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If you are promoting a blog post, should one focus on digg or reddit ranking? Which is preferable and why?

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4 Answers

up vote 5 down vote accepted

Reddit is better than Digg.

Digg has one front page, and only "power users" ever get anything on the front page. If it doesn't make the front page, you will get very few hits. Reddit lets users decide which topics they are interested in. Each topic has it's own front page. Each front page has it's own threshold of upvotes on an article to get it to that front page. Also, the users on reddit tend to look at more not-yet-front-page posts, and tend to be more likely to upvote you.

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up vote 4 down vote

I've had my LeanStartups.com blog for two and half years (at least) and TheOperationsGuy.com for about six months. Initially I experimented with Digg for the LeanStartups.com blog, but found that Twitter and Facebook were bringing a lot more quality traffic.

I also found that well thought out responses to articles on Harvard Business Review brought in very solid 25% of my traffic (not bad for 1-2hour per week investment).

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Thanks for your answer Apollo. There's some really useful info here. I would like to know what strategies you have been using on FB and Twitter to generate traffic? Page? Advertising? Posting links to blog? Would you be willing to elaborate? – Susan Jones Jun 28 '10 at 2:25
Organic growth traffic beats any traffic you may have brought in through ads etc. I played with Adwords & Facebooks ads (heck, with hundreds of $ in free credits I had, why not) and found them not as effective as good old strategy of contributing on other sites and driving traffic of people who are truly interested in my articles. Re. Twitter. I focus on writing "good stuff" and if it is really good, people retweet it, share it on FB and other places. – Apollo Sinkevicius Jun 28 '10 at 17:19
How do people find out about your responses to HBR articles? How do you initially disseminate them? – Joseph Turian Jun 29 '10 at 6:13
I just respond to them on HBR.org and either people click on my name or on a link or two I include from my own blog or some other source. I include those links only if appropriate. Conservative approach is the best. There are plenty of a-holes who will graffiti their comment with endless links. Don't be one of those people. – Apollo Sinkevicius Jun 30 '10 at 3:55
up vote 2 down vote

Agreed that generally Twitter > Reddit > Digg, but it depends on the blog content.

Often news and entertainment posts do better on Digg than, say, posts about business, marketing, or technology.

Still it's hard to imagine Twitter not being a useful platform for sharing links.

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Please weigh in on Twitter: answers.onstartups.com/questions/12425/… – Joseph Turian Jun 29 '10 at 6:18
up vote 0 down vote

Reddit vs Digg, it depends what visitors do you expect. For me Reddit gives me more traffic. Also check the "no follow" policy for links in Digg.

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