How to Write the Right Title for Digg

Yes it's true, content is king. If your content is great, if your service is unparalleled and your product truly novel, nothing will stand in its way, right? Well not entirely. If you are to truly take advantage of all socially driven sites have to offer, you need to focus on presentation. How you present yourself can take you long way, and here's how to do it right.

We've mentioned it before,

Instead, to increase your chances of getting on Digg's homepage, try coming up with something unique and funny but don't forget to make sure it's still related to the article.

So how do you create the perfect title?

According to analysis done by Bob, here's a list of 25 noteworthy words most often used in stories that get promoted to the Digg homepage:

While we can ignore words like "Wii", "Google", "Apple", Linux", "Microsoft", "Mac", "PS3", "iTunes", "Windows", "Nintendo", "Digg", "iPod", the rest of the words give us an interesting insight into how to present yourself and into what exactly this particular community is looking for.

The words "new", "first", and "top" tell us that you have to be the first one to do something and do it well.
The word "launch" tells us that your chances of getting the attention you are looking for are higher on launch day. People like trying out new things, and being the first ones to give it a spin. Just keep in mind that if you're expecting to get Dugg on the launch day, make sure you can handle it.
The word "how" shows that the community likes to be told how to do something and do it well. If you are in the market of instructional writing, this one is for you.
The word "web" is quite obviously a sign that a web-based or web-related service is more tuned to the interests of the crowd.
The words "pictures" and "video" tell us that it is often better to use these mediums to present information in a quicker and more appealing way than just paragraphs upon paragraphs of text.
And lastly, the word "free" is self-explanatory. Just keep in mind that free is a tactic, not a business model.

So the next time you're launching a service, or a stroke of literary genius strikes you, don't forget to keep the above-mentioned words in mind (as long as they are applicable).

Enjoy the post? Here are some more that may interest you.

nXplorer SEO & Marketing Blog, March 27, 2007: “Wie man ?�?�berschriften f?ɬ�r die Digg Startseite schreibt” — Bob hat die Titel s?ɬ�mtlicher Digg Stories die es zwischen dem 06.03.2006 und dem 06.03.2007 auf die Digg Startseite geschafft haben analysiert. Heraus kam eine Liste mit den 25 h?ɬ�ufigsten W?ɬ?rtern Diese wurde von Muhammad Saleem genauer untersucht. ...

Zach Katkin, March 26, 2007

Great list there. A lot of conclusions can be drawn. It would be interesting if bob's list was extended. This list supports that common assumption that Digg's users are "mostly [younger] tech-philes."

Stan Schroeder, March 26, 2007

So...New web-based free video how-to launched!!! You just can't miss with that one. (;

Cameron Olthuis, March 26, 2007

btw - that info is not completely accurate. I am doing some research myself on brands mentioned on digg and those numbers are pretty inaccurate from what I found.

David Wilson, March 26, 2007

Hi Cameron

What did your research on brands show as the most common types of titles?

David

Cameron Olthuis, March 26, 2007

David - I should be posting on it today, watch for that.

Ronald, March 26, 2007

How do you guys stop Digg Bowling from occurring? http://www.syndk8.net/forum/index.php/topic,10582.0.html

Muhammad Saleem, March 26, 2007

The figures aren't inaccurate, the person who collected this data just used a different method since the focus of his research was different. While Cameron is looking at how many times a word is mentioned in the 'title', 'summary', as well as the 'url', the above-mentioned sats are only for the 'titles', since in this post, just like in the post referenced here, we are interested in titles of Digg stories.

aaron, March 26, 2007

I'm once again commenting late in the conversation, but you should consider a similar post with the Reddit community in mind. It's even more interesting considering it's title-only. I had a post hit Reddit that drove a bunch of traffic this weekend. The title was "Do you work with an asshole?" (I wasn't using it for effect, it was a short post about some marketing for The No Asshole Rule.) Makes me wonder about the Beavis / Butthead effect of each. (Haha. You said "ass.")

Chip, March 27, 2007

I don't think this is very new and useful data. Everybody knows that people like freebies, pictures and videos. But if your blog contains only freebies,pictures and videos is it a good blog or just another stupid blog made only for digg?

If most people are interested only in stupid things should you blog only about what they like?

fatalus, June 20, 2007

My writers use just half of this "rules", i think there are more features during writing... it`ll be very good if someone post tha article about frequency percent of the keywords for digg (by using search engine agreements).