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Blame the World Cup. Better yet, blame the Subservient Chicken. They made it look easy. If Nike and Burger King hadn’t been so successful in their online campaigns, then maybe we wouldn’t have car dealerships and credit unions demanding viral sorcery from their respective agencies.
With online ad spend increasing steadily, viral marketing has become hip. New clients list it in their agency budget and yet are usually hopelessly unaware of what they’re asking for. Worse yet, they haven’t taken the time to consider if viral is really the right strategy for their businesses.
The confusion is understandable. A lot of the so-called Web 2.0 practices get lumped into the same social media bucket without any further examination. Besides viral video and interactive websites, other options include social networking, social bookmarking, and social news. For the laymen, think MySpace, del.icio.us, and Digg.
Viral is complex, yet alluring. Clients are drawn to it and don’t know why. For the sake of frazzled creative directors everywhere, I’ve attempted to demystify a small chunk of the social media scene. Since I can’t borrow Burger King’s chicken man, I set my sights on social news.
Digg.com, perhaps the most popular social news site, cedes the control of information to community vote, effectively creating a daily zeitgeist of the users’ interest. For businesses, the site provides both a wealth of psychographic audience information and valuable marketing opportunities. But what defines success on Digg? Can marketers and users amiably coexist in a popular vote system?
Can You Digg It?
Founded in 2004 by Kevin Rose, Digg.com offers people the chance to be their own gatekeepers. Users cast a positive (“digg”) or negative (“bury”) vote for any article or URL listed on the site. The webpages are all user-submitted, and the ones with the most votes are displayed on the front page of Digg.com – the benefits of which are a spike in traffic to the “dugg” website and increased visibility overall.
A successfully “dugg” article means increased links from outside sources, higher page rank, and usually a bump to the top of search results. Aside from simply creating buzz, the “Digg Effect” is search engine gold.
Through a brief (and thoroughly blogged) ethnographic study of Digg.com, I questioned the purity of such user-selected information. In conjunction with Rowan University and the International Association of Online Communicators, I spent a month delving deep into Digg’s online community to examine the diggers and pitch makers.
I Can Digg It
I used the Online Communicator’s IAOCblog.com as the home base for my findings, tracking top Digg users and analyzing the life span of successful articles. In the small sample I observed, dramatic headlines called to Digg’s core audience: tech savvy males in their late teens to early thirties. Each article’s votes averaged around 1400 diggs. Plus, Digg fame pushed these articles up the Google ranks, which correlated with the articles’ “freshness.”
Surprisingly, the average active lifespan for an article in the Digg system was about one week. Digg users have sort of a one-and-done mentality. Essentially, Digg users will check out the article you post but not your website. While Digg users may drive traffic to your website in the short-term – as well as through better search rankings in the long-term – they themselves are not viable long-term traffic.
Dugg
Articles about Digg are, as narcissistic as it may seem, some of the most popular on the social site, and with each blog post I was making a run at the coveted Digg Effect. All of my blog entries served dual purposes: one, to report my findings; and two, to cull Digg’s attention. To ease the suspense, yes, I did it.
I discovered a small contingent of libertarian supporters of Ron Paul in the Digg community, which was odd since the website traditionally swings left. Paul’s supporters were all networked together, voting up not only their own articles but also anything with Paul’s name in the headline! Not letting them get away with that, I baited the libertarians by calling them out on their attempt to subvert the system.
Within a day, I had the second most popular article on Digg and a lot of angry Ron Paul supporters. To date, the article has received 1909 diggs and boosted IAOCblog.com to top of the Google rankings for the term “Digg Dirt.” Traffic on the blog spiked dramatically, driving over 30,000 page views on July 4th, the date of the post, and over 13,000 page views the following day.
Filling in the Holes
With all the attention that viral marketing receives, it’s comforting to see that the traditional rules remain unchanged. A look at Digg.com shows us that the most popular articles are targeted to the site’s core audience. They’re written with compelling headlines, and they’re well researched. In fact, many websites that consistently appear on the front page of Digg have fostered a relationship with the audience. Sites like TechCrunch and Gizmodo have shown themselves to be trustworthy and content-rich, so Digg users keep voting for them.
By showing the depth of planning that goes into social campaigns, I hope to convey that viral marketing is not some magic bean designed to make your profits grow. The same tireless research and strategy that applies in traditional marketing still need to be done online. The reason the Subservient Chicken succeeded is not because it was great viral content, but because it was a great idea – one with a chuck wagon of strategic planning behind it. So don’t think of Digg and other viral outlets as quick path to success or an online gimmick. Instead, recognize them for the audiences they truly are, and learn how to reach them on their terms.
For more in-depth coverage of the Digg Dirt study, visit www.IAOCblog.com.