The Disgruntled Actress: Review of a shameless self-promotion blog

Actress Lorelei Mahoney has been utilising cyber space with her effective online marketing for a considerable time now. The Disgruntled Actress (make that Killing Loneliness) is the latest incarnation of her blog.

What makes The Disgruntled Actress successful?

While this is not a blogging about blogging blog, I still feel it could be evaluated according to Pro Blogger's 4 pillars of writing exceptional blogs. As always, these are:

• Be Extremely Useful


• Write Great Headlines


• Make The Post Scannable


• Write In Plain, Concise, Common Sense Style

Is The Disgruntled Actress useful?

Well, the celeb of the month on this blog is none other than Ann Coulter. I did not know that she posed nude for Playboy. Frankly, that knowledge is not exactly going to cure my bouts of insomnia. On the contrary.


Ann Coulter in Playboy. Yes, you read that right.

Lorelai describes herself as conservative. I think she is right. In more ways than one.

Does The Disgruntled Actress feature great headlines?

I'm not sure about this one. The headlines confuse me a little, but they definitely catch my attention and prompt me to read the rest of the posts, so they serve their purpose. I'd work on making the headlines a little more clear. Or maybe I was just being distracted by the semi-nude picture of Ann Coulter. Cold shivers are creeping down my spine while I'm typing this.

Are the posts scannable?

Definitely. The layout of this blog is exceptionally clean and neat. While the colours are bright and tend to shout at me like a bad acid trip, they're more welcoming than a casino's sensual assault. I think the posts are scannable. The bright colours do not distract, they merely catch your attention.

The link pool on the right is very useful and a great idea for any blog. I'm thinking of getting one.

Is The Disgruntled Actress in a plain, concise, common sense style?

Yup y'all.

Conclusion

This actress can't be all that disgruntled, because her blog is quite charming.

Build traffic with Digg

In the previous post, we looked at how you can build traffic by networking with other blogs.

This post deals with how you can build traffic by having other blogs network with you. My main blog, The Necro Files, offers heavy metal album and horror movie reviews.

I have managed to build consistent traffic by using social networking sites. One social networking site that has not given me much traffic to date is Digg. I decided to solve this problem by writing this post.

• I investigate how Digg works.


• An explanation of the Digg algorithm.


• Suggestions on how to use Digg.


• Tips I found on how you can let Digg work for you.

Let's hope Digg works better for me after this research!



The right way to dig but not the right way to Digg, you dig?

How Digg works

Digg has an algorithm. It works by rating how quickly you get diggs. If you get diggs very rapidly, you are likely to get to the front page of digg. To get to the front page of digg, you need at least 60 diggs in one day. If you get 60 diggs in one day, you will keep getting traffic even after your story is no longer on the front page of Digg.

The Digg algorithm

1. The faster you get diggs, the greater your chances are of getting on the front page.
   You need to get 60 diggs quickly to get on the Digg front page. This is the crux of the Digg algorithm.


2. Digg has a ranking system. A digg from a Digg user with a high rank will count more than a digg from a Digg user with a lower rank.


3. The more comments and positive diggs you have, the more weight your story carries. This one is obvious.


4. Similar to Stumble Upon, a user who does not like your story may bury it. Again, if a high ranking Digg user buries your story, it counts more than a bury from a lower ranking Digg user.


5. Similarly, more buries are bad. The more buries your story gets, the less it's chances are of getting on the front page.


6. Digg also considers the ratio of submitted articles by users who digg your story. This means diggs from regular Digg users will be more valuable than diggs from less regular Digg users. I'm not sure how this differs from the Digg ranking, but Digg ranking probably has to do with how many stories you get on the Digg front page, and how often that happens.


7. Digg tries to balance the problem of powerful Digg users dominating front pages by considering the amount of Digg friends you have. If you have lots of Digg friends, you need more diggs to get to the front page than a user who has less Digg friends.

To me, it would be better to have lots of Digg friends, because the point of Digg is to build traffic. If you have enough Digg friends, you will not need to get to the front page of Digg to get traffic to your blog.

Suggestions on how to use Digg

The way to use Digg is to digg articles you like. Now, you might find Digg cumbersome because you need to go to Digg every time you want to submit a story. This is no longer the case, thanks to these two handy Firefox plug-ins:

• Digg me later adds a small bar at the top of articles linked from Digg. This allows you to digg the article directly from your current page without returning to Digg. Note that also you nead Greasemonkey installed.


• Smart Digg button allows you to see whether a page is already on Digg before you write a full 500 page submission with all the bells and whistles, only to discover it on Digg already. Quite handy!

How you can let Digg work for you

You need to add the Digg badge to your posts. You will notice that I have a widget called Syndicate Me. This widget is code that I got from AddThis. It offers quick and easy links to all the big social networking sites, Digg included.

Hint: I even added this to the email feeds of The Necro Files.

If you do not wish to add another widget to your blog, you can integrate Digg with your site. You add the following JavaScript code to your site:

<script><br />digg_url = 'URLOFSTORY';<br /></script><br /><script src="http://digg.com/api/diggthis.js"></script><br />
You put the URL of your post in place of URLOFSTORY. I've had some problems with this code on my site, because of the Blogspot platform that I use for hosting. It is less complicated to use AddThis and encourage your social networking friends to Digg your posts.

Now you have a comprehensive guide on how to build traffic with Digg. Digg it, if you will.

Some useful links

• Digg algorithm unofficial F.A.Q.


• Dosh dosh suggests 12 must have tools for active digg users.


• How to integrate Digg with your site.


• iStockphoto for the image of the kid shovelling snow.