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:

• 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.

I've had good success with a one-word title as well as quite long titles. Sometimes I mix things up by putting one word in all-caps as well. Alliteration or interesting punctuation can also help.

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!