Digg Breaking News Stories (And Break Some Of Your Own!) With HitTail

Quite by accident I found an extra use for HitTail that’s pretty killer in terms of generating content for my blog. And I’m going to spill the beans so you can try it for yourself.

Basically, you can use HitTail to discover leads, breaking stories, and gossip.

Yes, gossip!

First, a brief recap on how HitTail works.

You install it on your site and get real-time scrolled keyword results on the searches used to find your site. Then the service points out to you which keywords have the potential to be capitalized by you for best hits on your next post.

So for example, HitTail might point out that somebody used the phrase “green ipod nano” to find your site – even though you didn’t specifically use that phrase in a post. But now you know that there is a relatively untapped interest out there in content on green ipod nanos – and that if you write about them, your hits will increase.

That said, I’m talking about a completely different use for the service. Well, not “completely different” – you’ll still get a lot of hits for your site. It’s just that this service is a whole lot more…edgy. Let me explain what I mean.

While using HitTail last week to monitor my personal niche blog, I notice that the service highlighted a very strange phrase. It was the name of a couple of important people who work in that niche field plus the word “feud.”

Now, as far as I know, those two people, who had a working relationship, were the best of friends. So I thought it odd that someone would have type in their names in relation to a dispute.

So I asked around. And guess what? They did have a recent falling-out.

Now, had I been an Internet gossip columnist, or some hard-core niche reporter – or simply wanted to write a hit-garnering post – this lead on a yet-to-be-discovered story would have been pure gold.

But, just for the pleasure of finding out what hot topics people are typing into search engines AS IT HAPPENS – HitTail is a must for my blogging.

Another Buried HitTail Story on Digg

Neil Patel reports that the last referrer before a story gets buried on Digg is sometimes crawl3.digg.internal. If true, the folks at Digg need to get a little better about keeping us nerds from understanding their internal processes, because I too just saw crawl3.digg.internal, and with a little bit of quick research, I see that HitTailers who are trying to get the word out about our service have a unique little challenge before them.

Notice this Digg search for HitTail that includes buried stories. There's one from 19 hours ago by HitTail user beautyofthelord. Now notice the same search without buried stories (this demonstration will only be valid for a short while while results churn). The purpose of this post is just to have a second case out there of seeing the crawl3.digg.internal referrer spin by before a story got buried.

Anyway, HitTail is good enough for The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, TechCrunch, CNET, PCWorld, countless bloggers around the Internet, and most recently, The Ventura County Star. So not sure if we really need Digg. I don't get the idea that their readership cares much about developments in the field of marketing, anyway. Sighhhhhh