Transcription
Today we're talking about ideas. If you want your videos to perform better, you have to improve your idea process. This is the most important aspect of content. Nothing else matters if the idea is weak.
Now, here's the truth about ideas that may surprise you. The top creators you look up to, they're all using the exact same process to find and develop their ideas. They've all built an idea mining system, and that really is the secret for how they're growing so fast. Their ideas are just better.
So, in this video, I'm going to walk through the step-by-step process for how you can build the exact same idea mining system for yourself. It's just three steps, and if you do this, I guarantee your videos will perform better. I know this works because content is all I do all day long. I have a million followers. I've done billions of views, and my idea mining system is the reason I can go viral whenever I want.
All right. Now, before I break down the process on how to build the idea mining system, let's just get crystal clear on what a video idea actually is, cuz it's probably not what you think. Most people think the video idea is just the topic. But that's only one small piece of it. A video idea is made up of seven different components. I call these idea Legos. You have the topic, but you also have the angle, the hook, the story structure, the visual format, the key visuals, and the audio. Think of these seven different components as Lego bricks that assemble together to create a unique video idea.
Now, let's just define each of these seven pieces very quickly so you know exactly what I'm talking about. The topic is the one sentence simple description of what the video is about. But the angle is the combination of the premise, take, and interesting key facts that are used to explain the topic. So, you could have two branding videos about Apple. One of them about the history of their logo design and the other one about a specific ad campaign from 2004. These are very different videos. Similar topic, completely different angles.
Okay, let's keep going. The hook structure is made up of three parts. The spoken hook, what is said. The text hook, the text that is shown on screen, and the visual hook, what is shown and how it's shown. The story structure is the way the story is delivered. Could be a breakdown, a listical, a tutorial. Think of it like story blocks or an outline structure that determines how the story flows. The visual format is the way the video is laid out visually. Could be green screen, could be a POV vlog, could be a faceless music only text conversation. There are dozens and dozens of winning visual formats. But just think of this like the visual layout of the video. Then we have the key visuals, which are the actual visuals used in the layout. It's what's actually shown on screen. The A-roll, the B-roll, the animations, etc. The visual format is how the visuals are laid out and sequenced. The key visuals are the visuals themselves. And then lastly, you have audio, which is either the background music or sound effects.
Now, every video is a combination of these seven Lego bricks. And this is really important because knowing this and thinking in these Lego brick terms will completely change the way you find and develop video ideas. So, as we build the system for finding better ideas, just keep those seven Lego bricks in mind. We'll come back to those in a second.
Okay, now let's get to the good stuff. This is the three-step system for coming up with better content ideas so that you get more views and grow faster on social media.
Step one is called outlier research. The first step in the process is to find other videos in your niche that have already performed well. We call these outliers and we measure them using an outlier score. An outlier score takes the views of one video divided by the average views of that channel. So, for example, if some video gets 100,000 views and the average views on that channel is around 10,000, that would be an outlier score of 10x. Now, outlier scoring is really important because it helps us compare different sized channels apples to apples. Small channels typically don't get as many views on average. But if they have a banger video with a 50x outlier, then that signals something different happened there that's worth studying. So outliers are the core to everything we do when it comes to idea research. And it makes sense, right? If I showed you a hundred videos and said, "I'll give you a million dollars if you can make one that beats all 100." What would you do? Well, the first thing is you would rank the hundred from best to worst. And you would study the best ones. You look for gaps, identify where they were weak, and then try to make your version better than the weak points of the best videos. Well, those best examples are called outliers. They're the outperformers.
All right. Now, I'm going to explain exactly where and how to find outliers in a minute. But just know step one in the process is that you need to build a system for finding outliers in your niche.
Okay. Now, here's step two. Once you find an outlier, you need to analyze it across those seven Lego bricks. And your goal is to find common patterns across the winners. Maybe you notice that six out of the top 10 performing videos in your niche are all talking about the same topic. Or maybe when you zoom out and analyze the top 50 best performers, you keep seeing the same visual format that grabs your attention over and over. These patterns are indicating there is a proven answer for that Lego brick in your niche. That insight is gold because what you're really doing when you analyze the patterns is letting the data tell you what works best. See, if you've ever tried to make content before and it hasn't worked, well then the number one question on your mind is why isn't it working? And the reason why it isn't working is because you're guessing at what might work across all seven of those Lego bricks. You probably came up with an unvalidated topic, had a random take, tried some story structure or hook structure that was unvalidated with a visual format that you had never seen before, etc. You weren't using data, you were using your gut. Using data makes it much easier to win faster because humans cannot outrun their psychology. They tend to behave the same way over and over. If the research is saying one Lego brick works best for your niche in a certain way, it's probably going to keep working well in that way over and over.
Now, am I saying you shouldn't ever try to be creative and experiment with something that's never been done? No, of course not. You should. But just know your hit rate is going to be way lower. If you make 10 reps based on validated data, you're going to get more winners than 10 reps based on your gut. It's just a fact. So, if you want to grow faster on social media, trust me, you need an idea research process based on finding outliers in your niche.
Okay, so far we've covered two of the three steps in the idea mining system. First, you need to look for outliers in your niche. And second, once you find those outliers, you need to figure out what those seven idea Lego bricks were for that video. What is the topic? What is the format? How was the hook made? You're looking for patterns that signal what is already working.
Now, here's the third and final step. Once you identify winning patterns in the idea Lego bricks, you want to hold the winning components constant and remix the rest. So, for example, let's say we make fitness content and we notice that all the best performing videos are hooking in the same way and using the same couple visual formats. We'll take those two components, keep them the same, but then we will change the topic, the angle, the story structure, the key visuals, the audio. So, in this case, it's hold two remix 5. I like to think of this process kind of like playing five card poker. You see some reference outlier, you break it into seven cards. You pick which cards to keep and then you reshuffle the rest to get a new set of seven. This makes a new combination which has a higher chance of outperforming the original cuz you kept the good parts and you fix the bad.
Now, this process I just described, it's called idea mining, and it's the most important step in the entire content workflow. Ideas are the thing that differentiate the winners and losers on social media and YouTube. This mining process is what all the top creators and brands are doing, and it's why they have an edge over you. They're using the data to tell them where the fish are.
Now, not to rain on the parade, but here is what makes this idea research process so difficult. The patterns for what works in each Lego brick changes over time. And the winning combination is completely different from niche to niche. What works for the fitness niche won't always work for the makeup niche, which is not always going to work for the marketing niche, and so on. For some niches, certain hook styles always work. For other niches, certain formats always work. For other niches, it's not clear what the pattern is. There is no one-size-fits-all strategy that applies to all businesses across every niche. It is a completely blank slate from category to category. That's why learning how to do this idea research process is so critical. It's probably the most valuable content skill you could develop. In fact, it's so valuable that if you train yourself on becoming really good at this, you could probably start a seven-figure revenue per year solo agency where you just did this for top creators and brands. Because regardless of the niche, if you get good at identifying the patterns, you can't lose.
Okay, so now that we're clear on what a video idea actually is and the three-step strategy for how to build an idea mining system, let's get tactical because what kind of channel would this be if I didn't also just give you the step-by-step click-for-click exact tactical process for how to do what I just described. So, let's dive into it. First, I'm going to explain exactly where to find the best outlier ideas for your niche. Then I'm going to share my screen and I'm going to show you exactly how I run this idea mining process a hundred times faster than everybody else.
Okay, so first where do we find outlier videos? There are four main places you can look for outlier ideas. We've got a 2x2 matrix. Let's say you make Instagram reels about fitness content. So that means you create short form videos on Instagram. Short form videos is the content type. Instagram is the content platform. Now your goal is to find outliers of fitness content that you can study to make better Instagram reels. Keep that in mind. So you could look for outliers in four places. Same type, same platform would be other fitness related short form videos on Instagram. That's what you're making and where you are. Same type, different platform would be other fitness related short form videos but on TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, any other platform except for Instagram. Now different type, same platform would be other fitness related posts on Instagram but it'd be static images or stories. Anything except for short form video. And then lastly, different type, different platform would be other fitness related posts, but maybe it's tweets or blogs or YouTube videos. It's non-short form video and it's non-Instagram.
Now, of those four boxes, which places do you think are going to be the best source of continuous inspiration that you can use for fitness related short form IG reels? Two of these boxes are the golden geese for where you should look. Pause the video and think about it for a sec.
Okay, I'm going to tell you the answer. It's the top two boxes. Same content type and either on the same platform or different platforms. That's where you should look for outlier ideas. And this is going to be the rule. The best place to look for outlier ideas is going to be the same content type, in this case, short form video, and either the same platform, Instagram reels, or other platforms that support that content type, TikTok, YouTube, etc. And why is this? Because humans tend to behave the same over and over. Like I said, they cannot outrun their psychology. Vertical video content hits people differently than other types of content. The consumption patterns are just different type to type. So the easiest foolproof path to find winning outliers is to hold the type constant. Find other fitness related short form videos wherever you can and mine them for patterns.
Now if you really know what you're doing with content, you can find interesting idea seeds on other content types, tweets, blogs, YouTube. But if you do this and find the topic and even the angle, you're then playing from scratch on all the other LEGO bricks. The hook won't carry over, the story structure won't carry over, the format won't carry over, etc. These will not be one-to-one from a tweet to a video, and so you won't be able to just transport it. You're gonna have to crack the full code on your own. This is very hard for people to do consistently unless they're experts at content. So, if you want the easy path, the easiest mode, the path that all these brands are doing, just look for the same content type either on the same platform or different platforms. Because the goal when you're making content, especially as a business or business owner, is to derisk your effort. Every rep, you want the highest chance that your effort is actually going to pay off, that the video is actually going to work. If you want to increase your odds significantly, just narrow your research focus to the things that are already working in the same format that you're making.
Okay. Now, before I get to the real sauce and break down my process for doing this 100 times faster, let's just recap on where we've been so far, just to set the table. Everyone can be even. First, we broke down that every video idea is really seven different idea Lego bricks. Next, we explained that the way to figure out what the winning patterns are across those seven Lego bricks is to find outliers in your niche and analyze them. We then established that the best place to find those outlier videos in your niche are either on the same or different platforms using the same content type. So, in this era, short form video is king for social media. If you want to grow on social media, you got to be making short form video. And that means you should be looking for outliers on Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
Okay, so at this point we're clear. We need to look for outliers on those platforms. So now the big question is what is the actual process for doing this outlier research because you can't really expect to just scroll the feed for 2 hours and outliers will come to you, right? Well, the crazy thing is yes, that is the process that everyone has been running this whole time. They either curate their feed to try to have those outliers serve up automatically or they have a list of inspiration accounts that they manually open, scroll through and try to find the outliers. That process takes forever. The good news is I have a much better way. Basically, a shortcut for all that manual work that makes it a hundred times faster. And that shortcut is using Sandcastles.ai. Sand Castles is the only tool in the world that makes this idea mining process extremely easy. And by the way, if you tried the original version of Sandcastles that was just for script writing, this is a completely different thing. Here's how Sand Castles works and why it's so cracked for idea mining.
First, you build a watch list of the top channels in your niche. And this is so you can narrow in your outlier search to just the accounts that you already know are crushing. In Sandcastles, you can use the channels tab to search for any creator. Just drop in their handle or their URL of their profile. And you can add any account from Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Now, there are thousands of creators already in Sandcastle, and those are going to pop up immediately. But if we don't have somebody you want, just search for their handle, press add new channel, and we'll get them in there in 15 minutes. Now, there's no limit on the amount of channels you can add or the amount of lists you can make. So, you basically have unlimited power. What you want to do is build out a list for your core niche. And then if you want, you can build out separate lists for adjacent niches. So if you make fitness content, make a watch list, name it fitness, and add 20 to 30 of the top fitness creators that you know are already crushing.
Now, here's a very common question. How do I figure out which channels I should be looking at for inspiration? I understand how to do it in Sand Castles, but how do I actually know which ones to add in the first place? And this is a great question. There are four ways to find the best inspiration channels when you're doing outlier research. The first way is that you already have a list of accounts either in some Excel or some list that you know make the best content for your space. And if you have that list, problem is obviously solved. Just start adding that list in. The second way is you might not have a full list, but there's probably at least one person that you can think of that really makes amazing content for your space. Start with that person. Open their account up on Instagram and TikTok. Click who they're following. And then you can see a list of the people that they follow. Typically, if someone is legit in a space, they're also following the other legit people in a space. So, that shortens the list. Go through that list. Anyone that's relevant, copy their profile link, add them to Sandcastles. The third way is to search on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube. Search for topics or keywords that will be relevant for your niche. When you do that, the top videos will surface. Click on the video, see the creator, click them, add them to Sandcastles, and then you can start with them and run path two that I just mentioned. Go to who they're following and look through that list. And the last way to find relevant accounts to add to watch list in Sandcastles is go to the video tab in Sandcastles. Clear all the filters and then search by topic or keyword. Our database is all the top creators across every niche. So the videos that show, click on the creator who made them and add that person to a list. So there are four ways right there to find the top accounts in your niche to then add to a watch list in Sandcastles. Regardless of the path you take, all roads lead to curating a list of the top accounts in your space. Take the 10 to 15 minutes and do this. It'll make everything so much easier.
All right, now is where things get really interesting. Once you have that watch list built out, go to the videos tab and filter the videos for just that watch list. What you then have is a feed of videos posted only from the accounts in your list. And if the hair on the back of your neck is not standing up as you see this, it should be because this is an absolute cheat code for finding outlier videos. You can take this database of videos and now you can sort by outlier score or posted date and filter by a bunch of different key metrics. So, for example, let's say I wanted to make content about social media marketing. Maybe I run a social media agency or I'm trying to build a personal brand around content marketing. Here's the list that I've already made with the top 20 channels that talk about this stuff on Instagram and TikTok. I've already built it out. So, I go to the videos tab. I filter by that list. Now, if I want to see the best performing videos in the social media marketing space posted in the last 3 months from my list, sorted best to worst. Boom. There it is. And this is basically all the outliers you need served up on a silver platter. It is insane how easy Sand Castles makes this compared to the manual way everybody was doing it.
Now you can analyze these videos in this card view so you can see the thumbnail or in like a table view a little bit more minimal if that's what you prefer. If you want to just copy my filter settings these are the best settings for making sure the outliers are relevant every single time. First for outlier score you want to filter 5x and above. For engagement rate you want to go 5% and above. This will screen out all the paid brand deals that are juiced but actually not outliers. For post date, you want to play with 7 days, 14 days, 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 12. If you're making news-based content where relevancy and recency matters, 7 days, 14 days is the best. If you make evergreen content, 3 months, 6 months, even 12 months might surface interesting ideas that are still relevant. And then you want to sort using those two arrows in the upper right by outlier score descending. That's the easiest way to get the top performing videos at the top. And you can create a filter preset with all these. Just press that save button. It'll save a preset for you. So you can one-click get this every single time. Now obviously new videos are being posted by these creators every single day and we're ingesting them daily. So you really want to be in sand castles every day or at least four to five times a week so you're constantly seeing the latest outliers.
Now from here the process is to start analyzing those individual outlier videos across the seven idea Lego bricks. And you can do that in two different ways. The first way is you can just click play video on any of the cards or the row and it will open the video up so you can just watch it manually. The second way is that you can click into each video and see the idea detail page. And here you get a bunch of metrics on the video, the full transcript, as well as detailed analysis on the hook structure and the story structure.
Now, here's my personal process for how I go about using this. I like to use both of those methods combined. So, first I will open the video and watch it manually. Then I'll go to the idea detail page and I will look at the transcript and those structures. And again, the goal and the reason I'm doing this is that I'm trying to mine for patterns across those seven idea Lego bricks so that I know what works in my space.
Okay, so when I'm analyzing each video and I'm going through this mining process, what am I actually looking for with respect to the Lego bricks? I like to go about this in two ways as well. The first category is daily inspiration. And really what I'm looking for here are specific topics, angles, and key visuals that are interesting to me that might be a topic I want to make soon. And I'm doing this daily to find these daily inspiring pieces. And then on the other side, I've got more long-term monthly and weekly tracking that I'm doing. Hook structure, story structure, visual format. You may not see a common pattern across visual formats in just 20 videos on one day. But holistically, if I do this every day for a week, am I starting to see the same story structure? That's more of long-term. So, I'm doing like real-time, daily, and long-term at the same time when I mine.
So, for me, I like to open a Google doc and I set it up like this. At the top of the page, I've got daily inspiration. Each bullet is a topic. And so, if I see a video I like and the topic is interesting, I'll grab that video and I'll write the following topics, angles, anything about the hook that popped out to me, key visuals. I also drop the link for that video there so I have it to reference. And then any audio notes about this video. So, it's all me analyzing this one video, not an aggregate pattern. It's this one specific video. Was it interesting to me? And what did I like about it? Then below in a separate section on the page, I have more of these long-term patterns that I'm trying to monitor over time. And so I've got hook structures, series structures, and visual formats. Anytime I start to have an idea pop in my head about a trend across any of those three that I'm starting to notice, I write it down.
And to click down even one step further, this is literally what I do. I open the video and I watch it. The first filter is this. Do I find this topic interesting or is it kind of dumb and not relevant to me? Because obviously, you're not going to remake a video if you think it's dumb and interesting. That's like the first dumb filter. Anything that doesn't pass through, I just skip it and ignore it. Right? So, we get past that first. Now, after I get past that kind of like dumb check filter, and I do see a video that inspires me, I'm going to open the doc. I'm going to add that new bullet for a topic. And I'm going to write all those things down. Am I interested about this? What did they say? What were their certain lines they said that piqued my interest? Were there visuals they use? Are there gaps that I'm seeing that could be potentially filled? Did they use certain audio that drove emotion? I'm just writing notes down about the effectiveness of this video. Because the truth is, if I'm looking at it using sand castles, this is an outlier. So, they did something that worked. What was it that worked? I'm trying to figure that out. And I'm using this doc bucketing it by Lego brick because I'm trying to figure out where are the weak points. What did they do well? But then what didn't they do well that if I remix I can beat.
After going through 20 to 30 videos in a single session, I will have a list of ideas, topics that I liked that are also validated by the market. And my goal, like I said, is to analyze those seven Lego bricks of the outlier, figure out what they did really well that I want to keep constant and what they didn't do well that I could improve on. Now, typically for me, what I've noticed is I will almost always change the angle, the hook, and the visual format. But usually, I will leave the topic, some of the key visuals, and usually like the audio mood of it. But this is all an iterative process. It changes topic to topic. It changes niche to niche. The point is, you know, how to pull the winners and look for why they won and where there are weak spots.
Now, if you guys want, I can make another video in the future that's just a screen share live session for an hour of me in sand castles doing this, like voicing over the process. What am I seeing for every single video? Why am I pulling it? I can do that for you. We don't have enough time to go through deep examples in this video, but if you want that, comment below and I'll know to make that video.
Okay, so that really is the easy mode process of how to do idea mining in a nutshell. You're going to use sandcastle.ai to create a list of the top creators in your niche. You're going to use that to aggregate the best performing videos in one place. And then you're going to analyze them one by one. And when you watch each video, you're going to look for insight across every Lego brick. What was the topic? What was their take, premise, or angle? What was the hook they used and how was it executed? How did they structure the story? What was the visual layout or visual format? Were there compelling key visuals they used or not? What was the audio and did it emotionally drive you to the feeling that you thought was compelling? Based on those answers, you're going to assess where the white space is. What was weak about that outlier that you could improve on to make an even better version. And the best part about using sand castles for this process is that there's no noise. You're only seeing the best performing videos in your space. So, that helps you see the patterns way faster.
Okay. Now, after this, what comes next? What comes next is being able to take those raw Lego bricks and reassemble them into new combinations for your version of the video. And that's where you really figure out which parts to hold, which parts to remix, how to combine all that and write a new script, and so on. And this is the second piece of the idea process. It's called idea development. First, you mine for the winners, analyze them, and break it apart into pieces. Then, you reassemble those pieces in a new way to make a better video.
Now, I don't have enough time in this video to cover the whole idea development process because that's another piece in itself, but so you know, when I do the idea development, I've got a full hook database. I've got a full story structure database. I have a full database of the visual formats. I'm looking at the winners. I'm holding pieces constant. I'm going to my database, swapping in new pieces. That's how I'm doing the development in real time. Now, if you guys want me to make that idea development video, kind of like part two to ideas where I take one of these outliers from the mining, break it down, and then rebuild it, you need to drop in the comments as well to let me know that's what you want. Just say something like, "Give me the sauce chef." And I'll know exactly what that means. Also, by the way, to thank you guys for the support on this channel, anybody watching the video at this point, I'm giving you the biggest discount code on sand castles that exists on the internet. It's code callaway. Use that at checkout. I'm not going to have it up forever, so make sure you use it now.
All right, guys. That is all I've got for this video. As a recap, we covered a ton of ground. This one really was a tactical banger on ideas, and this was the first time I covered ideas on this channel in a meaningful way. So, make sure to let me know what you thought of this one in the comments. Here's a summary of what we went over. First, we broke down the seven core pieces that make up a video idea. We call those idea Lego bricks. And those were the topic, the angle, the hook structure, the story structure, the visual format, the key visuals, and the audio. Then we broke down the three-step process for how to build an idea mining system and introduced the concept of an outlier. After that, we explored the four options of places to look for outliers and the two best ones, the same content type across the same or different platforms. From there, I went kind of super saiyan, breaking down the exact tactical process for how to use that idea mining system with sand castles.ai to find and mine for patterns. We also broke down the exact process for how to build your idea short list, that doc that you capture patterns on. This should be everything you need to go from zero to having an idea mining system in place that actually crushes no matter what your niche is. From here, the next piece in the process is idea development, where you take those winning idea Lego brick patterns and build them up to make your own version. And again, I'll make that video for you guys as long as you comment, give me the sauce chef below. As always guys, I'm trying my absolute best to actually give you the sauce, the answers that nobody talks about. So, if you like this stuff, please make sure to subscribe. It helps me out a ton. And here's the last thing, my free gift to you. If you're a business owner and you're really focused on improving your content, you want to grow your personal brand, you want to drive leads and sales for your business, I built a free community specifically for you. It's called Wavy World. We have over 60 free content trainings and playbooks just like this one. And there's over 30,000 other entrepreneurs in there already, all helping each other, trying to improve content together. It's completely free. I've got an invite link in the description if you want to join. All right, we will see you guys on the next one. Peace.