Transcription
Going viral with YouTube Shorts has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with strategy. So, if you want to see explosive growth with your YouTube Shorts this year, you need to master these two metrics that YouTube really cares about. So, in this video, I'm going to show you exactly what you should measure, monitor, and improve to make your Shorts go viral.
So, whenever you post a YouTube Short, is this a problem that you see? Do most of your Shorts maybe look like this where you have like a spike in views at the beginning? It begins to flatline. You maybe get a couple thousand views, maybe a couple hundred. You get your one subscriber and your 41 cents of YouTube ad revenue, right? So, it kind of is underwhelming and you're like, why did I spend all this time making a Short? But more specifically, you're wondering like about this weird thing at the beginning. Why does this happen? Right? You get this spike in views at the beginning and then it just completely flatlines.
Well, something actually is happening in here that's really important. And this is called the trial phase. So YouTube is actually testing your video, your Short in the first 24 to 48 hours. And this is an example and a case study of what that might look like in the first day. So we can see this is a video that I posted on my personal YouTube channel. And within the first hour, we get a little spike in views. It's not much, but YouTube is testing this with an initial wave of audience. Maybe my subscribers, maybe a few people that don't subscribe to me as well. And that's the first test. And actually with this video, there was a couple tests. Now, you won't always see two tests in the first, you know, couple days of your video. You might only see one test, but it did send it through a second wave of testing here at about hour 18 of this video being live. And within the first 24 hours, it did 10,000 views, got 13 subscribers and 36 cents in ad revenue. I'm rolling in it with that 36 cents, let me tell you.
But of course, the question is, what is YouTube testing during this trial phase? Well, they're actually testing two key metrics that we're going to deep dive into this video and talk about how you can improve them. The first is swipe away rate and the second is average percentage viewed. These are absolutely the two most important metrics you need to know about if you want your Shorts to go viral.
So, let's spend some time deep diving into swipe away rate and how we can improve this metric. So, what even is swipe away rate, right? So, it measures how quickly a viewer is swiping away from your Short. And if you're a TikTok user, if you use Instagram Reels or even YouTube Shorts, you've you've done the doom scroll, right? Where you're sitting there, you're going through video after video, but YouTube is actually measuring all this data. So if you are presented with a video in front of you, and within like a second you decide, ah, no, this video is not for me, and you swipe away, that is the swipe away rate. So you want a low swipe away rate percentage. If too many people are leaving within the first two to three seconds, YouTube is going to stop pushing that video to the broader YouTube community and your Short is not going to pick up any steam. If you have a high swipe away rate, meaning a lot of people are swiping away from your video and not choosing to watch it, you have a very, very low chance of virality.
Now, here's a couple examples of some swipe away percentages. So, on the left side here, we have what I call like the icebergs. You see the icebergs over here? It's cold. You don't want to see these percentages. Over 52% of people are choosing to swipe away. So over half of people when they're presented with that Short are like, "Nah, this Short's not for me. I'm going to swipe away to the next one." On the inverse though, these fire emojis over here, this is a fire swipe away percentage. Over 72% of people are choosing to view and only 28% are choosing to swipe away. So ideally, you want low swipe away rates that are going to increase your chances of virality. A basic rule of thumb here. If you can get 70% of people to view your Short instead of swipe away, so keeping that swipe away below 30% is going to be really helpful.
A quick word from today's sponsor, Riverside. Riverside is a platform that lets you capture studio quality content from anywhere. I'm literally recording in my home office right now and my kids are going crazy downstairs. And this still all looks and sounds really good because Riverside can record up to 4K video with uncompressed audio. It's also super easy to record and collaborate with guests. They don't need to download any apps. They can just tap a link on their browser and then they instantly are ready to start recording. One of my favorite features is the separate audio and video tracks for each speaker. This is a lifesaver. If your guest's dog starts barking or their kids start running in, you can actually just mute their audio track in particular without messing up your audio. And Riverside doesn't just stop at recording. It also has a very easy built-in editing workflow that's flexible and really fast. You can even edit by deleting words in the transcript, and the video will update automatically. Plus, right after recording, you can generate captions and clips optimized for YouTube Shorts, TikToks, and Instagram Reels, all directly in the app. It's the ultimate all-in-one tool for content creation. And so if you're a creator or business owner at any stage who wants professional quality without the headache, you've got to check out Riverside. So if you want to give it a try, go ahead and visit the link down in the description and use code think media at checkout to get one month free of their pro plan.
Now that brings us to the second very important metric, which is average percentage viewed. And basically average percentage viewed or APV as the abbreviation would be is pretty straightforward. It's how much of your Short people are actually watching. And YouTube specifically wants them to watch 80% or more of the total runtime of that Short. So if viewers are not sticking around for long enough, YouTube's just going to decide this Short is not engaging. It's not retaining people's attention. And that's like the number one goal of YouTube. They want people to spend time on the platform. So if they're only watching like a few seconds of your video, YouTube's not going to serve up that video to many more people.
We do have a couple examples we can show you. The icebergs' return on the left side. This is numbers we don't want to see, right? We don't want to see a 52% average percentage view. That means they're only watching about half of our Short and then they're swiping on to the next Short. We don't want to see that. On the inverse though, look at the fire emojis are back. We got a 95% average percentage viewed. So, if the average view duration, you can see right here, is 26%. That means that this video's total runtime is probably only about 27 seconds or 26 and a half seconds and they're watching almost the entire thing.
Now, we can look at this data all we want, but there's no better way to learn than looking at some successful Short examples and learning from those. So, let's take a look at this one right here from the main Think Media channel. This Short got 4.8 million views, got us 4,000 subscribers and a couple hundred in ad revenue. But, let's check it out.
>> Have you guys heard of that channel, Dad? How do you guys know how many subscribers he got in his first month? 1 million subscribers in his first month. The guy's in his mid-50s. So, he says, "Today, I'm going to show you what to do if you have a leak in the plumbing." What a sweet man. I love this man. Secretly, I have no clue how to fix my plumbing when it leaks. Other people need to watch this as well. Cool. For that, the mission is more about I wish I had a father like him growing up that taught me how to do this, right? People connect with that. People connect emotionally to a mission.
>> I love this Short. I think it's a great example of different tactics you can apply like split screen effects or captioning or an engaging story. So, there's reasons why, and we'll talk about those in just a few minutes as to why this video went viral. But we can look at those back-end analytics and see it's got a 98% average percentage viewed as well as only a 25% swipe away rate.
Here's another example from my personal channel that did 220,000 views and got me a couple hundred subscribers. And this is also like a different style. It's more of like a joke. This video is a joke, by the way. I don't actually need to bring this many cameras to a wedding, but you'll see. These are all the cameras I have to bring for a wedding. Instax Mini because I mean, come on, it's a wedding. The Sony A1 because I want the best for my clients. Full-size Instax because widescreen rules. RX100 for super high frame rate. An EX6 because I need a camera for YouTube reviews. Another Instax because these things are so unreliable. A Super Eight film camera because clients think it's cool. A backup Super Eight because these are also unreliable. An A6000 for the Grimsman that thinks he's a photographer. A full-size VHS camera because I can charge more. And whatever other cameras will fit in my bag. Honestly, I usually only bring like two or three cameras to a wedding at most, but I just thought this would be a funny concept and would drive retention, and it absolutely did. Average percentage viewed, 96.5%. And again, we're right around the same swipe away percentage with only 25% choosing to swipe away.
Here's one more example from one of our Video Ranking Academy students. Her name is Deianne. And if you did not know, we actually have an online course called Video Ranking Academy where we teach you the best strategies for growing on YouTube and monetizing your channel and having a sustainable business model. And if you're curious about joining other creators like Deianne in our Video Ranking Academy course, you can check out thinkv.com or I'll also link it down in the description below so you can check that out.
>> I love a good whitening toothpaste and I have my Philips Sonicare toothbrush. So let's see a little before and after. All right. What do you think? Actually, it does look whiter. That's pretty awesome. Plus, I like the taste of it. I'm not a big super mint person, and this one's like a light mint flavor. So, I like it. I think you're going to like it, too.
>> I love this Short from Dan because it is so simple. It's just her kind of brushing her teeth, but it did 80,000 views, which is above her channel average in terms of Shorts views. So, the question is like, why did this Short perform well and other Shorts don't necessarily perform well? Well, for her, there's these three reasons that I could identify, and we're going to deep dive into some of these strategies here in just a minute. But some quick things about Deian's Short here is that it does show like this transformative piece. There's a before and after. She starts brushing her teeth with the whitening toothpaste and then she smiles and you see like her super bright white smile. So, it like establishes that authority figure too of like, oh, she actually has really white teeth, so maybe this whitening toothpaste does work. It gives you that reason to stick to the end too because you want to see that transformative piece. And it also speaks to the common pain point of everybody wants brighter teeth. And I think Deian's like target audience is like maybe like anti-aging women in their like 30s, 40s, 50s around there. So that is a pretty niche audience. But the beauty of this reel is everybody wants wider teeth. So this speaks to both men and women alike. Like I'm a man who's 29 years old. I'm not her target audience at all. But I still find this Short interesting because I want wider teeth. Like, who doesn't want a nice bright smile?
Now, somebody we've had on the podcast before is named Brendan Kane, and he's a social media strategist, an author, and content creator himself. And he would classify this in his book, The Guide to Going Viral, as what's called the generalist principle. So, this is making your content universally accessible, capturing the attention of the broadest possible audience. And we think Deian did this so well right here. And this is something that you got to think about for your Shorts as well. I know something we teach at Think Media here is to like niche down, answer specific questions for exactly who your target audience is. And while that is still a winning strategy, especially for YouTube long form, if you want to succeed and have Shorts that go mega viral and do hundreds of thousands or millions of views, you have to apply this generalist principle and make your content more accessible to people from different demographics and niches, etc. So, a challenge for you if you want to make your Shorts go viral is how can you make a Short with the broadest possible appeal that's still going to honor and resonate with your core audience? That is the perfect type of Short for you to make on your personal channel.
Now, those are some great examples, but I do want to dive into some more strategy and growth tips for Shorts with specific use cases for how you can improve some of these swipe away rates and average view percentages that we're talking about. So, some common causes though of a high swipe away rate are these things. You might have a weak hook. Like your first one to two seconds of your Short is just not engaging. Maybe you have like a bunch of dead space at the beginning and it's not very snappy. So hooks are so vitally important. Like that first second, first one to two seconds is essential for getting high views. It also might be confusing or like lacking clarity. And I see this especially with like people who repurpose podcast episodes. They'll like repurpose a portion of the episode that really needs context in order to understand what's going on, but they'll just like repurpose a random section and it's a little bit confusing. Those kinds of videos often lead to pretty high swipe away rates. Also, your Short just might be a little bit low quality, like you didn't film on a high quality phone or camera, or your resolution is poor, things like this, or the audio sounds really bad. Those could be indicators. But a little note here is it's not always an indicator of like downward or poor performance if you have a low quality Short. If your story is really good or it's like a crazy like news clip or something, those Shorts can still go viral. But oftentimes we'll see people just make videos in their home and the lighting is really bad and it just looks pretty grainy. So that could be an indicator as to why your swipe away rate is high.
Now, if you want to improve your swipe away rate, here are some things you can do. Think about the first frame of video. Is your first frame interesting? Is it visually pleasing? Is it funny or strange? Like look at this first frame of this Short I found over here to the right. There's like a nurse hugging a tree and then it says up top like I looked outside to find my dad trying to save his favorite tree from a windstorm. It's like this is a very weird situation. Like why is this guy in his scrubs and he's holding on to a tree in a windstorm? Like is the tree going to fall on him? This is very interesting. It's like I want to keep watching this video and you can see hundreds of thousands of likes, millions of views, lots of comments. So this is a winning first frame.
Some other first frames that I found interesting over here on the left is like putting a 360° camera on a leaf. Like that's a weird idea. Like what actually happens when you do that? Like does the leaf look like it's just floating all around in the air? I thought that was kind of interesting. The middle one here is fascinating. It's got a little title card up top that says engineer built himself a bionic hand after losing four fingers. And right now it's just showing the back side of the hand, but you sort of want to like you want to know what happens. Does he flip the hand over? And like are his fingers really missing? It creates curiosity and a desire to watch till the end of the Short to see how this all unfolded. And then the one on the right is just a farmer who's going to mow some grass, but it is just like visually pleasing to see like you're in the middle of the action right now. A little bit of the grass is mowed so far, but not the entire thing. So, I want to see like how does he actually go about mowing this whole thing. It's almost like there's a timer on screen, but the timer is like the grass and you want to see the entire grass get mowed. So, these are three really interesting first frames of video and you can think about how you could make your first frame of content interesting and compelling to drive better swipe away percentages.
And then, of course, there is the hook. Like, how did you hook the viewer into getting them interested in watching your video in the first place? And I have a few examples I do want to show you right here. So, let's watch this video. And we're just going to watch like the first two seconds of these videos to show you how these videos were successful. And boom, that's the hook. It's two seconds in length and there's literally a lion jumping on top of a man and it's like what just happened? Is this dude gonna get eaten? Is he gonna die? Like what's going on? But if you let this video play out, you'll actually see that this is a story of a man who raised this lion up since it was a young cub. So there's a story, there's an emotional element here. So this video did really well and it has a great hook.
Our second example is for a university that I actually work for and we produced this Short that did a couple million views and let's watch the hook together. Why were there even Confederate monuments? Were those all erected by the South in order to celebrate their lost cause?
>> So really the hook there is like why were there even Confederate monuments? And people from all walks of life, not just historians, but anybody who like has a basically a high school education who's learned about the Civil War would be wondering, yeah, why are there Confederate monuments? It is kind of a weird thing. Like why do they exist? And so in this episode, we were interviewing a historian who walks through the actual reasons as to why these Confederate monuments were there in the first place. So it's a minute long Short and got a really good average percentage viewed and swipe away rate because of a compelling hook.
This last example I think is hilarious. It's literally just seven dogs getting ready to jump out of a plane. And that is literally all the hook is. It's just these dogs like they're right there. Are they actually going to jump out of a plane? I have to know this. Like I I need to know. Do these dogs jump? So, those are all examples of Shorts that actually performed really well and had low swipe away rates.
Now, let's look at some ways we can improve our average percentage viewed. So, this really is first and foremost just weak storytelling. So, there's no clear payoff potentially in your video. Like, nobody knows why they're watching. They maybe watch four or five seconds and there's no payoff. There's maybe too much dead space or no pattern interruptions. Like, there's no B-roll or no text coming on screen to sort of keep the viewer engaged. Additionally, you might not have captions on your screen. And it's really important to know that 60 to 85% of viewers who watch Shorts are watching vertical video without the sound on. So, if you're not having captions on your video, you're missing out on like 60 to 85% of the population who wouldn't even know what's happening because they don't have the captions available to them to view. And third, you might have also poorly formatted the video for vertical viewing. And maybe you like repurposed a horizontal video for vertical. And here's an example on screen. My kids love these YouTubers, good news guys. It's like Bible stories for kids. But you can see over here like they put like goodnewsguys.com down below where like their title card and the subscribe button is. You can't even see that. And then the vertical video is not even filling the frame. So it's just kind of a messy Short and it didn't perform very well because of that. So whenever you can, you want to format your vertical videos as best as possible for the vertical viewing experience.
Now, I already mentioned one of these books, The Guide to Going Viral. But another book by Brendan Kane that I found really helpful is Hook Point as well. So, a couple books by him. We'll link those down in the description below. If you really want to get serious about hooking viewers better and improving your storytelling, these are some awesome ways that you can do that.
Now, one of the things that Brendan Kane talks about in his books is that social media has sort of developed these different formats that you can apply to increase your average percentage viewed. And really all a format is are like these proven video structures that help a viewer know what to expect when they're deciding to watch your video for longer than three seconds or so. So some common formats that maybe you've seen emerge on social media in the past year or so are first what he calls the two characters one light bulb format. And I'll show you an example of that right here.
>> I tried freezing motion with my flash but it's still blurry. What am I doing wrong? Let me guess. You're focused on shutter speed right? Yeah. Doesn't that fast?
So, as you can see, it's one creator, but he's playing both sides of the coin. He's playing the beginner as well as the pro and answering the questions that the beginner has. So, this is a proven format that's really viral right now and something you can apply to your own channel.
This format has been around forever. It's the viral video reaction plus commentary. So, it's just you as a creator reacting to some sort of viral clip. It could be a news clip. It could be a cooking clip like this video is right here. Let's check it out. Frozen meat. Here we go. Wait. Frozen meat straight into pan. What? And the garlic on their nose. Taco seasoning. What? So, yeah, this is a super fun format that you could explore.
And there's one more format I wanted to show you, which is the power of this, which is kind of just like starting seemingly boring stuff potentially that you can turn and spin into a really interesting thing by using the power of this thing only cost $69. This strategy will take your channel from 0 to a,000 subscribers. It's the power of this. Let's watch Anthony right here demonstrate that. This is a two terabyte hard drive. This is a two terabyte solid state drive. And this is a two terabyte NVME drive. This is a great example of maybe a seemingly boring topic like hard drives can be kind of interesting if you format it in the right way. And the key here is that each of these creators are actually using the same format over and over again and they're mastering that one format to generate millions of views. You don't have to try 17 different formats. You can actually maybe try to just master one or two formats and find repeatable success in your content strategy by just mastering a couple. So that's kind of a challenge for you. Like what one or two formats could you maybe explore and do some research on in your own niche that could lead to that repeatable success for your channel.
So that's a basic overview of the two most important metrics to make your Short succeed. Swipe away rate and average percentage viewed. If you can master these two things and continue to improve those metrics, you're going to find success with your Short strategy. And if you're serious about growing on YouTube this year, you should definitely check out our online course, Video Ranking Academy, that I'll link right here at this end card. And if you want to check out another video from us here at Think Media, you can click or tap the screen right.