play. The game is totally free.

The only REQUIREMENT to signing up is if you would kindly write a brief post on your blog about the contest and provide a direct link to this post. By writing a brief post about the contest you can help gain interest and allow more people to sign up. When leave your comment here on this post, stating that you have signed up, please also include the URL to where you made your brief post about the contest.

I will post an update on July 1st 2007. In fact, you can pretty much mark your calendars. Every Sunday all the way to Sept. 23rd 2007 will be the official post day on this contest. Sundays are the day to really make an effort towards visiting the site and looking for the latest updates on the contest.

I am hoping to have the needed people signed up by July 7th 2007. With your help we may get enough signed up by July 1st! (One week from today!)

Good luck to everyone. I will be the host of the contest. I am not eligible to play. I am just the guy that will be handing over $250 dollars to you when you win The Big Blog Brother 2007 Contest! Have fun and enjoy winning the money!

With Your Help One Of Us May Become A Millionaire

One of my regular readers, Thor Schrock, is participating in a contest called The Next Internet Millionaire. I met Thor a few months ago and we have plans on rolling out a very creative and lucrative business when he gets done winning the Next Internet Millionaire competition. In the mean time, Thor needs votes! He has moved up to the semi-finals! I am so happy to see such a wonderful and caring person climb so far in a competition like this. Thor and I spoke on the phone for many hours about participating in the content. My last words to Thor was that he should participate because I felt that he would do very well with the competition and I felt that he carried the natural leadership abilities, experience and intelligence to drive full force into this contest and win!

Thor called me a few nights ago, and as he says, I am near impossible to get in touch with… Very sorry about that Thor! He left me a message on my voice mail and explained to me that he is doing very well with the competition and he wanted to know if I could help by voting for him.

I have voted for him because I believe in him and feel that he is the right person for this competition. I would love very much so if all my readers would do the same. Thor is a person just like you and I… and with all our help by voting for him we can aid him in his continued success in the competition.

VOTE!!! POST!!! and ADVERTISE FOR FREE!!!

I have updated the free advertisement service. If you would like to get your name added to the top of over 500 pages on my site, please do the follow for Thor and myself:

• Please take one minute to watch his video and give him a vote of a 10! He deserves it.
• Write a brief post on your blog about this article. Provide a direct link to this post.
• Drop me a comment and let me know that you voted for Thor and wrote the post on your blog.
• Everyone that votes a 10 for Thor and writes a brief post about this article is going to get their name and direct link to their blog added to the very VERY top of every page within my entire site.
• This means more traffic to your blog!

If you like me as a person, then you will like Thor. We both have so much in common, you would think that we were twins!

WATCH THE VIDEO AND VOTE FOR THOR CLICK HERE!

How to Get Popular on Digg: Comment Case-Study

Article by Guest Blogger: Matt Jones

Matt Jones is a very creative individual who investigates hundreds of affiliate programs to see if they are real or scams and then publishes his findings on his blog titled, Affiliate Programs and Internet Scams. Matt Jones is a class act and a very creative thinker with innovative ideas. If you are interested in making guest appearances on my site, I would love to have you! Contact Me if you would like to write on Garry Conn dot Com. It’s a great way to increase traffic to your blog, increase your readership and increase backlinks to your blog! Please be sure to visit Matt’s site and give him a warm welcome and a ton of comments as I am sure he worked hard on this post.

The power of social media to make a blog successful is still very strong. Digg comments can be used to drive consistent small amounts of traffic as well as building popularity on Digg, which ultimately results in becoming a “Digg power user”, where the posts you submit consistently make it to the front page. Over the last 3 weeks I have been commenting on Digg and building up my profile there.

The result? Before 3 weeks ago, I only ever used Digg to submit the best of my own posts, as well as vote for a few other sites. On average each post I submitted (each post was the best of the crop) would get a paltry 2/3 Diggs. After about 1 week of adding users as ‘friends’, voting on more stories and commenting several times a day that average figure rose up to about 5 Diggs. Now, after a total of 3 weeks things are still progressing. Every post I submit (including posts that are not ‘flagship’) rarely receives less than 10 Diggs. I’m predicting that in another month or so consistently achieving page 1 will be a very real possibility. Naturally the title and summary of the post as well as it’s quality do have a large part to play in the number of Diggs, but ultimately digg is one massive popularity contest.

What you say Matters The ‘digg crowd’ is renowned for being a combination of Geeky, overly critical and bias in favor of users they are familiar with as well as stories that contain the names of certain companies E.G. Google, Apple and Microsoft. In case you weren’t aware, Digg comments are voted upon by users just like the main stories. The popular comments with more Diggs are ranked higher than the lower comments and so more diggers will click though to your profile and vote for your ‘number 1 story’ if you make a good comment. Being massively voted down can also have it’s plusses because often people comment on grossly inaccurate or unfunny comments causing them to actually rank quite highly, bringing the original commenter a lot of attention. I have rummaged around my digg commentated section and picked out the comments I have made that hopefully something can be learnt from. The “Title” is the title of the digg story. I made all the comments myself but remember I was adapting to the digg crowd, where more attention grabbing statements are required, so don’t be surprised if some of them seem out of character/contain slang (more on whether this is a good strategy later). The sarcasm of some of the comments may bring a tear to your eye, but when on digg… do as the diggers do. I have categorized the comments into the different ‘types’ of comment and numbered the titles and comments to make them easier to match up. The list is rather long so batten down the hatches and prepare for a digg comment bonanza.

Slap up the Wikipeida page

This is a way of avoiding showing any lack of knowledge and is also useful to the readers E.G: Title 1:How to: Get Google and AJAX to Play Nice Comment 1: “From the unofficial Google Wiki, it has some helpful info” +3Diggs

Use other comments to pretend to be knowledgeable

I consider myself not at all in on the MP3 Player rivalries but by reading the other comments it is possible to tell what most people will like to hear. Also this year I have hardly played any video games, but I still know the basic terminology (FPS = first person shooter). Using a little old knowledge mixed with the vibes that can be picked up from other comments is a potent cocktail. Examples: Title 2: Zune Marketplace to get MTV, VH1, and CMT content? Comment 2: “It’s a step in the right direction for Zune , but I doubt it will make a significant difference to the iPod/Zune wars” +18Diggs Title 3: Viva Piñata - why no one bought the best game of 2006 Comment 3: “A welcome break from FPS but best? Hmmm” +10 Diggs

Actually have knowledge

Using actual knowledge definitely secures you the moral high-ground! Examples: Title 4: 8 Practical Tips to Cure Your Internet ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) Comment 4: “Forgive me… but aren’t you talking about Internet Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) not ADD?” +3 Diggs Title 5: Mummified Tyrolean iceman was taken down by arrow Comment 5: “This is such OLD news I can’t believe it made it to page 1. I study archaeology and we knew this years ago. Ba!” -19 Diggs This is an example of when being massively Dugg down is beneficial. It resulted in 14 replies, which creates lots of publicity. My theory for the negative votes here is that diggers don’t like hearing something is old news unless they knew it was old news themselves (perhaps it makes them feel ignorant).

Summon up Geeky Humor

This has the effect of giving the Digger a warm sense of inclusion, which they probably don’t get very often. Examples: Title 6: Wait in the self-check line? That’s so last month: scan each item as it’s taken it off the shelf and bagged as you shop Comment 6: “If its not called an iScanner I’m not interested” +4 Diggs Title 7: Google takes over university email services Comment 7: “First time I read it I thought it said “Google takes over Universe”, for some reason I wasn’t surprised!” +58 diggs Title 8: Halo 3 Box Art Finally Surfaces! Comment 8: “Is it possible for Box art to be in ‘BETA’?…. “+19 diggs Title 9: Shuttle launch as seen from WB-57 High Altitude Research Aircraft [PIC] Comment 9: “Is it weird that the fist thing I thought of when I saw that was the HALO 1 escape pods?” +6 diggs Title 10: Inspiration: Gamer Competes In Tournament Without Using His Hands Comment 10: “The power of video game addiction can make people do amazing things” +8 diggs

Non-Geeky Humor can work too

Wile humor that uses the latest terminology works best, Diggers are still in touch with normal humor. Examples: Title 11: Robot Reptile “Released” Into Wild to Aid Breeding Research Comment 11: “It’s really just an excuse to build a Robot reptile, I mean who wouldn’t want to?” +19 diggs Title 12: Czech pranksters sneak mushroom cloud into weather report Comment 12: “Those Czecks sure know how to pull a prank… “+10 diggs

Display a strong knowledgeable opinion

It’s very hard to vote down a comment that contains knowledge and portraying a strong opinion encourages replies. Examples: Title 13: Lifehacker and Gizmodo have taken steps to make it harder for its posts to appear on Digg Comment 13: “So the big boys who already got to the top partially by using the power of Digg have decided to not take the low road anymore, how high and mighty of them.” +5 diggs Title 14: Fruit could make ‘powerful fuel’ Comment 14: “It’s not gona happen, it would require WAY to much land to grow all that “+4Diggs Title 15: List of oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world Comment 15: “Living in an old city is an interest not something to brag about. Most of the places where more advanced civilizations emerged first (middle east) have risen and fallen, America is still on the rising, what else is there to say?” +3 diggs

Respect the dead

I shouldn’t have to tell anyone this but even Diggers thought I was harsh here: Title 16:Former Yankees 3B Clete Boyer dead at 70 Comment 16: “Are we meant to be surprised that people die at 70?” -11 diggs

Sarcasm isn’t funny every time

Sarcasm is very powerful on Digg but as with everything it should be used in moderation. Example: Title 17: Users strike back against corporate customer service Comment 17: “Great… so 5 consumers decide go to court, like that never happened before” -6Diggs

Key Points

• Do what ever it takes so it appears that you have broad knowledge
• Humor works very well, but everyone will be trying to use it so you have to be on the ball
• Know where to draw the line
• Don’t insult other diggers, you could be making a very powerful enemy
• Don’t bother commenting on a story that already has large numbers of comments, it’s time has passed
• Try to write at least 5 comments each day, as well as adding digg users as friends and voting on other stories

Being out of Character I’m sure I will be criticized for taking the ‘bad-guys side’ over the debatable issue of sticking to who you naturally are and pretending to be someone else in order to manipulate social media. I believe with blogging it is very important to be transparent (as I have been in this post) because your readers know you surprisingly well. However, Digg is the strongest exception to that general philosophy.This is because it is in no way a democracy, the best stories do not always get voted up. The fact that so many of the Page 1 stories are submitted by a small group of about 100 Diggers who have been part of the community the longest is testament to this. I am simply arguing that there is nothing wrong with giving your self an identity that is rewarding to you.

Conclusion I hope this rather long post has shown that it is well worth the effort to spend a few minutes each day adding members as ‘friends’, voting on a few stories and commentating. The long term benefit of having submissions regularly make it to page 1 is immense, and over the last 3 weeks Digg has sent me a couple of hundred unique visitors, many of whom came from my profile page which they found via my comments.