I am in talks with Digg and major media properties in helping them get acclimated to the New Digg. I will also be helping anybody with a billion Euros get a ticket in the adamantium steel bunker in the center of the Earth before asteroid shower blows up this planet on December 21, 2012, and we’re left sword fighting with tree branches for canned beans. Publishers should take the following steps to join the New Digg and finally get more followers than Ashton Kutcher before he punks Kevin Rose by planting marijuana in his tea bags and sending DEA agents with machetes, m-16′s, and body armor to his house. And if you’re scalping my tickets to Noah’s arc, get ready to scrub Lindsay Lohan’s panties in jail for the next two weeks. So bing!

1. Setup an official account for your organization or brand (or multiple brands) at digg.com/register. Also add a photo, name and bio
2. Send Erin Ryan @ Digg eryan [at] digg.com an official RSS feed associated with that account. Digg is recommending you submit less content but of higher quality; so don’t give me Glen Beck for president; more Old Spice man skydiving off of the Virgin Galactic spacecraft.
3. Also you’ll need to send Erin @ Digg the email address of the main point person on each account.

Every account should be setup with a unique email address.

And as a quick best practice, post ‘Follow me on Digg‘ links to your Digg profile. as of now all of your existing friends on Digg will be your followers on the new.digg system so go start kicking avatars and taking down usernames.

What steps are you taking to get acclimated with the new Digg? Please leave your responses in the comments section below

My name is Neal Rodriguez

The internet marketing tips i picked up from from all the links to the Make $500 a day on a white-sand beach while sports illustrated swimsuit models pick the toe jam out of my feet, got me a help desk job, Bellsouth, $9 an hour.

Women screaming into my ear that their internet is down while their husbands are shooting possum in the backyard; “uhh, my internet’s down and why is it that when i turn on this contraption i get popups of Oscar de la Hoya in panties and a executioner’s mask; getting whipped by Heidi Montag and lady gaga.

then you hear the shot gun blasts!

blow! blow! “you got ‘em honey” “yeah, i got ‘em baby. get the kids in the house; we gon’ have ourselves some possum tonight”

anyway i started working on my ppc affiliate landing pages and adding keywords into title elements and meta descriptions; Neal the SEO boy is born.

fast forward to 2006; a few thousand search referrals later a few hundred a week in affiliate sales of databases to paid surveys and ebooks on how to get rid of genital warts from the privacy of your own couch; page one google for a few companies, donald trump, george foreman; the Google logo, some luxury brands and at this time a private jet company – i went from eating doughnuts and running Cat 5 to eating pizza and champagne on a G4.

around the same time i heard social bookmarking was the next internet marketing hard on, so i join Digg for no logical reason whatsoever; same reason a kid throws change on the floor to look up a woman’s dress;
- throws change
- looks up dress
- “Ahhh! Tarantula!”

I didn’t do anything with the account:

ignored it completely; treated it like a pelican caught in the bp oil spill. nobody’s interviewin’ the pelican; i spoke to one on my recent trip to florida and he’s like “i can’t go fishin’; i stick my beak in and come up with tar balls and sea weed with jerri curl.” it’s 2010, i don’t need no soul glo all i want is clean fish that don’t smell like a roll of dollars pulled out a prostitute’s behind.”

Anyway my ranking for a keyword was slipping down google front page; $100 mass directory submissions and free press releases weren’t working anymore. i tried to get a final answer from slumdog millionaire, but indian police were still knocking his teeth out.

So i posted a story offering Ron Paul a flight on a private jet – 146 diggs it got buried but i got like 50 links pointing to the site; and over 1,000 visitors in the 1st hour; now that site is pasted on google page one for the most competitive keywords in its industry; as if the owner of the private jet company gave larry and serje their private jet with a stripper pole, a gorilla costume, Kendra Wilkinson, and a camera man.

Months passed, i learned how to use digg and made the digg top 100 when it only took about 100 popular stories to make it. i join a media conglomerate; and they’ve got a whole division writing stories and willing to sell their kidneys to get some traffic to them. anyway michael jackson dies; fans are jumping off buildings. people are getting downsized; everybody’s wondering what the fuck do i, neal rodriguez, mutant seo specialist do but tell them that they suck because they’ve got duplicate content and 50,000 404′s that need redirection.

I say fuck it; let the search engine spider choke on all the flash, redirects to redirects, canonical issues; 404′s. me and my diggas throw on ski masks and turn into social media special forces if we’re navy seals social media platforms are the water – when they start shooting @ us with ak-47′s and ginsu knives we dive back into the water – in this case the water is digg

Case history:

Problem:
no traffic

Solution:

Story hunt – a story hunt for something which will resonate on major social communities is about as rough as changing channels on a tv i had when i was little with a wire hanger as an antenna; you want to change the channel you’ve got to crank that dial – crackitcrackitca – GIJoe ain’t on yet; back to Mork & Mindy crackitcrackitca nanoo nanoo.

My grandfather’s from the Colombian civil war so he thinks its machine gun fire; so i’m like its 4:30; time for Transformers – crackitcrackitc! – my grandfather throws himself on the floor; “a tierra!”

I’m like no abuelito those are munequitos that m-16 is photoshopped

See in Colombia you don’t know if its machine gun fire or mosquitos. you hear them whiz by your ear and be like – slap your ear – you look at your hand and see your palm’s got a red paint job; “like damn that was a fat one – he stocked up.”

Then you look down and be like, “yo, that dog’s chewing on my ear, man” the dog grips the ear between his paws and stretches his teeth.

Like, “hey, dog! that’s not a flip flop – gimme that damn ear, man.” then you get the shoe man to glue that shit back on; “juancho, u poquito de goma alli.”

Anyway here’s the story i found:

Story:

Michael Jackson Death Photos Sold for $500k

I’ll tell you, you play around on Digg long enough – you see a headline like that and you start shaking, you want to get to the submit button as expeditiously as possibly but you go into slow motion like you getting chased by Freddy Kruger in a Night mare on Elm street.

You walk in the hood they think you want to cop some dope.

Like you want to suck your own cock;

I’m your mother, i’m yo daddy, i’m yo digga in the attic; need a digg im me; i’ll give you an fp; you know me i’m yo friend; reciprocity is key; i’m yo pusher; i’m yo digga

So i submitted it; i had no karma because i hadn’t logged in in months; so i sent it out to my contacts – it made it to the front page of Digg.com – i would refresh the digg bar every 30 seconds and i’d get an additional 500 views; and pdnonline gets paid by cpm so that’s like $70 for every 1,000 impressions; my eyes are like; cha ching! cha ching! gawker picked it up 90k views in total.

That’s the beauty of social news; you could singlehandedly do damage without having to sell some big social media initiative for which employees are going to have to sell umbrellas outside of the subway on rainy days and fried zepoles with powdered sugar during san genaro festival just to finance it.

Let me give you an example: case study!

Problem:

digg stopped driving traffic to typical news stories and more stories are getting buried off the front page.

I promoted ozzy osbourne is bestowed the cokehead burnout of the year award;

“i’m honored to sniff i mean accept this award”

I show a friend of mine that it gets like 300 views; he’s like, “stop putting a gun into kevin rose’s mouth to get these front pages, man”

I’m getting hair implants to cover up the bald spots where i yanked my hair out of its roots.

We start work on the bestofthe2000s.com and build the biggest mashup of the funniest commercials of the 2000 to 2010 decade – on youtube. i sub it as a video; title: The Most Epic Commercials of the Decade

I pass it to a few bloggers and bam!

1.3 million pageviews

They make $70 cpm on this microsite; so thats $70,000 cpm after the 1st day; and about $90k in less than four days.

Even Ashton Kutcher twote it! – you’re not getting punk’d – i can’t do photoshop – that tweet added up to about 19k views.

Although you don’t hear it on the mouth of every CNBC commentator talking social media; news aggregation is not a limp dick. this is a real digital asset through which you could drive a shit load of traffic not just for yourself; you could provide this favor for many people on the planet build relationships; it’s not like Twitter you could get 100 retweets and get like 5 visitors; man u get a hundred diggs u may have to pee on your server so it doesn’t blow up in your face and you end up looking like you’re taking beauty advice from leatherface in texas chainsaw massacre.

I hit these quote unquote social media conferences and they’re like what’s your twitter? i’m like i’m on digg, baby

They’re like, “eww you need to be spayed.”

But diggers don’t die we multiply!

Let me give you a quick run down of some links which make using social media less like paying tiger woods future alimony payment.

This is a thread on webmaster world where members share how they ask for links from other webmasters; this is so when you go out on your blog outreach; it wont look like you’re a sidewalk beggar that smells like piss with a sign which reads will give head for crack.

Di66.net, socialblade.com, and friendstatistics.com allow you to study the popular section of digg and all kinds of stats on other users.
Think of it as a second life version of that lady with rollers in her hair sticking her head out of the window who tells you when your neighbor gets teabagged by her hairy landlord

These mashups list niche social sites you could use to build your own platform. some of these sites may not drive too much traffic but you may find that you’ll get more subscribers after participating.

Remember, each and every one of you are a mini new york times.

This is people media – if we are the people and the internet is the most revolutionary form of media since hieroglyphics – we are the internet

This is the people media movement; it’s not about just joining Twitter and Facebook to find out what soul glo Ron Jeremy uses to keep the hair on his back shiny before a jailhouse gangbang; it’s about finding where your people congregate online and communicating with them to help keep them from jumping off the ledge until 5 pm;

I thank you for watching;

How valuable do you think is the use of social news aggregation channels like Digg and blog outreach? please leave your responses in the comments below;

My name is Neal Rodriguez.

Secondly, brands should identify all points of private contact on social platforms. So on Twitter you could click the link on their profile to find contact information on their blog or Facebook profile. Or if you follow each other, use the Direct Messaging feature to work out partnerships, guest posts, bank robberies, terrorist attacks black mail with sex tapes and S&M photography of him getting whipped by Ricky Martin in a executioner’s mask.

Thirdly, study popular sections of the social platform like the Digg front page and Twitter’s trending topics. For other digital networks where popular sections are not as obvious, Google the name of the social platform plus phrase “case study,” or a names of popular tactics of which you already know. So when you see how Moonfruit’s Twitter contest got a subscriber to build a private website for an abortion clinic for nuns who bathe Pope Benedict. You could hold a contest in response, which allows participants to guess in which Vatican bath house the Pope impregnated those nuns.

Optionally, you could identify influential top users who are also interested in your industry’s topics. You use the private messaging methods you learned in the 2nd step to reach out to them and get them to participate in your campaigns, which are composed similarly to popular campaigns you researched in the 3rd step.

So when you see a viral story on how Sarah Palin is being offered $25k by marijuana advocates to speak at their next event; hold a webinar with Michael Phelps announcing that he’ll do it for free as long he could give away his new line of Phelps Olympic Bongs. Follow the webinar on a tweet chat with a #hashtag called #olympicbluntologist and you’ll get weed smokers jumping in the conversation from every staircase on the planet.

From New York, “Yo, I got this new line of gold toothbrushes to go with that gold medal, baby; check it out!” #olympicbluntologist from the dirty south, “hey, playa; I got some hydro soaked in redbull that’ll give you fins, baby” #olympicbluntologist from Jamaica, “hey ya blood clot, send tree a them bong to Kingston” from Los Angeles, “sign my petition to get a law passed to lets us pay for marijuana with Medicaid.” #olympicbluntologist

Now, I know most of you will say how could I use a three-part system to master any of the thousands of digital communities on which my brand’s target market may or may not be present? Remember, this is simply a start. Ultimately, you have to complete your custom social media engagement strategy. I could tell you everything I have done to leverage social media platforms for my benefit, but odds are that everything I have done wont work for you unless you put some work in to learn how to use your tools; different rules for different tools, different strokes for different folks, different personal brands, different organizations, different professional brands, different target communities, different lingerie size.

I mean you could take bits and pieces of my tactics, but it won’t pop without a piece of your person involved. Michael Jordan can tell you exactly what he does to slam dunk a basketball, but that doesn’t mean that Shaquille O’Neill will be picking your pubic hair out of his teeth anytime soon.

You have to develop your own expert proficiency using the digital tools your target community employs. Now its in style to knock anybody who calls them self a social media expert;

“oh if somebody tells you they’re a social media expert run the other way until you’re eating scorpion shish ke bobs in Beijing.”

Let me tell you something, as I break it down for you on your hooker stop of the information super highway, if you are not a social media expert, you’d better go hire one. Not just because he screams that he is the social media Neo: the One, the prophecy states will kill the PCs and have humans make slaves of Terminator robots and have them chop onions at 50 slices a second that are run on Mac OS XX aka Cheetarah; but somebody has actually pushed the decimal point to the right a few digits on a bank account in the name of the organization with which he has worked.

But such expertise is not the only requirement; there is another. Never forget your ultimate objective, no matter how much of a tech ninja your mugshot profile on the FBI hacker watchlist says you are; you are communicating with people, not direct messages, not tweets, not @replies, not diggs, not stumbles, not upvotes… people. Just because you know how to dial a phone does not mean you could hypnotize somebody into stripping butt naked and sliding down razors into a pool of alcohol or buy your product or service. Think of a Direct Message as a speed dial and the Stumbleupon share feature as a conference call on your speakerphone. Like the phone, these digital platforms are mere tools; you wont get the girl to come over to your house just because you have a 10th generation droid phone, unless you can convince her she wont throw up and pass out after smelling the skid marks on those crappy speedos in the hamper and that you’ll keep the rats from nibbling on her toe jam.

Lo and behold the social trinity; the roadmap that I have followed to driver over 36 million pageviews to web properties worldwide; a lot of which for search traffic that helped me close a few million in back end sales; a media conglomerate with which I worked can account for 10% selling ad space at $70 cpm; $280k in four months time.