Josh Klein Web Strategy

Ignore the thousand articles you read before this one about using Digg.com to promote your website. They’re all wrong.

For those who aren’t familiar with Digg, here is a snippet from the about page:

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. From the biggest online destinations to the most obscure blog, Digg surfaces the best stuff as voted on by our users. You won’t find editors at Digg.

That requires some translation. Here’s what it really means:

Digg is a place for 18-24 year old males to read about internet gossip. From the smallest local news rags to the wittiest satire websites, Digg surfaces the stuff most entertaining to our users as determined by our staff of editors.

I’m not trying to be a negative nancy — Digg can be entertaining and informative — but it has little to no value for directing attention to websites of substance, whether you’re a marketer or not.

I’m operating under a couple key assumptions. First, your website is not about liberal politics, internet piracy, or conspiracy theories. Second, you care about your website.

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Attention grabbing headlines, link bait, squeeze pages, list building, social media and blahging.

These are the chew toys that have made me sad and tired and cynical.

I’m using (or butchering) the words of Merlin Mann, a writer whom I respect, who has been on a recent campaign to make blogs better [skip to 5:20 in].

It got me thinking. See, I read plenty of blogs about making and promoting websites. I bring the best stuff to my clients — and write about the subject — so it’s my job to be on top of what’s going on.

It can get depressing.

The atmosphere reminds me of the one leading up to the dot-com bust. The web seems like easy money, so entrepreneurial-minded people are trying to cash in their get-rich-quick cards.

For blogs in particular, everything is about driving traffic and readership, being perceived as a niche expert, and upselling leads on a product or service. Eyeball theory all over again. Bubble 2.0.

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