Arvana's Guide to Successful Sifting
To celebrate being the only — and probably last — sifter in the Top 15 who doesn't have a diamond, I've decided to share with you some of my secrets to sifting success. Hopefully some of the other prolific sifters will chime in with some of their tips as well.
Finding Great Videos
Some of the videos I sift are things that interest me personally, and I just hope there are at least 9 other people who agree. For the most part, though, I'm a popularity whore and tend to submit vids that are likely to have universal appeal.
It does take some practise to know what videos might or might not make it to the Top 15, but one thing that really helps is having somebody else's validation first. Personally I receive that by mainly posting vids that others have already recommended; usually on other social networking sites, blogs and occasionally via email. If you aren't plugged in to any of those sources, I recommend following your interests on technorati.com or del.icio.us and see where that leads you.
Getting Votes for your Vids
With any video, only a certain percentage of viewers are going to vote for it, so the key is getting lots of people to watch it in the first place — the more views, the more votes, unless it's really a bad video, in which case go back to Step 1.
I've found the #1 most important factor in getting views is the title. You can find online tutorials in headline writing that can help build your skills in this area, but in general, a good title:
Apart from the title, a description can also be helpful, especially if the subject matter is obscure or needs some background for people to understand the video. Tags also help, both in searches and to appear in the tag cloud.
Other Ways to Promote Your Vids
Apart from shameless self-promotion of your videos in a Sift Talk post, there are lots of other ways to attract more viewers:
That's all I can think of right now; I'll add any other thoughts that occur to me in the comments. I hope that helps, and I look forward to being bumped out of the Top 15!
Finding Great Videos
Some of the videos I sift are things that interest me personally, and I just hope there are at least 9 other people who agree. For the most part, though, I'm a popularity whore and tend to submit vids that are likely to have universal appeal.
It does take some practise to know what videos might or might not make it to the Top 15, but one thing that really helps is having somebody else's validation first. Personally I receive that by mainly posting vids that others have already recommended; usually on other social networking sites, blogs and occasionally via email. If you aren't plugged in to any of those sources, I recommend following your interests on technorati.com or del.icio.us and see where that leads you.
Getting Votes for your Vids
With any video, only a certain percentage of viewers are going to vote for it, so the key is getting lots of people to watch it in the first place — the more views, the more votes, unless it's really a bad video, in which case go back to Step 1.
I've found the #1 most important factor in getting views is the title. You can find online tutorials in headline writing that can help build your skills in this area, but in general, a good title:
- is as short as possible
- is as descriptive as possible
- creates a sense of urgency — it makes people feel that they have to learn more.
Apart from the title, a description can also be helpful, especially if the subject matter is obscure or needs some background for people to understand the video. Tags also help, both in searches and to appear in the tag cloud.
Other Ways to Promote Your Vids
Apart from shameless self-promotion of your videos in a Sift Talk post, there are lots of other ways to attract more viewers:
- Make some interesting playlists, and update them often so they appear in the "most recently updated" list. I even created my own Greatest Hits playlist (an idea I stole from karaidl).
- If it's genuinely helpful, you can link to your playlists from individual videos. For example, whenever somebody submits a Whose Line is it Anyway video, I add it to that playlist and link to the playlist in the video comments.
- If relevant and appropriate, you can cross-link to a video in another vid's comments.
- I always find that my queue always clears really fast when I post a quality Sift Talk. Not sure why, but I guess more people visit my profile.
- You can also attract people to your profile and/or individual sifts from offsite. If you regularly participate in any online forums, add them to your sig. Or spam them in YouTube comments! (j/k
) This is not only good for you, it's good for VideoSift in general.
That's all I can think of right now; I'll add any other thoughts that occur to me in the comments. I hope that helps, and I look forward to being bumped out of the Top 15!
13 Comments
MarineGunrockYou can also post really good Sift Talk posts that make other members want to give you a *quality if star points are all you're after.
siftbotAwarding arvana with one star point for this contribution to Sift Talk - declared quality by MarineGunrock.
arvanaThanks MG -- I'm actually trying to avoid star points right now cuz I'm rather proud of being the lone gold in a sea of diamonds. So damn you!
MarineGunrockWell you shoulda said that before posting such a good post! And I didn't realize you were that close!
arvanaJust kidding, I was going to write up this post when I first popped into the Top 15 users, so this is my excuse now before it's too late!
theaceofclubzI used to have a trick where I would mine for videos posted on Australian sites at 11 at night my time, them post them and let the overseas/late night sifters vote on them while they had their longer than normal time on the first page of the queue. But then we went to 3.0 and that technique went all to hell. Lately its been stickin' with what works, watchin' blogs and sites that post vid's and then thowing them in the sift. Mind you I didn't say it was working well.
MINKeach to his own, but i wouldn't brag about this strategy.
arvanaHuh?!? Not sure what you're objecting to, Mink -- self promotion? marketing? I used to hate marketing, but I've come to accept it as a necessary part of life; if you want to stand out from the crowd, you have to do something that the crowd isn't doing.
Doc_MThanks MG -- I'm actually trying to avoid star points right now cuz I'm rather proud of being the lone gold in a sea of diamonds. So damn you!
Hey if ya don't want the star points, feel free to send them my way heh. I'm not below accepting donations.
Anyway, thanks for this post. Good ideas.
Another good one is making a sift-talk post and citing your videos so we all go back and watch them and upvote them. GG
arvanaDarn, you saw through my elaborate ruse!
I thought of a few more:
Not that I actually do all of these things much, but they work.
Thanks to theaceofclubz for posting another good idea -- anyone else have any offerings?
MINKto clarify: i think that the sift would be better if more people sifted from the heart, regardless of votes. i don't think the popularity contest is the most important thing, and the rankings should be motivation to post the stuff you believe in yourself, not motivation to post crap that everyone else kneejerks to. There's loads of popular stuff, we don't need more people posting more of liveleak's top ten, we need more variety. I see the Sift as a way to find stuff i wouldn't normally find out in the big bad internet, and a way to show other people my personal world (marinegunrock does this best, especially in his blog, i try to do the same with my lithuania/russia stuff). I want to look at my sifted vids and be proud. i want at least one person to get some new insight out of my posts, rather than just 100 people having a laugh.
of course we all post with votes in mind, but posting with votes as a priority is empty IMO. better to at least do something useful like deadpool fixes or quality sift talk if you want to boost your ranking.
but like i said, each to his own. the way this site is set up, i don't blame you, you're not breaking any laws, and contrary to the most common criticism of my comments... i don't actually insist that everyone agrees with me. i just have a brash confrontational aries streak that's fun to flex. do what you like.
arvanaI agree with you, Mr Aries. I wasn't advocating sifting vapid empty submissions based entirely on popularity, although I can see how you could interpret what I said that way. I think if you look at my submissions that I aim for a balance of both interesting / funny / thought-provoking AND universal appeal — and those tend to be the videos that do well here.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that most popularity-based sifts that have no substance won't get very far on this site. This is a much more discerning crowd that the video hosts, which is part of what makes the site so great.
I guess it comes down to the old question of whether to be a starving artist who's a purist, or a successful one who caters at least somewhat to the market. I can respect the former, but there are still lots of greats who were the latter — and obviously my post was aimed at sifters with that mindset.
LaekrothGood stuff Arvana, I'll try it and see if it works. For some reason I'm having trouble getting my video's sifted during the first run for a while now. My vids usually need a requeue (sometimes two) before they make it through. Strangly enough they rise in popularity as soon as they hit the sifted pages.
For example my video http://www.videosift.com/video/Homer-kills-the-Grim-Reaper took one requeue and some extra days to make it through the sift, but it hit 30 extra votes in the first 10 hours it got sifted.
Discuss...
Enable JavaScript to submit a comment.