How would you differentiate the users of Stumbleupon and Digg? I ask this because
SU has been my top referral site in terms of traffic, although I don’t send any of my posts there. I sometimes send my
posts to Digg, and I know it is a sin. However, I also submit other
bloggers’ posts.
Can I conclude that Digg users prefer news posts, which is not my
blog topic? Or basically, Digg users hate me because I submit my posts?
First of all, regarding the difference between Digg and StumbleUpon
users, I would say that Digg users are relatively younger and more
tech-savvy. The technology niche is undoubtedly the main one on Digg,
and while there are many StumbleUpon users that are also tech fans, the
overall population of its users is more heterogeneous (i.e. there are
also many users that like videos, funny pictures, how-to guides and so
on).
Keep in mind that this is what I have observed by using those services, and other people might disagree.
One essential difference between the two services, though, is how
they work. Digg has an upcoming section on their website, where users
are able to vote the stories up or down. The traffic that you would get
from getting listed on the upcoming section alone, however, is not very
big, because there are thousands of others being submitted every day.
Should your story receive enough votes to break to the front page
(those days this happens at 150 diggs or so, but varies a lot), you
would see a huge traffic spike, because virtually all Digg users keep an
eye on the stories that go to the front page. It is not uncommon to
receive over 100,000 visits in a single day from a Digg front page, in
fact.
As you can see, Digg works under a “make or break” situation. Your
content either gets enough traction to go popular and hit the front
page, sending you a horde of traffic, or it doesn’t, in which case it
will join the thousands of other stories that never get enough exposure
or traffic.
StumbleUpon, on the other hand, works with a browser toolbar where
its users vote the web pages that they see up or down. The higher the
number of up votes, the more people will see the page via the Stumble
toolbar. The difference here is that it is a continual process, and not a
binary one. As a result, you will end up getting some traffic
for most of your pages that end up on the StumbleUpon database, even if
they don’t receive many up votes. Traffic spikes are also possible with
StumbleUpon if a lot of people vote your story up in a short period of
time.
Secondly, the StumbleUpon traffic is gradual and can last for a long
time. If people keep giving your story or web page an up vote, it will
keep showing to Stumble users, sometimes for months after it was first
submitted.
On the second part of your question you asked: Can I conclude that Digg users prefer news posts, which is not my blog topic?
News posts tend to perform better on Digg than on StumbleUpon, but I
would not conclude that merely from the fact that your posts never got
any traffic from Digg. As you can see from my explanation, the cause of
that might be the fact that they never got enough traction (i.e. votes)
to go forward. Should your blog keep growing its audience, one day it
could starting seeing better results with Digg, even if your content
style won’t change.
Then you ask said: Digg users hate me because I submit my posts?
I don’t think that is the case either. Digg users would hardly notice
if you submit your own blog posts once in a while, especially if they
never get close to becoming popular. This is only an issue if you end up
submitting each and every new post your publish, regardless of their
quality, and if you try to further manipulate the system by asking all
your friends to Digg your story even if other Digg users won’t find it
worth.
Showing posts with label Digg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Digg. Show all posts
