Transcription
Social media has officially changed. Whether you're a brand or a creator, there are new content strategies that are outperforming everything else. Because the truth is, we've entered a brand new era for social media.
Now, I know this because I spend all day on the cutting edge of content and marketing. I have a million followers. I've done billions of views. Now, I've studied thousands of the top outlier videos across every niche. And here's what I found that was super surprising. It turns out there are nine content attributes responsible for all the top performing videos. These are the only things that matter when it comes to getting more views and converting more customers. And once you know to look for these nine things, it will completely change the way you approach the social media game.
So, in this video, I'm going to break all nine of them down. These are the nine most important aspects of content that if you focus on will unlock massive social media growth for any business in any niche. Okay. Okay. Now, by the end of this video, I'm going to give you a nine item checklist that you can use to gauge if your content ideas and process is actually working.
Now, before I break down the nine content attributes, let me just explain the two different buckets they fall into. There's really only two aspects that matter when it comes to generating attention. There's getting it, and then there's holding it. When you make content, the first step is actually getting your videos in front of the right people initially. But that's only half the battle because then in order to have those videos resonate and get the person to take some action, you got to lock them in and hold that attention for as long as you can.
So when you're playing the social media game, there's really two questions you should focus on. First, how do I get my content in front of more people initially? And then second, once I get it in front of them, how do I hold them on it and get them to watch it for longer? And answering both of these questions is the key to winning on social media.
Okay, so why do these buckets matter? While I mentioned those nine magical content attributes, four of them are responsible for getting the initial attention and the other five are responsible for holding that attention. Now, for the rest of this video, I'm going to explain each of those nine attributes, give you tactical tips and examples for what they all mean, and then at the end, I'm going to go through my exact process for using this nine-step content checklist to come up with winning content ideas every single time.
Okay, let's get started with this first bucket, getting more attention initially. And what I mean by this is literally how do we get more people to come across our video in the first place? To get more people to see our content initially, all we have to do is convince the algorithm to push us more on the feed. And I know that sounds stupidly simple because it is. Social media is now completely feed. It's for you all the way down. And that means the only thing that determines if we get in front of someone is if the algorithm puts us there.
Now, this is a blessing and a curse. The curse is that we have to make content the algorithm likes or it won't push us and we lose. The blessing is that I know exactly how to make the algorithm like us and I'm going to tell you right now. So to figure out how to get the algorithm to like us and know what type of content to make, we have to understand what the incentives are of the algorithm.
Now algorithms only want one thing, more ad revenue. Their only goal is to make more money for their parent platform. That's why they were built. Now, to get more ad revenue, all the algorithm needs is more user minutes. And that's the key metric of this whole thing. The more minutes that users spend scrolling on the platform, the more ads the algorithm can slot in, the more money the platforms make. So, user minutes is all the algorithms care about.
Now, user minutes are calculated from just two things. It's very simple. A, the number of users on the platform at a given times B, the number of minutes per session that each user spends on the platform. So, if you have 20,000 users spending 5 minutes per day, that's a 100,000 user minutes per day. And if algorithms are only allowed to slot one ad per 100 user minutes, well, that means they can run a,000 ads per day. Now, you can see why the algorithm wants that 100,000 user minutes to go up as high as possible cuz the higher that goes, the more ads they can run. So, if we want the algorithm to push our stuff more, all we have to figure out is how to make our content so that it helps the algorithm get more user minutes. Make sense?
Okay. So if user minutes is just those two variables, users and minutes, what type of content increases each of those? Let's start with number of users. Now, how might our videos help increase the number of users on a platform? Well, the number of users goes up when our content is shared externally and brings a new user onto the platform to create a new session. For example, if there are a million people on Instagram at a given moment, how does that number go up to a million and one? Well, the main way is that one of those million share a piece of content either through DM or text with somebody not on the platform. They see a notification, they click it, and then they join. So shares are the biggest reason why number of users goes up. Remember that.
Now, the other variable that matters to the algorithm is user minutes per session. Again, this is basically how many minutes does every user spend on average every time they open the app. Now, these sessions get longer when users are liking and enjoying the things they're watching, obviously. So the metric responsible for driving longer session times is called watch time or average viewer duration. And this is basically for every video, how long is the average viewer watching it? What is the length in terms of number of seconds or minutes? The longer the better. So really the only two metrics the algorithm cares about are shares to bring more people in and average watch time to keep more people in. Those multiplied together equals user minutes.
Now, here's where things get tactical and where the nine content attributes come into play. The algorithms are measuring both shares and user minutes on every single video individually. And when it detects a video that has a ton of shares and a long AVD, it realizes that that means more user minutes. And so it pushes that video more to more people. Interesting. So that means if we want the algorithm to push us more to get more initial attention, all we need to do is make content that gets more shares. And if we want to hold that attention for longer, all we need to do is make content with longer AVD.
Now, I'll talk about AVD in a second when we break down the five attributes that map to holding attention. For now, for this first part, we are laser focused on getting more shares because more shares equals more initial push. So, the question really is this. How do we make sure our content drives maximum shares so that the algorithm pushes it more? And this is where we get to the first four content attributes. Each of these variables is super important for maximizing the number of shares on your content.
Okay. Now, the first content attribute that drives more shares is called TAM resonance. And TAM resonance answers this question. How big is the audience that would find this video interesting and resonate with the concept? TAM is just a fancy abbreviation for total addressable market. What is the total addressable number of views that this topic might be able to get? Now, the reason TAM matters is because the algorithm is only going to push videos to profiles that it thinks will like it. even if the shares in AVD are super high. A technical science video is never going to get pushed to someone who likes watching makeup tutorials because they know it won't resonate.
Now, to understand TAM, let's go through a very simple example. Let's say I make sports or hobby content. If I could make a video about fly fishing or a video about basketball, which one would have the bigger TAM? The answer is basketball. In total, there are about 8 million people that like fly fishing and 30 million people that like basketball. So, basketball has a tam that is 3.75 times bigger than fly fishing. What that means is that if you were to make a similarly effective video on both, the basketball one would have a 3.7 times bigger TAM and a higher likelihood of getting more shares. Now, this matters because people only share things they like and are interested in. So, TAM has a huge factor in the amount of share potential you might be able to generate. If you want to get more shares and unlock more free algo push, you want to pick ideas that have large tams.
Now, if you're a business owner and you have a specific set of products and services you sell, you don't want to make videos about unrelated topics just because they have a huge tam. This obviously makes no sense and your core customers will not resonate with that content at all. So, the sweet spot is to find ways to talk about topics inside your niche while maximizing the highest possible TAM. And here are two of the best tactics for doing that.
The first one is to go for a broader and more simplified premise of your idea because TAM resonance is directly correlated to the percent of people that understand what you're saying. So for example, if you make chemistry content, which of these ideas has a simpler premise? A, what would happen if we added a new element to the periodic table? Or B, let's explore the chemical bonding properties of veence electrons. Which of those has a simpler premise? Even with a chemistry audience, unless they're insanely advanced, it's just easier for more people to wrap their head around the experiment of adding a new element than veence electrons. And if you're watching this and have no idea what a veence electron is, that's exactly my point. So, the first way to expand your TAM resonance is to pick topics and premises that are simpler and broader. So, the surface area of understanding goes up.
Now, the second way to increase your TAM while staying in the niche is called cult hopping. Call hopping is using a famous celebrity brand or movement to increase the surface of resonance in what you're talking about. Maybe you do choose to talk about veence electrons. Good luck. But you do it comparing the electrons to the way that a famous DJ creates his music. While fewer people will understand the electrons part, a bigger percentage may resonate with the DJ and be able to connect the dots on the metaphor. Cold hopping is an extremely effective tool to expand the TAM, but it's also extremely disadvantageous if you do it the wrong way. For example, forcing a Trump or Elon reference that has nothing to do with the topic doesn't actually help you even though a lot of people know those names. So, you don't want to force a cult hop reference to work. But, if you can fit it in, it can be extremely helpful for broadening the TAM. If you want to increase shares, you should look for content ideas that by default have a large TAM and therefore will resonate with a lot of people. Bigger TAM equals more shares, which equals more algo push.
Okay. The second content attribute that matters for driving more shares is idea explosivity. And idea explosivity refers to how shocking or unusual the idea or frame is. I like to measure all ideas with a shock score from 1 to 100. The higher the score, the more explosively the video will be shared. Now, why does shock factor matter so much when it comes to shareworthiness? While TAM measures the amount of people that could share, idea explicity measures the likelihood that people will share. The truth is, people share when they feel an emotional pull to do so. And I'll explain more about that in a minute. But just know the most visceral share emotion is shock. So if you can make someone feel heavy shock, they're likely to share.
Now shock is just the difference between current belief and some new reality that you introduce in the content. Because whenever people are watching something, they come into the session with some baseline expectation on a topic. The bigger the delta between their base expectation and the thing you share in the video, the greater the shock. And the greater the shock, the higher the likelihood that they share. Now, most people only share one to three pieces of content per day max. Sometimes they only share like one per week. And the things they choose to share are the things that drive the most emotion. Shock being the strongest. So, your goal is to pick content ideas and frames where you can engineer the most shock possible.
Now, like I said, typically shock comes from some non-obvious take or premise that you're able to introduce. The topic might be ordinary, but the take or lens you apply on top of it is what makes the shock come. For example, recently I considered making a video about tech enabled smart contacts that you wear for your eyes. And here's how I thought about engineering the shock for that video. First, I try to figure out what the baseline common understanding would be about the topic. In this case, contacts for the eye. And that baseline is very simple. It's pretty close to people just knowing that contacts help you see better when you put them on. Very simple baseline. So, if I made a video about clear contacts that had some tech innovation that helped people see a little bit further and a little bit stronger, that would probably have a shock score of somewhere around 10 to 15 out of 100. And even if you're listening to me say that right now, you probably wouldn't even think to want to watch that or share it. It's cuz the explosivity of the idea is just too low.
Now, if I made a video about a small group of people in San Francisco all wearing red contacts as part of some satanic ritual, well, now the shock score of the idea is starting to go up. Maybe it's at 30 to 40 out of 100. More shareworthy, but still not maxed out enough to make. But if I made the video about contacts that give people night vision and allow them to still see when their eyes are closed, all of a sudden that shock score goes up to 85 or 90 because that is so far from the base premise of just clear contacts that people see. And it's shocking because the difference is so large. Now, I made that video about the night vision context and it got two million views in three days. So, that's an example of how to take a base idea and engineer more shock through the contrast idea explosivity. The higher the shock score, the more explosively the video will be shared, the more the algo will push it.
And guys, before I dive into this third one, if you're a business owner and you like the way that I explain and break down these concepts, you're going to want to join Wavy World. It is a completely free community that I built specifically for entrepreneurs trying to get better with content. We have over 60 free tutorials, guides, trainings, and there's 30,000 entrepreneurs in there, all helping each other, giving feedback, working together in groups to improve their content. Like I said, it's completely free. I've got an invite link in the description if you want to join.
All right, the third content attribute responsible for driving more shares is called emotional magnitude. And this is gauging how large of an emotional response on a scale from 1 to 100 does this video idea create. Just like idea explosivity, emotional magnitude is the other factor in gauging how strong a pull someone will have to want to share. And the reason this works is super simple. Emotional magnitude measures the intensity of the emotion felt when the viewer watches. And here's why this matters. The deeper the emotion that's felt, the higher the likelihood someone will have to want to share.
Now, why is this? People share because they want to get social or professional credit from the person they shared to. If you share something funny with a group chat, deep down you're doing it because you want to offer a shared experience, someone laughing with you, but also you want the subconscious social credit of being known as someone who is funny. This is the core driver for why people share. They see something that is cute, funny, shocking, or sad, and they want the credit for curating that emotion with others. Emotionally driven content is the easiest way to drive shares because it triggers a feeling that is easy to communicate.
Now, the most shareworthy emotions are shock, fear, anxiety, and sadness. It's all the negative ones. These are followed by happiness and joy. The fear-based and negative emotions typically get a more visceral reaction. I don't make the rules. That's just how it works in psychology.
Now, tactically, the way you drive a bigger emotional response in your content is by the following. A. Showing visuals where the subject in the visuals is showing the emotion you want the viewer to feel. B using music and sound effects to vibe match the desired emotion. C. Delivering your words in a tone and pacing that match the desired emotion. And D using trigger words, specific words that match the desired emotion. So, for example, if I wanted to make a piece of content that drove a fear-based emotion, I might do the following. Use tense, fast-paced music with minor chords. Say things like, "This is going to change the future of X. Everyone needs to look for it." Or show visual clips where the subject, maybe me, maybe someone else, looks visually scared and anxious.
When I evaluate content ideas, I am assessing the potential emotional magnitude on a scale of 1 to 100. Specifically, how many people out of 100 can I get to feel that emotion at a high intensity? I can't guarantee they share, but if I get enough people to feel the desired emotion, a high percentage of them will. Now, the best most shareworthy ideas are typically 80 to 90 out of 100 on this emotional magnitude spectrum. To assess this, you watch the content and you just feel how strongly you feel the desired emotion.
All right. Now, the last content attribute that drives shares is novelty. And this one makes a lot of sense when you just think about it for a second. To build on my previous point about sharing to get credit, if you're the fifth one to share the same funny meme, chances are the recipient is not going to think it's funny the fifth time and they won't give you that subconscious funny guy credit. Because of that, you know this and won't share the meme the fifth time. This means as the creator trying to get you to share the meme, there is a massive premium on being the first one to make content about a topic.
Now, novelty comes from being first or different when covering a story. So, when you're assessing which content ideas to make, you want to try to figure out, will I be one of the first to cover this, or do I have a different take or premise that'll make it feel like I'm the first? If you're just making content reacting to news-based stuff and you're 5 days late on the news, chances are you're not going to get a lot of shares because many people have already seen that story before. In these cases, if you really want to make that content idea, you want to add a novel frame or premise to make it feel remixed, like you are the first one to cover it in this new way.
All right, so those are the four content attributes that matter the most for driving shares. And if you drive more shares, the algorithm is just going to push your stuff in front of more viewers for free. In other words, unlocking more of that initial attention. Now, like we said, this is only half the equation because the other half is actually being able to hold that attention once you get it. So, now we're going to walk through the other five content attributes that all map to how do you hold attention better.
But before we do that, as I was walking through those first four pieces, you heard me mention the same phrase over and over again. When you're picking your content ideas, you need to look for X. And this should tip you off. The secret to building a content system and an engine that crushes every time is picking and developing the right ideas to make. All the sauce is an idea selection and development. This is why Mr. Beast on YouTube says ideas are everything. I'm saying ideas for social media are everything. Ideas are the most important thing.
Now, the absolute best way to pick and develop ideas is using Sandcastles.ai. This is the AI content tool I've been building from scratch for the last 2 years to completely automate the social media content workflow. Sandcastle allows you to track all of the top creators in your niche and then analyze their top performing videos. Once you have all their videos in one place, you can sort by outlier score to find the winners. For each of those winners, chances are they were highly optimized across these nine content variables that I'm talking about. By using sand castles, it makes it way faster to find the winning ideas, get them in one place so that you can analyze and figure out how they won. From there, you can remix and then script your own version either manually with chat or you could use Sandcastle's script writer. Now, if you tried the initial version of Sandcastles, we were just focused on script writing initially, but we just launched the V2 and it covers both ideas and scripts. We're building the full end-to-end AI content workflow for short form video. And now it is officially the best tool in the space for ideas and scripts. If you want to try it out and see a full breakdown of how to set this up, go to sandcastle.ai.
All right, so far we covered the first four content attributes for triggering shares and getting the algorithm to push you more. That's how you get more attention initially. Now, we're on the other side of the equation, holding that attention. It's not enough to just get initial impressions. We need the viewer to watch and engage long enough so that we can implant our message so they take some action. And like I said earlier, the best content metric for measuring how well we're holding attention is average viewer duration. In other words, how long are viewers actually watching our videos. If you look at analytics on any social platform, they actually give you the watch graph. You can see where people are falling off and they show this to you because it's an extremely important metric to gauge how well you're holding attention.
Okay. And there are five more content attributes that we can make sure are in our content to increase that average viewer duration. If you make content that optimizes for these five things, you will have a lot more success on social media and YouTube.
Okay, the first content variable for holding attention is speed to value. And this one is super simple. How fast can you tease the value that is incoming over the rest of the video? If you were to take a stopwatch and start it just as the video begins, how many seconds does it take for the viewer to understand what the incoming value might be? The more compressed you can make that timeline, the longer you'll be able to hold the viewer for the rest of the video. And the reason for this is because value clarity is the number one reason why viewers hang on and keep watching. If you promise to help with something they need, they will wait to hear it.
Now, every additional second that goes by in a video, you're losing 5 to 10% of your viewers. So, the difference in value clarity coming in the third versus the 8th second is like 30 to 40% of the viewers. Now, the way you improve speed to value is being extremely deliberate with your hooks. Absolutely zero fluff. The first sentence needs to have context clarity on what the video is actually about. Ideally, this sentence is as short as possible and can set up the incoming value from there. At the very worst, the second sentence should be the one that teases the value.
Now, here's a quick exercise you can use to audit your scripts to make sure you're doing speed to value well. Read your scripts line by line and ask yourself this question after every single line. Is it clear what the value is going to be for the rest of this video? If it's clear after just one sentence, awesome. You win. If it's clear after two sentences, that'll work as well. Anything longer than two sentences is too long. Cut the fluff and bring the value forward.
All right. The second content variable responsible for holding a viewer longer is curiosity amplitude. And this just means how curious can you make the viewer on a scale of 1 to 100. Curiosity is the thing that keeps everybody watching. And what's actually happening in the viewer subconscious is that they're getting fixated on some question in their brain. That open question is like a loop in their head that they need to close. Now, typically they will stay on the video as long as their attention remains on that open loop and they don't get distracted by something else.
Now, this open question in their brain can either be stated directly by you or it can be implied by some facts that you share. Either way, it will create the opening and that's what they'll think about. Now, the amplitude, the size of that curiosity comes from how badly they want the answer to that question. The closer the question is to a pain point they're experiencing, the longer they're going to be willing to wait for the answer. For example, if you get a question to pop in a viewer's head, but it's kind of trivial or surface level, well, then their attention is going to be extremely fragile. Any small distraction might be able to pull them away. But on the other hand, for a question specifically related to the pain point they're experiencing most, they're going to sit through a lot of distractions and you're going to be able to hold that attention.
So, I found the easiest way to ratchet up that curiosity amplitude is to figure out what pain points your ideal viewer avatar has and then intentionally place a rhetorical question directly into their brain. For example, you'll notice in a lot of my videos, I say this, if you're trying to grow on social media, this is the number one question that should be on your mind. And then I'll say the question. I'm doing this specifically because I'm trying to implant that question in your mind because I know that's the thing that will hold you for the longest.
All right, the third content variable which helps increase average viewer duration is absorption rate. And specifically, this maps to the percentage of words per second that are being understood by the viewer. The truth is, you cannot implant an idea or question in someone's mind unless they actually understand what you're saying. The more they understand you, the better chance you have of getting that idea to hold. Absorption and curiosity go hand in hand. It's hard for a viewer to stay curious if they're only comprehending half the words you're saying.
Here are a couple quick tactics for how to increase absorption rate. First, use the simplest words possible. Second, use the simplest phrasing possible with the fewest possible words. This puts less load on the brain when they're listening to a sentence. Third, pair your words with visuals to give the viewer two chances to understand what you're saying. A picture is worth a thousand words. You got to give them some.
All right, the fourth content variable that maps to AVD is called rehook rate. A rehook is a second curiosity loop being reopened in the viewer's brain at some point throughout the video. In short form videos, this happens anywhere around the 20 to 25 second mark. In YouTube videos, this typically happens every 3 or 4 minutes. Here's why rehooking is so important. Remember when I said that curiosity loops are vital to get the viewer to stay locked in? Well, it turns out unless you absolutely nail that most important question in the viewer's mind, there's a half-life on their attention. It's decaying and they're just going to get distracted and bounce. If you open a curiosity loop but then take 55 seconds to arrive at the answer, chances are unless you nailed that question, they're not going to be paying attention by the end, a better way to hold their attention is to create many open and close loops throughout the same video.
So, for example, I'll open an initial curiosity loop in the hook and then around 20 to 25 seconds, I'll either close that loop or I'll jump to a new loop and restart the process. If you're able to do this successfully, you basically buy yourself another 25 seconds of fresh attention. And if you continue doing this over and over and over in the video, it's kind of like hitting the booster in the video game before your car runs out of gas.
Now, to build effective rehooks, you need to analyze the idea holistically and figure out what the best open loop questions might be. Use the best one first as the initial hook for the video and then use the second best one 20 to 25 seconds in. Typically, contrasting words like but or however are great ways to transition and hop from one to the other. So you might do something to close that first loop and then say some transitional sentence like this. But the truth is the bigger problem is actually this. You're hopping from one to the other.
Okay. The last content variable that matters for retention is called stickiness. And this one goes handinhand with curiosity magnitude. Stickiness is a measure for how deeply the topic or premise actually matters for this particular viewer. Another word for this might be relevance. If you've nailed their biggest pain point in that curiosity loop, there's a good chance they're going to hold and watch the entire video. But if they aren't really facing the problem you're talking about, chances are the video is not going to be very sticky and they're going to bounce. Again, this bucket of five variables was all about figuring out how to hold attention for as long as possible. The way to increase stickiness, and honestly, most of these things, is to identify the most important pain points for the viewer and stick to those when you make content topics. Those topics will have embedded stickiness and allow you to just hold them longer by default.
Okay, so those were the five most important content attributes for holding viewer attention once you get it initially. And as a recap, they were speed to value, curiosity amplitude, absorption rate, rehook rate, and stickiness. Now remember, these matter a ton because if we can make content that gets our viewer to watch for longer, that will increase the AVD, which increases user minutes, which makes the algorithm push our stuff more. And when the algorithm pushes our stuff more, it gives us more chances to get more shares and more AVD. Everything is connected together in this viral loop.
Again, I want to just end the video with this. The way you actually solve for these nine things and figure out how to incorporate them into your content is identifying the winning outlier videos in your space and how they are incorporating these nine things in their content. So, this is exactly what I do with my team. We open up Sandcastles. We create the channel list with all the top creators in our niche and we study their outlier videos. We open the videos tab. We look at the best performing videos from the last 1 or 3 months and then we run through this nine-step checklist to gut check how good or bad each execution was.
So, we open an idea and we say, "Okay, for this idea, why did it win? Did it have a massive TAM? Did it have a high degree of idea explosivity? Did it have high emotional resonance? Was it novel given the take or timing? And then we look at the execution. Was the value teased quick enough? How curiosityinducing was the initial hook? How well were we absorbing the words and concepts? Did they rehook us well and when? And did this idea feel sticky to us as the core viewer? We're running that n-step checklist every time as a filter that we run every idea through. And then this is the most important part. We're identifying white space and potential gaps in the execution. So maybe we find an idea that did an amazing job at driving shock and it was novel as the first one covering it, but the execution around the curiosity and the absorption rate were just really low. Now we know the video still did well, but what if we take what they did well, improve on the gaps, and remake it for oursel? Will that work better? The answer is almost always yes. This process is called idea mining and development. And if you're not doing it, you're leaving a ton of potential growth on the table. This is what all the top creators and media brands are doing. Hopefully, now that you see my process and how I approach that ninestep checklist, everything's starting to make sense for how you should run that as a filter for your content ideas. And remember, the only way to do that is to get all the best performers from other people in your space in one place. And Sand Castles is the only way to do that today.
All right, guys. That is all I've got for this video. As a recap, we covered a lot of ground. We broke down the nine most important content attributes for making sure we're getting and holding attention. Now, as a recap of the nine, on the getting attention side, we covered TAM, idea, explosivity, emotional resonance, and novelty. And on the holding side, we covered speed to value, curiosity, magnitude, absorption rate, rehook rate, and stickiness. Now, again, these matter because these are the most important attributes at driving shares, and longer AVD. And those are the two metrics that are the biggest drivers for the algorithm to push videos.
As always guys, I'm trying my best to make these absolute banger videos to just give you the non-obvious answers and advice that nobody else is covering. If you like this stuff, the absolute best way you can support me is just subscribe to the channel. And also, like I mentioned earlier, I created a completely free community for business owners called Wavy World. There's 30,000 entrepreneurs in there, 60 free guides and trainings. It's completely free. I've got an invite link below. There's no reason you shouldn't join if you care about getting better with content. All right, guys. That's it for this one. We'll see you on the next video. Peace.