A couple of weeks ago, I gave a quick rundown of StumbleUpon, one of the main social bookmarking sites out there and a tool I use to promote both my blog and Spoonfed while I’m at work. I generally have prefered StumbleUpon because you’re almost always guaranteed traffic to your site, in some form, regardless of how popular your page is. More popular pages get more traffic, sure, but even if not one other person gives you a thumbs up, you’ll still see more visitors.
On the other hand, Digg.com, another incredibly popular social bookmarking site which allows users to share their favourite bookmarks and vote on the best ones by “digging” their favourites is very different. The most popular stories, the ones that get so many votes that they appear on the front page of digg.com get, I was told, a huge boom of traffic but stories that get a few dozen or fewer votes generally don’t get any traffic at all. Therefore, I knew it was important to continue to submit Spoonfed and The Top Floor Flat stories to digg, but I didn’t really anticipate much of a return.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered first hand what a front page digg.com story can do when my post about Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland movie not only got over 1000 votes on Digg as a popular story, but appeared on the digg.com homepage! Two hours and 20,000 visitors to my blog later, I still saw no sign of an ebb in the traffic flow – huge boom of traffic indeed!
I couldn’t believe it… I had more visitors to The Top Floor Flat than I’ve ever gotten in the history of all website I’ve ever run. Then the server broke (sorry if you tried to access the blog and it wasn’t working yesterday!).
Today, the traffic has slowed but is still incredibly high. The article has been reposted on a number of blogs, the link was picked up by several movie sites, and although I was just blabbering about how much I enjoy Alice in Wonderland, I seem to have struck a chord with internet readers.
I may have to review my view on digg.com. It clearly is a different sort of marketing tool – and I don’t anticipate many of the people who read my Alice post coming back to the blog. But it’s exciting to feel so popular online, even if just for a few days.
Now I just need to upgrade my servers and get a Spoonefed.co.uk story to the front page of digg.
Meaghan Fitzgerald is a marketer and entrepreneur building and growing consumer and gaming products and experiences. A Silicon Valley native, she started her first company, DormWise, in 2006 which she later sold in 2009. Meaghan spent 7 years in London in early stage consumer startups, two years at Xbox as a product marketer for Minecraft, and is currently the head of product marketing for VR experiences at Facebook and Oculus. Meaghan writes here about business, technology, gaming, and marketing. She has been named a top
Great stats!
Seriously though, I’d be interested in seeing that graph next week(or month). In past experience with StumbleUpon and Digg you generally get a huge spike in the traffic before they drop back down to normal.
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for further directions.
Really cool statistics we’ve seen similar effects in StumbleUpon but never anything quite so dramatic. I guess we’ve got a way to go yet.
I suppose the acid test is the bounce rate, did your visitors go on to look at other entries on your blog?
that is awesome! I haven’t had an article go viral on Digg yet, but I’ve heard the same stories as you. Now here’s another proof. Congratulations!
Wow Kiddo, you are your own walking talking …writing web marketing experiment!!
This placement issue is quite interesting, but I think this also speaks to the power of content.
great post, and I know several people with the similar experience and all unfortunately had their servers crash on them. But, sure sounds like the best way to go.