"Be creative. Really open the box. Show people what you can do," says online marketing specialist Brent Csutoras.

But before that, the panel – consisting also of SEOMoz’s Rebecca Kelley, Stuntdubl’s Todd Mailcoat, Rusty Brick’s Tamar Weinberg, and Atlas Web Services’ Michael Gray – agrees that marketers have to take the time to get to the communities they are marketing to.

"If you aren’t interested in being a part of the community," says Brent, "hire someone who [is]. Comment. Talk to people. Become part of the community."

Rebecca and Tamar both concur that understanding the community and gradually becoming a part of it is better than submitting your site or doing something promotional early on.

But once you’ve established that essential rapport with the target community, here are some tips about creating content they’ll love to link to and talk about:

1.    Look for lots of different angles
2.    Spoofs are popular
3.    Top 10 lists are favorites
4.    No long articles or face the dreaded "TLDR"
5.    Tamar suggests "eye candy with intriguing titles"
6.    Videos are good; short videos are better
7.    Be funny. Now!
8.    Free products or coupons are big in the virtual world, too
9.    Have a contest
10.    Go "far out" 

Tiffany Doughty contributed to this article.

If Digg drops by your digital house, it’s like a band of teenagers swarmed your kitchen, raided your fridge and left. Nobody’s clicked on an ad, if you have them on the page, because, to quote Alexander Barbara, CEO of ReidBrown Enterprises, Inc., "Digg users do not click on ads."

But if the number of page views means something to your business model, then that traffic does translate into money. That’s not the only reason Digg traffic can be valuable though. These web-savvy 20-something that don’t click on ads, often will give you some link love for great content – a Digg link alone carries some nice authority to help you rank better in search.

And that can mean more qualified search traffic (let alone the massive amount of brand awareness a front page Digger can grab you).

So, in that case, if you’re going to be targeting Digg, you need to be ready for when they show up. Barbara goes so far as to advise pulling your ads off the target page (gasp!) until the storm has cleared, and then putting them back on.

We’ll let you decide if that approach is right for you.

If you’re not sure your server can handle that tide, there are other things you can do in advance of your campaign to accommodate:

1.    Prepare a static HTML page in advance for ease of loading
2.    Let Google crawl it a week ahead of time so that it’s included in Google’s cache. Piggyback on their tremendous servers.
3.    Look into a peer-to-peer content distribution network like CoralCDN

Once you’ve prepared for them, drop your submission into Digg and wait. Don’t expect ad clicks. Don’t expect RSS subscription sign-ups. Just sit back and enjoy that you’ve successfully become part of the conversation.

Tiffany Doughty contributed to this article.  

Newmark’s list covers 32 cities these days, but when it began in 1994 – following a move to San Francisco for work – Craig’s list of San Francisco events was sent via email to his friends. His list became so popular, he had to move it to a mail server, and then to the open Web.

The move to the Web was a solid move to bring people in, rather than keep his local scenes list the exclusive province of email insiders.  After a childhood marked by pocket protectors and being last-picked in sports, Newmark legacy becomes one that doesn’t exclude anyone.

"When you think about the net, everyone is included," he said.

And it’s still free to everyone to this day – a winning model that hit one million page views per month way back in 1997. After all the site’s success, Newmark says his company continues to espouse the original open philosophy.

"We’re just doing what feels right. Everyone seems to believe in the notion that you treat people like you want to be treated."

Keeping with a simple, straightforward style even in his speech, Newmark forwards that open philosophy to the Internet as a whole. Perhaps reflective of his pro-Network Neutrality viewpoints (where an open Net promotes opportunity), Newmark says, simply, "The Internet is everyone’s printing press."

WebProNews Managing Editor Mike McDonalds contributed to this article.