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What’s the best way to interact with YouTube users? I guess many would give some obvious answers, such as “leave comments on their videos” or “send them private messages.” However, I’ve realised that there’s another way and this one may be as good as the others — or even a bit better.

In order to try this method, I’ve opened an account with another nickname and created a silly short video. It’s a mere slide show with only four frames and no soundtrack nor special effects. It lasts no more than 25 seconds. Yes, it’s totally trashy and it’s gotten the worst rates you can imagine. I don’t mind, though, because it was intended to be just a tool for my test.

After creating and uploading my trashy video, I visited my Account page and made sure that “Active Sharing” was turned on. Then I started watching other people’s videos. My video’s view count slowly increased afterwards. That’s about it.

As you must have guessed, “Active Sharing” is the key here. If you turn it on, whenever you watch a video on YouTube your username will be listed among others under “Also Watching Now.” Ideally, you’ll want to watch the videos featured on the site’s main page, because those are viewed by many people simultaneously. Therefore, they increase your chance of having your username seen and clicked on. But I’ve also gotten some good results when viewing stuff not listed on the main page.

When I first read about the “Active Sharing” feature and how it could help you get more views for your own videos, I was a bit sceptical. After trying it myself, I had to agree that it is a nice tactic. Apparently, YouTube users are rather curious about each other. Perhaps they think: “Well, if this girl or guy is watching the same video as me, maybe we have similar tastes. Let’s see if he/she has also some cool stuff to show.” Right away they click on the person’s username and take a look at their channel. If they find a title or screenshot that catches their attention, chances are they will click on it and watch the corresponding video.

Can you just imagine the possibilities? If I’ve managed to attract a few hundred visitors to my little piece of garbage just by playing that trick, guess how much interest a good, viral video might have generated?

If you think that the only way to take advantage of MySpace for promotional purposes is by spamming its members with endless repetitive comments and bulletins, think again. Trust me, there are smarter and more honest ways. They can be summarised in this simple tip: view and use MySpace as an actual social networking site, not as a sort of spammers paradise.

What you want to do is look for real people who may be really interested in whatever you do. Instead of using the site’s general search, I suggest you use the Groups search. Although the former lets you search people by interest, the latter will lead you directly to the places where people interested in a given subject gather to chat. This will also show you that such people are real and not fake accounts made by spammers. After all, why would a spammer post a reasonable message at a forum?

Before adding a person, of course you must take a look at their profile. On some social networking sites you are expected to at least leave a message to a member before adding him/her to your friends list (Orkut is the first example that comes to my mind). It isn’t the case on MySpace, though. People over there are more liberal in this sense. So, only leave a comment or send a private message if you feel it’s important — or if the person you’re about to add clearly states on their profile that they require it before adding back. On the other hand, if someone takes the initiative to add you, it would be a nice idea to leave them a “thank you for adding me” message after adding them back; this is a common practice at MySpace.

If the first people you’ve added have very specific interests, chances are their existing friends share such interests. So don’t forget to explore their friends lists. Better yet: explore the comments left by their friends. By reading their messages you’ll see who’s been active lately and what they are into.

Speaking of comments, they are your best choice when you want to promote something. After all, they are public, that is, they may be viewed by people who aren’t your friends. Besides, they tend to stand out when compared to bulletins. there is a very simple reason for this: bulletins are too easy to send and reach all friends at once, whereas comments must be posted on an individual basis; as a result, there uses to be much more bulletins than comments on MySpace. Guess which ones have more chances of being read?

Absolutely do not exaggerate when promoting your stuff. Treat your friends as friends. Be nice to the others if you want them to be nice to you. If someone sent you spammy bulletins every single day, how would you feel? Think very carefully about it before sending any messages.

If del.icio.us is not the best social media site ever, it’s certainly very close to it. Oddly enough, it is ignored by most meta-bloggers. I suppose it’s due to the apparent difficulty to make it onto the site’s main page. Well, those short-sighted bloggers don’t know what they are missing.

Think about a subject, preferably using only one word to define it; if that’s not possible, write the needed words together or join them with hyphens. This will generate a tag. Now type the following on your browser: http://del.icio.us/tag/yourchosentag . Chances are you will find dozens of links that you wouldn’t see on any search engine’s first result pages. Would you like to have new links on your chosen subject(s) delivered to you regularly, as they are added to del.icio.us? Just scroll down the page and subscribe to its feed. Or add the following to your feed reader: http://del.icio.us/rss/tag/yourchosentag .

By taking these simple steps, you will keep yourself up-to-date on a plethora of topics, find brand new/forgotten/obscure sites, detect new and ongoing trends, get inspiration for more articles and so on. Wouldn’t your site or blog benefit from it?

If you’re into link listing, del.icio.us will help you get things going. Bookmark the links you want to include on your next list and make sure to add to each of them a special tag to help you distinguish them from the unrelated ones. You could use, for instance, “list23,” “linklist4,” “my-next-post” etc. When you are ready to compile your list, you’ll quickly find in a single place all the links you need by just clicking on the pre-defined tag.

For those who just can’t stand spammers anymore, here’s yet one more reason to favour del.icio.us over other social media sites: the site’s users can’t send you any messages. They can, at the very best, send you links by using a “for:username” tag. But rest assured that most users don’t care at all for this feature. You’d hardly get bombarded by undesired links.

Note: I haven’t been paid to write this enthusiastic review. Unfortunately.

This is my entry for Aaron Stroud’s group writing project on del.icio.us.

- Is it only me, or is Sphinn a relatively closed community? Whenever I visit it, I see that most hot topics have been submitted by the same small group of users. I know Sphinn is certainly not as huge as, say, Digg; this might partially justify the lack of variation. Still I wonder how the apparent dominance of a few members could discourage the participation of newcomers?

- That inevitably leads me to other questions: why do sphinners tend to preferably sphinn posts submitted by popular members? Could it be the infamous bandwagon effect? Of course it happens on other social media sites, but on Sphinn it is… well, more visible.

- Once I was the first person to sphinn a certain post and then I saw a popular member regreting it that he wasn’t the first one, implying that the article would hardly go hot, despite its quality. Guess what? He was right. Interesting, huh?

- When will Sphinn make the Category Feeds available? WHEN?!

- By the way, try subscribing to the New Topics Feed if you feel that things are just too quiet on your feed reader. Trust me: the Hot Topics Feed won’t do it. Go for the whole lot. You’ll not only find some hidden gems that will never go hot, but also have an amazing source of research and inspiration right before your eyes.

This is my entry for Simonne’s group writing project on Sphinn.

The main reason why I opened an account at Digg was my will to help some fellow webmasters and bloggers. As you all know, Digg is seen as a vital source of traffic by many people. Consequently, I’m often asked to digg various articles.

I don’t take all requests, though. The time-sensitive ones (”Please digg my post within the next 20 minutes!”) are the worst for me, because for some obscure reason I’m never online when such requests are released. Normally I read them a few minutes after the dealine is over, so I always feel bad for not having been able to help.

There are also other reasons why I may say “no” when someone asks me to digg their stuff. But the truth is that there have been many requests which I have declined although I could have perfectly taken them. The problem here is that I’m really not a Digg fan, therefore I avoid visiting that site. To be more specific, I don’t like its community. And considering that it’s a social site, i. e., a site (supposedly) driven by its community, I think that’s a very serious issue. I don’t foresee any possibility to overcome my ill-will towards it in the near future. I just can’t stand all that childishness and rudeness. When I visit Digg, I spend most of my time burying the silly comments I find over there, instead of searching for interesting headlines. It tells a lot on my feelings about most diggers.

I know, I know, there are some cool people at Digg too. However, they seem to be… well, buried among the not so cool ones.

This post is my entry for Vivien’s group writing project on Digg and Reddit.

I know some great Mixx enthusiasts (most notably Tad from SEO 2.0) and I can relate to their enthusiasm. Mixx does look like a refreshing alternative to Digg. At least its community is still not polluted by radical types.

I prefer its design over Digg’s one. It appears “friendlier,” although I can’t really explain why I have this sensation. Maybe it has something to do with their colour scheme. The tags right below their search box are very convenient for the casual bored visitor who just wants some quick suggestions on what to look for. And I really must highlight one of the coolest features available to their users: the ability to organise and join groups. It helps you find and compile links to stuff you are truly interested in.

With all that being said, I have never become an active Mixx user. I visit the site from time to time and occasionally vote for some stuff. But I never got to develop a true passion for it. Why?

I guess it is a sort of “Digg fatigue.” I’ve seen so many annoying and even disgusting things taking place at Digg, that I simply can’t feel that enthusiastic about similar sites. In fact, I’m a bit pessimistic when it comes to the future of Mixx’s community. I’m not sure it’ll remain as welcoming as it currently is. It may sound silly, but that’s how I feel. I know I may be missing some nice experiences by not embracing Mixx as I could. And perhaps things won’t go as wrong as I think they will. Anyway, for the time being I won’t change my behaviour.

This post is my entry for Pearl’s group writing project on Mixx, Propeller and Squidoo.

First of all, let me tell you that everything in this post will be written from a strictly personal point of view. I won’t imply in any way that my thoughts are also the thoughts of your other visitors. It’s very possible that I belong to the minority, that is, most of your visitors may act in a totally different way when it comes to submitting your stuff to Digg. On the other hand, it doesn’t mean that no one else in the world thinks like me. So try to see this post as an opportunity to get to understand some of your visitors’ behaviour a little better. After reading it you may either ignore my words or feel motivated to implement some small changes on your site in order to get more diggs.

Now that I’ve made you read this boring — yet necessary — introduction, let’s go straight to the 2 reasons why I probably won’t digg your stuff:

1. I’d hardly be the first person to Digg any given story. Don’t count on me to do it, unless your story is clearly suited to any Digg category. Alternatively you could tell me which category you want me to submit your page to. Why should you do it?  Because Digg’s range of categories is rather limited and, even if I like your stuff a lot, I may have a tough time trying to classify it according to Digg’s standards.

I’m going to insist on it because I feel it’s very important: I often find posts that I’d love to digg. I like promoting good stuff and I sympathise with those who look for more traffic, as I’m one of them. Many people dream of making it into Digg’s front page, and I’d be more than happy to help them if I believed them to deserve it. The point is: no matter how much a story deserves to be promoted, if it doesn’t fit one of Digg’s current categories then things get a bit trickier. Submitting off-topic content is a violation of Digg’s TOS (have you ever taken the time to read it?). While your stories may not be exactly off-topic, sometimes it may be (very) hard to tell where they’d fall under. So, please help me help you, if you know what I mean.

2. Are you asking me to digg actual stories?  I’ve seen many forum threads where webmasters, bloggers and marketers require and exchange diggs. Many of the links listed in such threads don’t lead you to stories, but rather to homepages or, even worse, to sales pages! How can you expect me to digg those? They just don’t fit Digg’s purposes, audience and topics.

A final note: no, writing about Digg doesn’t necessarily mean that one wants to have her post dugg.

As you all should know, this year’s theme for the Blog Action Day is the environment. However, as I feared, many bloggers decided to take advantage of this event to show just how indifferent they are to this subject.

Their reasoning is simple:

1. I find out that an important event will take place on the blogosphere.

2. I realise I should participate because that will give me another chance to promote my blog.

3. Since I don’t really care for all this environmental blah blah, when the day comes I blatantly express my skepticism and/or indifference in my post. I state that “I’m only blogging about it because I don’t have anything better to write about today.” Or I explain why I think this global warming issue is just for the silly.

4. My post turns out to be controversial. Controversy is good for my blog. I’m going to get more visitors!

5. If someone criticises me for my attitude, I tell him/her that I’m entitled to an opinion just like everyone else. Oh, and I make sure to sound dry and/or sarcastic.

6. Hopefully this will make some people angry, they’ll try to reply back and the controversy will continue. More visitors! More exposure!

See? It’s so easy, isn’t it?

Perhaps too easy.

If you think your readers are all naif and won’t be able to notice your real intentions… think again. And know that such behaviour may even hurt your reputation and make you lose visitors, no matter the initial surge of traffic generated by your pre-made controversy.

Keep in mind that if you want to blog for a cause, you should be truly interested in it. Otherwise, look for another cause to support. Or just don’t support any at all. Blog about things you care for and believe in. And don’t make us readers feel like we’ve been fooled by a blogger who is only worried about his/her own stuff.