Think Media - 8 Viral Tactics from Top 1% Creators (Free Masterclass)
The discussion highlights the challenges of creating viral content, especially with hyper-niche topics that typically have low reach. It emphasizes the importance of the Mass Appeal method, which involves creating content that resonates with a broader audience while staying true to one's niche. Examples include using stories and interviews that have wide appeal, such as featuring well-known personalities or tapping into universal themes. The video also explores the Reaction Strategy, where creators react to trending or viral content, thereby attracting more views. Ethical clickbait is another strategy discussed, which involves crafting engaging and honest titles that pique curiosity without misleading the audience. The importance of stirring emotions and sparking interest is emphasized, as emotional content tends to be more persuasive and shareable. The video also suggests riding trends through culture surfing, which involves incorporating popular cultural elements into content to increase its appeal. Finally, it advises using punchy titles and specific numbers to enhance engagement and suggests forming a peer network for collaborative growth and learning.
Key Points:
- Use the Mass Appeal method to broaden your content's reach while staying true to your niche.
- Implement the Reaction Strategy by reacting to trending content to increase views.
- Craft ethical clickbait titles that are engaging and honest to attract clicks.
- Incorporate emotional appeal in your content to make it more persuasive and shareable.
- Leverage trends and cultural elements to enhance content appeal and engagement.
Details:
1. 📈 Unveiling YouTube's Viral Secrets
- Hyper niche content generally has a low chance of going viral, leading to low views and reach.
- Mary, who started on YouTube at age 60, reached 1 million subscribers by age 65, demonstrating that age is not a barrier to success on the platform.
- The speaker promises to reveal eight strategies that top creators use to trigger the YouTube algorithm and achieve virality.
- It's important for marketers, business owners, and entrepreneurs to define what 'winning' looks like on YouTube, which may not always be high view counts but could include leads, sales, community building, or targeting the right audience.
2. 🌟 The Mass Appeal Method
- Hyper-niched content rarely goes viral, as seen with YouTube's lower views due to features like Shorts dividing attention.
- Noah Kagan increased views by shifting to mass appeal topics, with a video reaching 5.6 million views compared to 10,000 on a hyper-niched video over six years.
- Mass appeal topics can remain on-brand while expanding audience reach.
- 'Man on the street' interviews and stories about intriguing figures, like unknown billionaires, effectively capture wider interest.
- Lila Heros increased views 56 times with broader topics and transformation thumbnails, showcasing 'before and after' scenarios.
- Balancing niche content with broader topics can increase viewership without losing brand essence.
- Roger Wakefield's mass appeal video achieved 840 times more views than hyper-niched content.
- Using viral clips for reactions, like a chiropractor reacting to trending videos, illustrates potential even for niche professionals.
- The 'Viral For Me' (VFM) concept focuses on achieving higher views relative to usual statistics, enhancing top-of-funnel reach.
3. 🔄 React Strategy for Engagement
- Roger's video titled 'Real Plumber Reacts to Biggest Plumbing Scammers' achieved 2.3 million views, demonstrating the effectiveness of targeting niche audiences with engaging titles.
- Using vidIQ, it's observed that this three-year-old video still garners 11 views per hour, highlighting the long-term engagement potential of YouTube content.
- The React strategy leverages other people's content (OPC) under fair use, transforming it into engaging material through commentary, humor, or analysis.
- Successful channels like 'React', 'Mr. Beast React', and 'Kids React' illustrate the popularity and potential reach of reaction formats on YouTube.
- A channel with 20,000 subscribers managed to gain 150,000 views on a reaction video, showcasing how reaction content can exceed typical viewership relative to subscriber count.
- Examples of successful reaction content include 'Filmmaker Reacts to Halo Reach' and 'Doctor Reacts to Obesity Debate', both tapping into existing popular content to attract wider audiences.
- The strategy can be adapted to various niches, such as 'Agency Owner Reacts to Bad Car Dealership Ads', to broaden reach and engage new viewers.
- Reaction videos can quickly go viral, potentially achieving 100,000 or even millions of views by appealing to both niche and broader audiences.
- Fair use is crucial in creating reaction content, allowing creators to transform and add value to existing works without infringing on original copyrights.
- Implementing effective commentary or analysis is key to distinguishing your content and maintaining audience interest.
4. 🎯 Ethical Clickbait Explained
- Ethical clickbait is engaging, compelling, and honest, unlike typical clickbait that can be misleading. It involves delivering more than promised to build long-term trust.
- Stephen Bartlett's podcast 'The Diary of a CEO' exemplifies ethical clickbait, achieving 25 million YouTube views monthly by testing 100 thumbnails per episode to enhance click-through rates.
- The podcast selects topics based on pre-research to align with audience interest, guiding interview directions to maintain viewer engagement.
- Effective thumbnails combine three facial expressions and 30 quotes to determine the best engagement strategy.
- Ethical clickbait effectively triggers emotions like curiosity and disbelief, and taps into psychological triggers such as confirmation bias and victim mentality.
- MrBeast and other top marketers use storytelling elements like stakes and curiosity loops to create compelling content, illustrating the power of these strategies.
- In business contexts, ethical clickbait can be framed around personal stakes and outcomes, such as discussing the impact of spending $11,000 on Pinterest ads to engage viewers through curiosity loops.
5. 💡 Stirring Emotions & Sparking Interest
5.1. Emotional Appeal in Marketing
5.2. Creating Content with Emotional Triggers
5.3. The Power of Change in Content
5.4. Emotional Triggers and Virality
6. 🌍 Culture Surfing for Broader Reach
- Content creators are encouraged to use 'culture surfing' by incorporating familiar cultural elements like music, media, logos, and brands into their content to enhance recognition and appeal.
- Utilizing well-known social media logos creatively in thumbnails can attract a wider audience by leveraging familiar platforms such as Instagram and Facebook.
- A niche-focused podcast, particularly one centered on YouTube growth, can benefit by integrating broader cultural elements to increase mass appeal while maintaining its core audience.
- Ethical clickbait involves using recognizable people, brands, and events in content to attract attention, provided the content delivers on its promises.
- Dan Martell's video titled 'The Only 4 Skills You Need to Build a $1B Company' achieved 205,000 views by leveraging recognizable figures like Elon Musk and Steve Jobs, demonstrating the power of influence surfing.
- Culture surfing includes 'influence surfing' (using known personalities) and 'trend surfing' (leveraging current trends or events) to increase content visibility.
- A video exploring Andrew Huberman's morning routine garnered 3.5 million views by tapping into his influence and popular podcast, showing the potential reach of cultural association.
- A strategic approach to content creation, such as tapping into current events or trending topics, can significantly boost views and engagement, as seen with the 45 million monthly views achieved by value tment through trending topic reaction strategies.
7. ✍️ Crafting Punchy Titles
- Punchy titles should be brief, as attention is scarce. Use shorter, simpler words for stronger impact, tailored to your audience.
- Research on Think Media's most viewed videos shows a trend: titles with seven words or less attract more views.
- Example: 'How to get free stuff on Amazon' - a seven-word title achieving 3 million views by appealing to a wide audience interested in Amazon deals.
- Another example: 'Best cheap smartphone accessories for video' - six words, 1.5 million views, emphasizing cost-efficiency and video production.
- A five-word title, 'Camera lenses explained for beginners,' simplifies complex information, making it accessible and popular.
- A trending creator, Ryan Tread, garners 118 million views per month using simple, compelling titles like 'I tested one-star camping gear.'
- Titles that are easy to understand and packed with intrigue, such as 'Genius YouTube advice for 15 minutes straight,' perform well.
8. 🔢 Using Specific Numbers in Titles
- Titles with odd and specific numbers, like 'zero to 1,000 subscribers in 9 days,' perform better and feel more authentic.
- Nolan's video using the specific number '9 days' has nearly a million views, demonstrating the effectiveness of specificity.
- Different ways to present metrics, like subscribers gained per day or earnings per week, can make content more engaging.
- Specific outcomes, like turning '20,000 into 4.5 million,' enhance perceived authenticity.
- Ali Abdaal's success with specific metrics in titles, such as 'nine passive income ideas' or '27k per week,' highlights this strategy's effectiveness.
9. 🤝 Building a YouTube Jedi Council
- Creating or joining a peer network of like-minded YouTube and marketing enthusiasts is crucial for success and is a secret of the top 1%.
- Mr. Beast attributes his growth to daily masterminds with four other YouTubers for a thousand days, focusing on thumbnails, video pacing, and going viral. This collaborative learning accelerated their growth from 10-20,000 to over a million subscribers in a short time.
- Learning from others' mistakes can accelerate personal growth by five times compared to learning from your own mistakes alone.
- Regular interaction, possibly daily for extended periods, with peers at events like Social Media Marketing World is highly encouraged.
- For those without a peer network, self-brainstorming and creating multiple title options (five to eight) before selecting the best one is recommended.
- Community feedback can be solicited for title or content selection by using platforms like community tabs or Facebook.
- The speaker offers additional resources for content creation, including a free 'perfect video recipe' PDF with detailed video-making strategies.