I’ve heard of the “Digg Effect” (akin to the Brogan Bump or the Oprah Effect) but had no idea I would ever experience it myself. Until last week when I wrote this Facebook Ads post that created quite a stir. My post generated subsequent posts on Mashable, Digg, Reddit, ReadWriteWeb, Download Squad, WalletPop and more. To date, I’ve had more than 100 comments. I stopped counting the pingbacks, but you can see them below.

pingbacks1

pingbacks2

On the busiest day, I had more than 18,000 visitors on my site. Here is a snippet of my Google Analytics from 7/13-7/22.
site-usage
Traffic would have been even higher had I not experienced a lot of downtime as noted here and here.

A week and a lot of downtime and frustration later, I’m digesting what I’ve learned from the whole experience. Here are my initial thoughts.

4 Things You Should Know About the Digg Effect:

  • It takes a toll on your server. The traffic spike can be huge. Can you current host handle it? Mine couldn’t. I spent a lot of time on the phone with support.
  • It generates comments. I generally send an email to each person who leaves a comment on my site. Are you ready to respond? I was out of town on a mini-vacation so I had to squeeze in work in the midst of play time.
  • It creates pingbacks. I try to leave comments on sites that pingback to my own. I’m still catching up on this. How do you respond when others link to your site? Are you prepared?
  • It just might force silence. When my site was down, I used Twitter and Posterous. Do you have an additional outlet?

If you’re a blogger, marketing professional or a business owner, are you ready for the Digg Effect? Recognizing that I’m not an expert in this topic, what else have I missed?

Related posts:
Digg Effect: Top 10 Things Webmasters Should Know
Surviving the Digg Effect: from Creativebits and Digg