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We all know the power of social media and the huge number of visitors it can bring to your site. But getting on the front page of a social media site like Digg is kinda (really) hard if not impossible. But what if I told you that there is a method to get your site of the front page of Digg without any headaches??! And what if I told you it’s really easy to do that???

As you may know 80% of social media readers DON’T read the post. They just read the title, the description and the COMMENTS. If they like the title and the description they will vote your post (most of the times without even reading the entire post). But how to use this to your advantage? EASY. Using social media comments will give you an unfair advantage over your competitors. You will get huge amounts of traffic because your site will be on the front page every time (well, sort of). But how is this done, I hear you ask.

First you find a Upcoming post that is going to be Popular (you can do that by sorting by most votes) and has a few comments (under 20). The post must be somehow related to what you are going to promote or else people will just ignore it (if it’s not related at all to the commented post, it will get buried, which, if it gets a large number of minus votes, it will also attract attention). So now the thing to do is PLACE A LINK TO YOUR SITE in your comment. The results are just amazing. If your comment is in the first 10, if the popular post gets 1000 views, your site (with the link in the comment) will get at least 700 views. Of course this can get you banned from sites like Digg if you do it to often and if your comment are really offtopic. But don’t worry, you can always create another account.

So with this in mind, you should think before you submit a post to Digg and it gets 7 diggs. Maybe you should just comment.

Popularity: 69% [?]

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They’re not angry, I was just kidding. But they are going for your server. Let’s say you have a site. 300-500 visitors per day. Someone submits one of your posts to let’s say Digg. And in 14 hours that post gets on the front page of Digg. That’s great news. That’s what you wanted. Tons of traffic to your site. This is what you wanted. But let’s think about it for a little. 500 visitors per day means about 21 visitors per hour which means 0,3 visitors per minute. That’s not going to kill your server, even if you are using free hosting. Now let’s imagine the Digg front page situation: 10,000 visitors in 24 hours means 416 visitors per hour which means 7 visitors per minute. But you won’t get 7 visitors each minute for 24 hours. The first 40-60 minutes are going to be crucial. Being on the first page of Digg you will get some 7 visitors per second. This is bad news. This is even worse if you use a database based publishing platform (like Wordpress). Because every time a someone visits your site your wordpress will have to contact the database and display some content. And if you take into consideration the fact that most $7 hosts allow only 10 simultaneous connections to the database (only 10 users at the same time) you will realize how wrong is this. Most hosts use settings like this not to break down the server. Because if you allow more than 10 connections your server will have to process a large amount of information in a fraction of a second and it will go down.

So before you even think about getting tons of visitors in an instant, you should think about handling them in some way. If you get your post on the front page of any social site and your site doesn’t work you will hate yourself (just like I did when it first happened to me). Use stuff like WP-Cache or similar (you’ll find more about this on Google). They work. Don’t think about switching hosts. Any $7 host will give you the same thing. If you want a host that can handle 7 visitors per second you’ll have to pay about $80/month (maybe less). And if you usually get 500 visitors per day you don’t want to pay $960 year for that.

So before getting a flood of traffic you should brace yourself, using simple and effective methods.

Popularity: 41% [?]

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For the past 4 days the site has been offline. I don’t really know the reason for this: it could be the fact that that some hackers did something (and i really don’t know what or why) or it could be the fact that my database crashed due to the huge number if visitors. Thank God i had a backup (which was corrupted - my host said something about a SLEEP command - if you know something about this please let me know, i don’t want it to happen again). So to get the site back on i had to manually copy/paste every single post.

In the 4 days that the site was offline i think i lost at least 40.000 visitors (they still keep coming for the same thing).

Previously i wrote the 5 Ingredients For A Perfect Viral Linkbait article. And immediately after that i wrote the actual linkbait: 13 Wordpress Plugins That Can Make Your Life Simple, using the 5 ingredients. After that i asked someone to submit the post to Digg and StumbleUpon. After a few hours the flood came. Digg traffic is like a 1 time bomb - exploding for a few hours and then it stops. But StumbleUpon is so constant - even today i got 1200+ visitors from SU in only 4hrs.

So the thing is, before going online with a potential viral post, first you must prepare your server.

I am a Wordpress Noob, so I ask you guys if any of you knows something about the MySQL sleep command or how to make your WP based site load faster(any mysql setting on anything that can help)? I await your answers.

Oh and regarding the contest, you may have noticed that all the comments were deleted. But don’t worry i have all the entrants and the points they have on a spreadsheet, so there is nothing to worry about.

Popularity: 67% [?]

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For people who don’t know what that is… Linkbait is content created with the purpose of getting people to link to it. This will result in increase in traffic and better SEO. Viral linkbait is the kind of content that allows quick dissemination by it’s readers and just like a virus, it’s self replicating.

Now that you know what a viral linkbait is you can read about the things that can create a perfect linkbait:

1. It should look natural. Just like fishing, they use artificial lures that look and act like live bait. That is what you want to. You don’t want your linkbait to look like linkbait. The article should look very natural, like it’s not designed to attract links.
2. It should be topical. If your linkbait content is topical and it relates to popular issues, you have greater chances for success. Having more potential readers is probably the most important thing when trying to spread something.
3. Make it easy. Easy to read. If you produce extensive resources about something your reader may wanna bookmark it but not share it. But if you produce something easy to follow (just like a funny youtube clip) it will spread more easily.
4. Provide linking options. Consider this: someone viewed you likbait, liked it, and now wants to share it with his friends or community. A “share this” like button will facilitate better dissemination, without making it hard for the user to share the linkbait.
5. Be the first to disseminate the linkbait. As i always say, don’t be shy. If you want something done your way, do it yourself. Don’t wait for others to start doing it.

Popularity: 36% [?]

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What fish? We are talking here about social media sites and the traffic they can bring. Being on the front page of Digg is great but getting there is so hard, almost impossible. Each social media community has something specific, things they like and they will vote for. For example on Digg you’ll have to show up with the following to get noticed. The thing with Digg (and other big social sites) it that is a special community. For them it’s not about what you write it’s about who you are. Take a look at this crappy good for nothing post. There is absolutely no relevant information in it but it got 5500+ diggs just because it was submitted by a top Digg member. This is so like Bill Gates. People won’t care if your Windows Vista is full of bugs and brings nothing new, they’re still gonna buy it because it’s Microsoft who is selling it. So if you know people in high places in these big social sites take advantage of them and let them submit.

However if you don’t know such people, the next thing you can do is check out these lists: 10 Giant Lists and 233 Social Sites. Here you can find almost all social bookmarking sites. And now this is what you do. Smaller social sites are niche orientated(music, environment, marketing and more). Find the one that suits best the topic you are covering and try submitting to it. You’ll say “Yea but a smaller social sites don’t get the huge amounts of traffic that the big ones get“. Yes that is correct, but on a smaller social site (that fits your topic) people will notice your post and will vote for it. And the big break that can happen is that users from these small profile sites are also users in big social sites. So if your post gets on the front page of a smaller social site the chances are you’ll get featured on the first page of bigger sites (like Digg or Stumbleupon).

So if you’re small, don’t go for the big fish coz you won’t get none.

Popularity: 20% [?]

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