Digg, a social news website, gives patients the power to discover and share news stories and can increase patient volume by greatly increasing your website’s traffic.
Your audience is going to the web first for healthcare information. By utilizing Digg you can drive significant traffic to your site from patients who are actively making healthcare decisions.
Your digital strategy should center around the principle of providing your patient or prospective patients with relevant information at the moment they are looking for it.
Tools like Digg can help you in this effort. For example, when a story gets dugg it can bring as many as 8,000 unique visitors in an hour. With the right messages, you can use this awareness to drive patients into your system.
However, it pays to know the right people at Digg. SEOmoz.com highlights this fact.
The Top 20 have contributed over 20.81% of the stories on the front page. The top 100 Digg Users have contributed 56.41% of the content on the homepage. SEOmoz goes on to say that this trend isn’t a secret or a problem hurting Digg. Instead of being a mass opinion, Digg shows the content opinions of a few people.
So how do you get started using Digg to help patients find information about you? Follow these simple steps:
- Submit current new information: ideally 100% brand new information (perfect for highlighting research, clinical trials or survey results)
- Brainstorm topics- you are looking for 100% new information
- Beef up the cool factor through videos or authoritative sources (You and your physicians are an ideal source)
- Understand your audience: relevancy is critical
- Consider the time: people are more likely to Digg articles during downtimes at work
Turn Up Your Volume 
I like Digg.com, it’s really a great way to find the really cool stuff online.