Transcription
Imagine your next video's retention is so high, your video is guaranteed to go viral. I want that for you. So, I've taken my eight years of experience on YouTube writing scripts, editing videos, and investigating what goes viral, and I've boiled it down into six components.
The first component is to stop trimming down your videos to just the parts your audience actually wants to see. Obviously, you need to be giving your viewers value, but there's another often even more important thing your videos need to do. Here, let me show you an example from this video. This paragraph is the valuable lesson that my audience wants. So, what am I talking about in the first paragraph? Let's take a look. I want you to look at this. There's a problem here.
This is the timeline of a typically edited YouTube video. A couple cuts have removed the unnecessary bits. There was a tangent here that wasn't really relevant to the video's greater purpose. These cuts removed pauses and these removed bad takes. But in its current form, this video is doomed to fall short of its potential. The reason is this video isn't using its visuals to maximize attention. That first paragraph is where I reveal a problem. And then in the second paragraph, I give a lesson on how to solve it.
Now, imagine if I didn't state the problem first and instead got straight into teaching the lesson. There wouldn't be any curiosity or expectations, so whatever I say will just be boring information rather than being an answer to the viewer's questions or problems. Are you doing that? Do your videos just get straight into talking about or doing random stuff? Or do you first make sure the viewer cares about what you're talking about or doing? You see, it's obvious to you or to me as the creator what makes things valuable, but to the audience, they don't actually know until you tell them.
So, here's my formula. I color code my scripts to make sure the viewer always cares so much about what I'm saying that they can't possibly stop watching. In these green sections, I give the reason to watch. I explain the problem, share a mystery, give a question, or create an expectation. Then, in these purple sections, I reveal the answers.
Now, this formula isn't just used for my videos. It's used everywhere. Here, look at this video from Ryan Tran. The intro is of course going to be a green section to get you to care about what he's going to do in the video. So, do you remember what the green sections are? It's when you introduce the problem, question or mystery. Which one does Ryan do?
"This is the loneliest house in the world. Oh, it's so lonely. No, there are tons of conspiracy theories around it. Like, like some people think a billionaire built this place in case of a zombie apocalypse. Some people think it's like a religious cult. But most people just want to move here and get away from their problems."
To get the viewers's attention, he says the facts that create a mystery. The loneliest house in the world has a ton of conspiracy theories around it, such as a billionaire's zombie apocalypse hideout or a religious cult. So tell me, what question does this create? It makes you ask, what is the true purpose of the world's loneliest house? And that question gives the viewer a reason to watch the video.
Okay, cool. But that was just one method to create curiosity. There's actually four methods. So, get your notes ready because you're going to use these a lot from now on. First, you can create a mystery like what Ryan did in that video. Or it could be a problem, question, or some obstacle that lacks an answer. Second, you can say something counterintuitive. For example, look at this video. You wouldn't expect the smaller asteroids to be the ones to worry about. So, this is something that's surprising and it makes you curious. Third, you can reveal that someone knows a secret. Make it seem like someone's hiding something that's really important. And fourth, you can suggest that there's a missing component or something important that you haven't yet considered.
Now, this first one is the secret to turning your boring videos into highly captivating stories that get millions of views. So, let's look at how Ryan does it in this video. Now, first, do you remember how I use that green purple formula for my videos? I go problem, solution, problem, solution. For the videos I made on my previous channel where I talked about my favorite video game, Terraria, I did question answer. Question answer. But the thing is with Ryan's video, he's not giving information. He is he's doing things in the video. So how do we apply that green purple formula to a video where you're doing something? Well, that was actually initially a a big weak point with Ryan's video. You see, the reason to watch the video is to see him explore the world's loneliest house. So, what's the problem? Here's the plot of the video. Try to spot the weak point.
Ryan gets ready for the trip. "Ready?" Then he takes the boat to the island, jumps from the boat onto the island, climbs up to the house, and then explores the area. Do you see the problem here? The viewer only cares about seeing Ryan explore the world's loneliest house. But the first half of the video is the journey to the house. So, how's Ryan going to keep all the viewers watching during the first half of the video? Simple. He needs to make the viewer care about the journey as well. How? Well, Ryan's really a genius. Take a look at the rest of that intro.
"This trip is said to be extremely dangerous. And locals say you'd have to be stupid to try to go with no experience, which really only leaves one man for this job. Hello. Hello. Clearly, I'm not prepared for a country named Iceland."
He says that the journey is really dangerous and then throughout the video makes himself out to be very unprepared. "Just gave me a bunch of clothes cuz I wasn't prepared." Therefore, his safety and success becomes uncertain which makes the journey to the world's loneliest house become just as interesting as the house itself. Write that down. Intrigue comes from uncertainty.
Okay, good. Now, I need you to recognize this for yourself in the next example. So, take a look at when Ryan jumps from the boat onto the island. That plot point of Ryan jumping is a purple section. Now, I need you to notice the green section before it.
"So, this is the part of the video where I can never really illustrate how scared I am and like just how dangerous this is for someone like me who has no experience doing anything, but I have to jump off of this boat over the icy, deathly waters. I hope I don't fall. Ready? Ready?"
Did you see that? He tells us that he's scared, it's dangerous, he's inexperienced, the water is freezing cold, and then hints at the end that he might fall. Imagine if he didn't say any of that before jumping without knowing the stakes and what could go wrong. It wouldn't be entertaining. Well, actually, he didn't say any of that in the recording. That green section was actually a voice over that he added during the editing process. You see, after recording the footage for a video, Ryan follows a three-part limus test to identify what to cut out and what voiceovers to add. This is how he makes the viewers care about each and every second of his videos. One, the viewer must always know what's happening. Two, they must know why it's important. And three, they must know what could go wrong. The viewer just needs to be told all three things, and then they will watch whatever follows. Sometimes Ryan says those things in the recording, like when he tells us the things that he's concerned about. "I I'm so scared right now. Can I just say that?" And then other times he forgot, so he just adds a voice over. "I'm meeting a man named like or something. I don't know how to pronounce his name."
Okay, I'm moving a little fast here, so let me explain. Now, there's actually a whole another side to this entire thing for both narrative and informative content. Whenever you're trying to get the viewer to care about something that you talk about or do in your video, if you can't create curiosity or expectations, then cut that part out. For example, in Ryan's video, he was able to make the boat ride interesting because there was a chance that things could go wrong. But other parts of the story had no chance of failure, so there wasn't room for any curiosity. Therefore, even if he recorded a lot of footage for that plot point, he would just summarize those parts with a sentence or two of voiceover.
Okay, so after all that, I got to give you a takeaway. I don't really know what to say, so I'm just going to wing it, but basically, you need to figure out what your audience is there to watch, what they're going on YouTube, what like experience they want, what type of conversation topics they're interested in, stuff like that. And then once you've identified that, you want to make sure that you're making it clear in your video with those green sections. Make it clear that you're giving it, make it clear what their expectations should be. Uh, set up some questions using those those methods that I told you. and then cut out anything that's not explicitly what they want. And that's essentially it. Obviously, it takes practice. So, I want to to help you out with that with what I'm offering, but it's basically just just that.
Ryan, for example, he he's not making videos that are too outlandish what he's doing in them. He is he's able to there was even this video he made where it was just him spending like two days in a house with all the lights off. and he was able to turn that into a really captivating story and a great video by just knowing how to to frame things in the right way to make them entertaining. So, you know, you don't need to be doing crazy YouTuber stuff. You just need to know how to present stuff in a more entertaining way using the methods that I told you here. There there's no other secret methods. It's really just about trying to figure out how to do it effectively. And then also with my channel on Yur Steel, I was making $1,000 a month when I was like 15 when I I figured this stuff out. I would just go on the uh game pedia, like the wiki page for the game. I would read all the information on a topic, turn that into a video. All I had to do was make it interesting, find a title and thumbnail that made it interesting, an intro that made people want to know it, just try and get the whole niche interested in that information, and then I was set.
So, yeah, obviously it's really hard to actually uh figure out how to do this effectively. So, I am I have an offer for that, which I'll I'll tell you at the end of the video. But, yeah, I just want to let you know like this is gamechanging for your channel. I'm really excited for you to be able to apply it. And yeah, that's it for for my takeaway. I'll see you in the next component. Um, this is actually I'd recorded and and put together the rest of this video earlier, so it's going to look a little bit different. But anyway, I'll I'll let my past self take it from here and I'll see you at the end of this video where I'll come back. I'll explain what I'm offering.
Okay, I want you to watch this intro over here and then I want you to tell me what you think about it. "Hey, Vsauce, Michael here. This appears blue. This appears yellow and this appears green."
What? Do you want to keep watching that? Why? He's just telling us the colors on a Rubik's cube. And there's not even any video editing in this either. Yeah, this video sucks. Or does it? Because it is the intro of a video with 30 million views. And let's not lie, it was kind of engaging. So, what's making this so interesting? Well, it's that the creator looks and sounds as if he's saying something super important. So, think about your videos. How do you talk in them? Do you sound like you're genuinely excited to share something? Do you speak louder for excitement? Lower your voice for suspense and pause to build anticipation and emphasize key points? Do you raise your eyebrows to show something is interest? Squint slightly to emphasize a key detail, or move your head in sync with your words? Do you shift your hands from one side to the other to visually separate ideas? Do you spread your arms wide to signal something big or pinch the air to indicate something precise? You don't. Well, you got to change that because if you speak in a monotone, then anything you say will feel boring. Whatever emotion you put into your voice is contagious. The viewer will feel it too. And yeah, that means that if you feel uncomfortable talking on camera, then the viewer watching you is going to feel uncomfortable as well. But, you know, that's what's so frustrating because you can talk just fine to your friends, right? But then as soon as you get on camera, "please, please like the video." But don't worry, I've got a shortcut for you to stop being camera shy and become pretty engaging on camera.
You see, when you're saying something to a close friend, 100% of your focus is on just trying to get your point across. But once you're talking to the camera, you get distracted by thoughts like, "Am I speaking fast enough? Am I pausing too much? Am I saying that right?" You get self-conscious. You're focused on yourself rather than on sharing your message. Because you're distracted, you start to lose your train of thought as you're speaking. So, what makes sense to do here is to memorize the words that you need to say so that you say it all correctly. But this makes things worse. Now, you're more focused on getting the words right than on the real meaning behind the words. And that's what causes you to speak in a monotone. How do you fix this? Well, you got to get comfortable with making mistakes on camera. Cuz think about this. What sounds more engaging? You can say your script flawlessly. Every word's perfect. You don't say um you don't say ah. However, the entire recording you're speaking in a monotone. Or does it sound more engaging if you make some mistakes in your speech? You might pause a few times. You say um you say ah, but it sounds like you are really excited to share something. You're you're just giving off the impression that there's something really important and exciting to talk about. Obviously, that second version sounds way more interesting despite the mistakes which you can actually just cut out later. So, what matters here is not trying to look perfect, but instead treat the camera like it's your friend who's really interested about what you're saying. And that's really the big issue here. You you get in front of the camera and you start thinking that there's a big audience watching you or there's like a panel of critics judging you. The issue is when you start to think that, oh, I'm in front of the camera now. Now I have to act different. I have to say things right. But that's not what it's about. It's it's about connecting with each individual viewer as if they were your friend who's interested in what you're saying. And that's what's going to make the viewer feel like you have something really important to share.
There's a problem with your videos and if you don't fix it, your scripts are boring. And this applies to any type of video. And I've been making this mistake the past few sentences. And I hope you noticed because I keep saying and. And the problem isn't just with the word and. The problem is with using and to connect points in your video. Here's what I mean. The creators of South Park discovered that when a story is structured like this happened and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened, it quickly becomes repetitive. But it also creates a bigger issue. It isn't specified how one thing leads to the next. This can be pretty disorienting for the viewer. The video jumps between topics or scenes without a clear connection between them. Your viewer, without a clear path through the video, isn't kept immersed. There's all these exit points where they're free to disengage.
So, here's the far better structure that South Park found. We tried this, but that got in the way. Therefore, we had to do this, but it didn't work. So, we tried this. Whether it's the scenes in a story, the topics in an explanation, or even the individual sentences in a paragraph, this structure makes a massive difference. What this all comes down to is creating a seamless flow throughout each part of your video so that the viewer stays fully immersed from the start to the finish. But that South Park structure isn't the only thing needed to create a seamless journey through your video. There's still one more thing you got to do.
Before I got started with this video, I was curious about something. I wanted to know what is the most common mistake people make in their videos for retention. So, I went to my Discord server at the time and there was a a section for feedback requests. I went through all the videos in there and guess for yourself. What do you think the biggest mistake was? Was it a lack of storytelling? Was it really bad video editing? Was it people speaking in a monotone voice? Or was it something else? Well, it was actually the most basic intuitive thing that you got to be doing with your videos, yet no one was really doing it. The biggest mistake was confusion. I was confused what was happening. And now, if you think that you would never make such an obvious oversight, then you're probably one of the creators doing this here. Let me give you a quick insight into my scripting process. I revisit every part of my video genuinely around a 100 times to find any possible way to make it easier to understand. Because here's the thing, you're biased. When you look at your video, you look at it from a place of having all of the context. You are the expert. You did the research, the filming, the editing. But where is the viewer coming from? A place of zero context. Everything is completely new to them. Therefore, it's way harder for the viewer to keep up with and understand what's happening. And you know, I got to be honest, this is probably why you keep getting disappointed by your view count. You can tell when you upload a video that there's a lot of value there. There's a lot for people to get from it. Yet, people are not enjoying it that much. And therefore, the metrics that YouTube gathers from your video end up being lower, and you don't get the views that your video really could be getting because chances are you already have a good video idea. You're already putting a lot of effort into your videos, a lot of value in there. But the issue is your viewers just aren't able to absorb it. They're not able to understand it that well and therefore the video is lower quality because they're not able to access that value. And really this comes down to communication. And we've already talked about this quite a bit so far with the storytelling lesson which in in summary is just like make sure you're telling the viewer what's going on at all times and what the stakes are, what could go wrong. So if they know all of those details, then they're able to keep up with the story and empathize with you, get a lot more immersed into what's happening. We had that communicating. And that was a big part of communication. But there's a lot more to communication beyond that. I think there is three more things to communication. These are especially important if you make videos like mine that are not a story, but you're explaining something.
First, let's say you're explaining something and you make it clear and concise. Great. You're getting to the point and just saying things simply how they are. Well, that's still going to leave the viewer down there. Why? Try to remember the last time you were learning to play a new game. People could tell you a crystal clear and concise explanation of how to play, but that wasn't good enough. It was a lot to take in, so you forgot some details, and it it just took a few rounds before you really understood the game. The key thing here is that it isn't tangible until you've seen it in action. And it's also hard to wrap your head around if it's totally new to you. So, how do you get the viewer to understand things? You can use an analogy like for example what I did a moment ago when I related the viewer's experience trying to understand your video to your experience learning to play a new game or you can give an example like like what I just did. I gave the example of using an analogy. Those things turn an abstract idea into something vivid for the viewer.
The next thing is to get someone else to watch your video before you post it. I've been doing this for years now, and every single time I get someone pointing out some moment in my video that was either boring or it was confusing. Now, the final thing is something I swear by because it set me apart ever since my previous channel. It's what I do with the visuals. Check this out.
"Your journey begins as you scour the surface for the wooden boomerang, your first weapon. You find a fallen star and use it to upgrade to the enchanted boomerang. The game is only getting started."
Did you catch it? In my videos, I always make certain that every single thing I talk about has a visual to show that thing because you obviously want to pace your video pretty quickly. But the issue is if you pace your video really quickly, then it's really easy for the viewer to miss some details. The solution, take full advantage of visual communication. That way, your video can communicate maximum value at maximum efficiency. But just showing a visual for each thing isn't all there is to it. There's often multiple things in a scene that the viewer might look at, so you need to clarify where their focus should be. I zoom in and pan the camera to exactly what the viewer should be looking at at any given moment.
But that brings up this really common misconception that people have with editing. There's this big narrative that the more cool things you put into your video, whether it's visuals or sound effects, that's going to lead to more views. And I'm sure you've seen a lot of big creators having a ton of variety in their videos, too. But variety is much more delicate than that. And having variety just for the sake of having it really has the potential to screw up your video. Let me explain. Variety is like seasonings in a dish. The purpose is to bring out the flavor of the food. But too many seasonings ruins the dish. So, for example, with the mood of your video, keeping a constant tone throughout the whole video is like only using one seasoning. It's boring. But if the mood fluctuates from excitement over something to worry about some problem or threat to joy about a solution to unease over some impending obstacle and so on, your video becomes much more engaging and vivid. The viewer is kept alert by the shifting tone and the contrast between moods enhances the strength of each mood. So a healthy amount of variety is great there, but adding too much variety can be harmful, just like adding too many seasonings to a dish. For example, with your visuals, if you take things too far with variety, it becomes difficult to keep up. The viewer isn't given enough time to process each thing that's happening on screen, which means they can't absorb anything valuable from the visuals. So, the point I'm making with variety and with your video editing in general is that rather than taking all the spices and tossing in as much as you can, you got to think about the effect each thing you do has and how much of it's needed to create the perfect experience for your audience.
So, what can you do to make the algorithm always choose your videos to be the ones that blow up? Here, I'll go ahead and tell you. The algorithm is designed to make the viewers experience of going on YouTube be as enjoyable as possible. So, if your video is predicted to be one of the most enjoyable videos for someone, the algorithm will recommend your video to them. Now, if your video is predicted to be a highly enjoyable video for millions of people, then the algorithm will recommend your video to millions of people. Here's how to do that. Take an audience that you understand. You know what they're interested in, and you know what they're seeking for, the experience they want when they go on YouTube. What you need to do is figure out exactly what they want and how to give it better than the competition. For example, with my Terraria channel that I was running when I was 15, I looked at all of my competition. I looked at what videos were getting the most views in my niche, and then I compared those videos to my videos. And I kept noticing and then improving the things that they were doing better than I was until eventually I was getting the same or even sometimes even more views than them.
So, that's what this final component is. It's to study what has gotten the most views in your niche. And you look at those videos and you're going to find out from that what your audience values. What is it that they value? Then you're going to study those videos to figure out how to provide that value better than anyone else can. And that's been my secret to going viral, blowing up with each and every video. Now, if you want to do that studying process alone, then I'll walk you through step by step the whole thing in in the next video. uh it'll show up on screen in a minute. But if the problem with doing it alone though is that without an expert to guide you through it, you're never going to know if you're identifying the correct things and if you're making the correct changes. So it is going to rely on just trial and error, which for me it took six years of just every single upload I was getting disappointed by it until finally I was able to get 100,000 views and then yeah when I was 15 like that channel finally took off. But uh yeah, if you're familiar with that cycle though and you're sick of it, then click the first link in the description. I'll we can see what we can do. But uh basically, I want to work closely with a couple people. I can only accept a couple people a month cuz I want to be able to work closely with them. So check that out. And then if that doesn't make sense for you, you're not at that stage right now, then I will walk you through like the just by yourself studying process in this next video.