With the emergence of DIGG in 2004, many different social bookmarking sites have popped up over the past couple of years; Reddit, StumbleUpon, Float to name a few. There’s even an open-source application called Pligg that you can download and install on your server for your own customized version of “Digg.” There’s no doubt that if your content shows up on the front page of one of these sites you’ll receive a ton of hits. One could argue that your ability to make the front page of Digg can make or break the success of your site. Many a server has gone down due to the overload in visitors from social bookmarking sites (a.k.a. “Digg effect”).

How Can I Optimize My Blog for Digg?

There are a couple of ways in fact. The first and most obvious way would be to create a Digg account and submit every single blog post that you create, but logging into Digg every time and entering every piece of information can be a bit cumbersome. What you really want to do is add a Digg badge to your posts. What badges do is submit your blog post to the social bookmarking site of your choice and auto fills the forms, thus taking care of half the work. Aside from any content/description tweaks that you may have to do, after submitting with a badge, all you have to do is click “Submit” and you’re finished.

Text/Custom Badge

For a text or custom badge, wrap this block of code around your text or image:

<a href=”http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title(); ?>&bodytext=<?php the_excerpt() ?>”title=”Digg this story”></a>

From inspecting the code, you can see that it inserts your post’s permalink, title, and excerpt into the link which then auto inserts that info into the designated fields on the Digg submission page. If you’re one that likes spice everything up and deviate from the norm, this is the code you’d use.

Standard Digg Badge

For the standard Digg badge, insert this piece of code into the loop of your theme:

<script src=”http://digg.com/tools/diggthis.js” type=”text/javascript”></script>

This type of badge is a lot more noticeable. It leaves a heavier footprint on your page, and calls for readers to click on it. If you only want to integrate one social bookmarking site into your theme, use this method.

Multiple Badges

At the bottom of every WP Collective post you’ll see multiple, but smaller, badges that submit to various social bookmarking sites. In our case we have Digg, del.icio.us, Facebook, Google, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Twitter. If you’re using Wordpress, there are tons of different plug-ins that let you pick which sites you want to submit to, and generate the code needed to display them within your posts. Here are a couple of plug-ins that you may find useful:

Sociable: Automatically adds links on your posts to social bookmarking sites. (What we use)

Social Dropdown: This plugin displays several social bookmarks in a dropdown. Unlike other social bookmarking displays, this does not cause clutter. This plugin displays several social bookmarking options in a dropdown.

Social Bookmarks: The Social Bookmarks plugin for WordPress adds a list of XHTML compliant graphic links at the end of your posts and/or pages that allow your visitors to easily submit them in a number of social bookmarking sites. Furthermore, the plugin adds a page in the WordPress admin section that lets you customize it. See the Customization section below for details.

There you have it! A rundown on how you can “socialize” your wordpress blog. Remember, adding these links is but a fraction of the battle. Remember to always post meaningful, helpful, inspiring, motivating, and entertaining content. Doing so will ensure that people spread the word of your site.

Sample Video

Reports say that Flickr video posts work seamlessly with Wordpress’ WYSIWYG editor, unlike YouTube embeds which require either a plug-in or strict use of the HTML editor.

If you haven’t already heard about the news, follow the Flickr Blog post to learn more: http://blog.flickr.net/en/2008/04/09/video-on-flickr-2/

You can also follow the Flickr Video FAQ here: http://www.flickr.com/help/video/

With the popularity of Twitter ever increasing, the thought of integrating it into your Wordpress blog should be a no brainer. What started as simple “status-updates,” Twitter has turned into a form of “micro-blogging.” Ever experience a time where you had a thought in your head, felt that it needed to be heard, but wasn’t compelling enough to be a full-on blog post? “Tweet” it!

Not only are you getting your thoughts out, but you make a connection with anyone who follows your account. If you haven’t made a blog update in a couple of days/weeks, at least your readers still know you’re there from your Tweets and aren’t compelled to delete your site out of their RSS feeds.

How can I integrate Twitter into my Wordpress site?

Twitter Tools: This plug in allows you to both display your Twitter feed on your blog via a widget or snippet of code. Both are fully customizable. It also automates a Twitter update every time you make a new post to your blog. So whenever you make a new post, Twitter Tools will create a title and permalink back to your new post, letting all of your followers know about your update. It even allows you to use your Admin area as a tool for Tweeting your messages.

TwitThis: Everyone has seen social bookmarking buttons such as the ones from Digg, Reddit, and StumbleUpon. TwitThis creates a button that allows a reader to Tweet about your post much like they would use a Digg button to “Digg” a post.