I am not a gifted blogger. I can not write long in-depth inspiring diaries. In my time at DailyKos, I have made the Rec List probably twice. My day job, though, is Marketing/Publicity. So one thing that I enjoy very much is trying to get more people to read the Diaries at DailyKos, as well as other similar sites.
One of the sites I use is Digg. For those of you that know what Digg is, it is a "news site where the stories are chosen by community members rather than editors." Similar to DailyKos, members submit an article and then other members "digg" the ones they like. The ones with the most "diggs" make it the Front Page. The really popular ones go into their version of the Rec List where the can stay for hours.
So why is this so important?
Digg, according to Alexia.com, has a Web Traffic Ranking of 160. DailyKos has a ranking of 4,626.
So, if you can get a DailyKos diary on the front page of Digg, it means that many more people will see it and read it. Also that Digg is not a politics only site, the likelihood of readers that normally do not visit DailyKos reading an important diary grows. DailyKos is still a "preaching to the choir" site, if we really want to get our message out there we need to get out to sites like Digg.
In a given day, I will post to Digg about five DailyKos diaries. About once a week, one of those diaries will make it to the front page for an hour or so. About once a month, one of those will make it into their Rec List and sit for hours gaining more readers.
So what does this mean to all of you? Well probably nothing. However, hopefully more Kossacks will start to do the same thing and we will get more and more diaries posted over at Digg and get more people reading them. Even if one Kossack posts a DailyKos diary over at Digg, it still needs votes to get it to the front page. Just that you post, doesn't mean it stops there, you still need to help vote them up.
To those diarists that can write those epic diaries that can move mountains, please keep writing them. I, in turn, will keep putting them out there for more people to read them, so you can keep moving more mountains.