With so many social media platforms available for small businesses to utilize today, one may consider the reason why you should need to use Digg as part of your marketing plans.

Just like other social media sites, Digg was set up to enable users to share interesting contributions and pass comment on on others shared content. The content could be relevant news stories, new product launches, industry press-releases – just about anything you consider would be of interest to others.

If a user ‘diggs’ a particular news story or post, it will mean that content will become more popular by one mark. This ultimately means a hot story that has been dugg the most will most likely end up on the front page of Digg. This is the ultimate aim of a marketer – to get their story onto the front page for more eyes to see.

Digg can be a very useful tool if you want to get high-quality back-links and generate traffic back to your blog. You will find though that users are there to read a cool story, share content with friends, and learn from useful information rather than actually shop. This is why it is best not to use Digg to openly push products or write sales-pitches, and most definitely not to post affiliate links! Doing this will probably result in your post being ignored, or possibly even getting your account banned.

So if you cannot direct-sell, what is the point of using Digg?

What you have to remember is that you don’t use any social media platform to direct-sell. People have become too aware of sales-pitches and pop-ups, and this in-your-face approach lost its effect a long time ago. Blatant marketing now has the opposite effect, and actually turns people off your product or service as well as you and your company.

The best way to succeed with Digg is to craft a captivating story with a catchy headline that will draw people in. You only really get one chance with this to hook your audience, so your story headline should be the best you can make it. You only have to take a brief look at the stories making the front page of Digg to see that there are such diverse topics covered from gambling to current affairs, and the titles are crafted cleverly to hook your curiosity.

If there is any remote possibility that you can somehow tie in your own story to any story or particular theme making the top spots on Digg, then you can use this to your advantage, even if it is gently poking fun at yourself in the process. People on Digg love amusing stories, so if you have a talent for satirical writing, your content could be the key to generating a huge amount of traffic back to your business blog. As long as you make your content interesting and discussable, then you will be in a good position to invite them over to your website for further discussion and in-depth information.

It is estimated that more than 75 – 85% of Digg users will have a blog, and will expect you to have one too, and most will be hungry for more content if they are interested in what you are saying, so it makes sense to point all this potential traffic back to a well-maintained, high-quality business blog. Once you have them here, you would encourage them to sign up for your newsletter and RSS feed, then you can start with your subtle marketing and sales persuasion.

Crafting stories to suit the tastes of Digg readers is certainly worth the effort. If you are consistent with your writing efforts, can write controversial, thought-provoking or funny stories, and are successful in generating Diggs that lead you to the the front page of a particular category, or even the front page of Digg, then you had better be prepared for some serious traffic to your site!

Since its inception in 2004, Digg has been used by millions of people from across the world, and has had new incarnations as technology improved, and clever social media marketers are using it today to help promote and establish new websites by driving steady traffic to them. This really is a great tool for any new start-up business or entrepreneur, and should never be overlooked in favour of the social media giants Facebook and Twitter. Used correctly, Digg can provide an instant boost in web traffic that can help establish new sites and give them a better standing with search engines.

You can link all your other social business accounts together, so any fresh story you post to Digg will be visible to all your followers on other platforms too. Over the years Digg has been responsible for a fair few server-crashing events due to the influx of traffic it has driven, so can you imagine the impact you could have if you crafted a ‘hot’ story for Digg that was then also shared across other platforms?

So any new business start-ups and entrepreneurs should allocate some time in their busy schedule to curate a targeting following on Digg as well as the other social media big-hitters.