Just a week ago, I added a new WordPress plugin to my blog’s arsenal. It’s called digg digg.
It could also be called awesome awesome, because it is. It’s an all-in-one plugin that allows you to easily add the digg and retweet button onto your blog posts or page. You can see it in use on the upper left part of my posts when you’re on the website. It also has reddit and buzz.yahoo.com, but I don’t use those right now. It’s customizable with a few different options and it was exactly what I was looking for.
A couple of months ago, I would never of thought of adding a retweet button to my blog posts, but now because twitter is growing at such an alarming rate, I thought I’d give it a shot. Twenty-five minutes after I posted my first post after installing the plugin, I saw this in twitter:
This is a screenshot of a search I did for anyone who “retweeted” my article. You can see 5 on the screen, but actually it was more like 8. Let’s crunch some numbers:
- Time it took to install the plugin: 1 minute
- Time it took to configure the plugin settings: 5 minutes (after some trial and error)
- Total number of people who retweeted my post: 8 people
- Total number of people following those 8 people: Roughly 40,000 People
So, in just 25 minutes, that retweet button alone magically allowed me to send the link to over 40,000 people’s twitter accounts. If any of those people retweeted it, then the numbers would grow even larger. I’m hoping you can see, 1) the power of the retweet button, 2) the power behind using twitter, and 3) how things could go viral rather quickly and easily.
There are a couple of other implications here that I’d like to point out:
- Your blog post title is super important: I honestly spent about a half hour thinking of a good blog post title, and came up with The Obvious Part of Online Marketing that Most People are Missing. I think anyone who reads that headline or title is very tempted to open it because they want to know what that obvious thing is.
- Your connections through Twitter are highly targeted: Your twitter account should, in theory, have people in your target audience following you. For me, I have mostly internet marketers and bloggers following me, in addition to a few personal friends, since I’m using myself as a brand. What are the chances that the people following my followers are also in my target audience too? Pretty darn good. So, any retweets from my followers will just expand my reach into my target audience, and hopefully bring in some new readers who don’t know about me, who might end up subscribing to the blog and give me a bigger online presence footprint. See how that works?
So if you think twitter is lame, you might want to think again. Digg is just as important, but I’ll get to that in a later post.
You can get the Digg Digg plugin through your WordPress Plugin search in your admin panel. If you’re using another blogging platform, you may want to check your plugin database for a twitter retweeting solution.
It’s almost the end of the month, so stay tuned for my September monthly income report!
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{ 19 comments (Click Here to Leave a Comment Below) }
Pat,
I love how you share your ideas and experiences with your readers. You talk about everything from the bid picture idea, down to the little details like with this plugin.
I’m starting a blog soon, and I’ll definitely be incorporating this plugin. Thanks!
Tammy, thanks for the comment.
In regards to using the plugin, you might want to wait until you have some kind of traffic coming in, which of course takes a little bit of time after launching a new blog. One of the things I forgot to mention is that although this plugin works great, it can only be taken advantage of if you have followers and traffic coming to your website. It might look worse to have the “0″ diggs and “0″ tweets on your blog at the beginning. Just keep this tool in the back of your mind until you start seeing some traffic coming into your website. Thanks, and best of luck to you! Let us know when your website comes out!
Well, Twitter may be useful, but it’s still lame, lol. I just may have to grit my teeth and use it someday, though.
As far as Digg, I’ve been using it regularly every day because it’s easy and I’m used to it, but it generally translates into very little actual traffic. I hear the same thing form countless other people who have abandoned it because if little traffic from it. It’s not the popular site that it once was. Popular traffic moved from it to StumbleUpon and now to Twitter.
LS, I think you make a great point. However, the nice part about digg is that is your site is listed in digg, you’ll have some great SEO juice because of it.
The actual traffic that comes directly from digg, however, tends to be quite non-targeted.
Thanks for the tip, I’ll keep my eye on that one. I don’t have a twitter account yet, but with all the exciting things I’ve been reading (this post included) it’s becoming hard to resist. My main reservation about twitter is that I’m concerned it will become a distraction and a time waster. Do you find twitter to be overly time consuming? Any tips for keeping it under control?
Mark
Hi Mark,
It CAN be time consuming, but only if you let that happen. It’s really easy to get lost in all the posts, especially if you’re following a lot of people, but it’s proved to be, at least for me, a wise investment of my time, so far
I like the retweet part, but I don’t want to put a digg button on my site. I used to have people digg my stories (on a previous site) and they would write a terrible headline
… It screwed me up a couple of times.
I know what you mean. I haven’t really seen anything from digg from my stats. Plus, most traffic from digg tends to be highly non-targeted. I’m considering taking the digg part down. Thanks for your insight Carl!
Cool Pat, you always come up with such helpful stuff:)
For me the hardest part about blogging is the traffic, I find creating a good design and great content is not too difficult if you are passionate about what you write!
Going to install Digg Digg right now
Thanks again!
Cheers
Diggy
Hey Diggy, traffic is definitely tough to get. If there’s one thing I’ve learned though, is to keep creating good content, put yourself out there, and traffic will eventually come – it just takes time. It’s hard for me sometimes, because I want things to happen right away!
Got retweet buttons as well. Unfortunately, unlike the T-Shirt you’re wearing in one of the random pics indicates, I am not huge on twitter.
But you make a very good point about how tweets can spread like wildfire. Definitely great potential there!
Hi Pat, I just created a new blog and I add the twitter plugin not knowing how powerful it is. But I did not add the digg plug.
How does the “digg” plug work as far as creating traffic?
Hi gigi,
Well, digg is a social bookmarking network. People who digg articles share them with their friends, and thus their friends might have a look at the article as well.
If enough people digg a certain piece, digg learns that that article is very popular, and puts in on the front pages of whatever category it’s in. If it’s SUPER popular, then it gets put on the digg homepage. That’s the short explanation
Looks like a great plugin. I am going to try it out.
Pat adding social media icon always interest users to bookmark and spread your post. This is one important checklist for any newly created blog.
Part of getting those retweets was the massive traffic that your site already brings in. However, giving people a quick and easy way to spread the word about your post (anyones post) is always a good thing. I have experimented with a few social plugins for wordpress and will take a look at this one. Thanks for the share!
yes! it’s Very powerful plugin! visit my site for hot tips!
Hey Pat,
Thanks for the article. I can’t wait to try this one out. I noticed your stay connected box in the side panel. Is that part of the Digg Digg plug in as well?
sharing buttons are a great way to share your content across the network,and a good way of making inlinks to your website ,increasing page rank and seo benefits….