You are losing 1.2M+ of potential views because of your ideas

Here are 5 ways to avoid that:


Thread🧵

P.S there's a FREE bonus at the end 👀

🌍1. Remove your constraints

This is one of the MAIN reasons why MrBeast doesn't run out of ideas.

Unlike him, we often restrict our imagination by limiting what is possible

Don't throw away all the crazy ideas your mind comes up with.

Write them down instead.

🍒2. Take things out of proportion

Every day is an adventure, but you usually settle for a simple recap of the events.

However, life is too interesting to just leave it at that...

So, this is what I do with my friends:

We weave tales, by adding imagination to our everyday lives.

Resulting in epic stories with unexpected plot twists, making us say..

"Hey, that sounds like a YouTube video!"

Those shungite stones you bought yesterday?

It's what gave you the powers to save the world 🧙‍♂️

💎3. Double down on what works

Look at what already works on your channel, find the most popular videos and IDENTIFY what made them succeed.

Double down on that and experiment with parts of the video.

But you may still need to..

👀4. Find Outside Inspiration

1. Look at what the best channels of other niches are doing.

2. Find what is working for them and write down the ideas.

3. Apply it to your content.

Yep, it's actually that simple.

You just have to draw the parallels between what's possible.

🧪5. Innovation

You'll need to experiment with ideas that come from deep thinking and lots of sitting on the toilet.

But there's a technique that makes this much easier:

It takes advantage of repeatedly asking "Why?" about a certain topic.

You'll find yourself coming up with more and more content

@TaylinSimmonds has an in-depth thread about it below

You can then get EVEN MORE Ideas by adding:
- "How?"
- "What if ... ?"

https://twitter.com/TaylinSimmonds/status/1630553465515646976?s=20

+ 🎁BONUS

I have created a spreadsheet containing over 12,203 Titles to nail down a niche I am working with.

I'll DM it to everyone who likes, follows and retweets this thread

Let's recap:

🌍1. Remove your constraints
🍒2. Take things out of proportion
💎3. Double down on what works
👀4. Find Outside Inspiration
🧪5. Innovation

How To Generate ENDLESS Ideas for YouTube (and Everything else..)

When I started about 3 Years ago, there were BARELY any tools for the platform...

And now we have so many amasing tools making the game easier for everybody.

I've listed down EVERY tool that I know/use.

Some of these give an absolutely unfair advantage...

https://twitter.com/Ryker_Strategy/status/1731389801968845308?s=20

I've made concepts for 500+ thumbnails and analyzed over 1000s of others.

To create a viral thumbnail, you have to master these 3 elements

1. Grab viewer's attention
2 Make the message clear and simple
3. Create a Curiosity Gap

Here's how

First and foremost, the idea is the bedrock and foundation of your entire video, including the thumbnail.

If out of the entire thread you walk away with this..

it will save you DAYS worth of work and COUNTLESS lost views due to bad thumbnails:

1. By thinking of better ideas you will make better thumbnails by default

2. As soon as you think of the idea, imagine a thumbnail for it.

If you're struggling to think of something simple and interesting, you should probably scrap the idea (you can try later though)

1. ATTENTION ⚠️

There are aspects you can utilize to grab a viewer's attention, but for each of the steps I first want to give you the principles

So that you can understand the thoughts behind the things you change and improve.

What Getting attention really means, is being different.

And more specifically among your competition of thumbnails that might be surrounding your content.

So the variables that I'll mention are relative to what is happening right now, on YouTube and your niche.

While some things are relative, others are more constant.

The same principle applies to idea generation.

Here are some variables that can make you stand out:

- Faces: faces stand out to the human eye, but don't add it blindly as a face without value can be detrimental.

- Colors: higher contrast colors usually make a thumbnail stand out, but there is also a caveat to this.

If every thumbnail is high contrast, having a low contrast will counterintuitively make it stand out.

For example, which thumbnail's colors stand out to you here the most?

- Objects/Images: an interesting object or image (which is easily recognizable) can also make the thumbnail stand apart from the rest.

If you consider what the potential viewer is/could be interested in, it can add extra appeal

Let me give you an example:

You could either use something the audience is already familiar with, or manipulate something that would make it look new and interesting.

- Text: Simple words can be quickly understood by your brain even in peripheral vision, especially if these are common/known words to the viewer.

for example using big bold "BROKEN" would be clear and simple to the viewer to see without directly looking at the thumbnail.

2. SIMPLICITY ⬛

Everyone's heard about the Rule of 3 by now, but there are a lot more things you can simplify.

Let's take this video as an example:

Great thumbnail, pretty simple to understand, but there are still a bunch of improvements that we can do

I changed only a few simple things here, and yet the difference is quite big.

1. Blurred the background
2. Changed line color
3. Adjusted contrast

Green might not fit in this concept due to other colors and the theme of the thumb/video, but it demonstrates how much can change.

Let's take another example.

This thumbnail is already VERY simple, and easy to understand, but even here, there are things we can improve.

(p.s I don't have the original files for these thumbs)

If you zoom out and slightly unfocus your eyes, you'll be able to see where your eyes are drawn to.

Any unnecessary focus that is not on the main elements of the thumb, add to the "processing time" to understand the thumbnail.

This is the key concept I want you to understand:

Here, although the background is blurred, the tree on the left still takes a lot of attention, we could either:

1. Blur it more
2. Add a shadow
3. Reduce saturation

Now if we look at the grass and the rest of the bg, we can see that everything is saturated & bright, which means

That nothing stands out in the thumb, the #1 focus is the text.

Everything else ends up blending together more than it should be.

So while this thumbnail might GRAB YOUR ATTENTION..

You will spend more time on processing what it means.

Here's how this thumb could look like:

The differences may be minor (because it was an already great thumb)

But this saves microseconds in the processing time, and when you have only around ~3000ms or even less to process the thumbnail, every ms counts.

So now that I showed it visually, let's break it down into some more specifics

Things you can change to simplify a thumbnail
1. No of Elements (rule of 3)
2. Complexity of elements (i.e blurring simplifies a complex tree)
3. Colors (Saturation, brightness, hue difference)

You might also notice that improving simplicity, might take away some from grabbing someone's attention.

It's always a balance of the 3 steps, so keep that in mind as you edit your thumbnail.

(p.s It might take time getting used to it)

3. INTEREST 👀

No matter what way you grab attention and curiosity, every thumbnail concept has a "curiosity gap"

The curiosity gap is the space between the information the viewers know and information they would want to know

Here's why that matters

The bigger the curiosity gap, the more the viewer will want to find out what the video is about.

When I think of a curiosity gap, I usually visualize it as a sticky link of information between two end points.

The distance of the info end points is determined by..

How much space you're creating with each element in your thumbnail, including the title (which can be huge)

Each element can stretch that curiosity gap further.

So perfect packaging would utilize each element to it's limit

Here's some examples:

There's interest in the early gameplay of an upcoming game.

But the thumbnail itself is not adding any curiosity gap here

A better image could be a clear and simple screenshot of a new ability/cool feature mid-action

Although this thumbnail could be a bit simpler
(as there are 4.5 elements)

Each element is adding something to the thumbnail concept.

His face is smug, showing confidence in the product.

The question mark on the item makes us wonder what it is.

meanwhile..

The title is not repeating the information, further adding space to the curiosity gap.

I would personally consider removing the arrow, but that might be an important separation from questioning the product vs questioning if it's easy to sell.

On the other hand..

This should be a pretty clear clickbait for everyone I hope.

If you don't know Andrew Huberman, he never made a face like this, never said anything like this and clearly the face was also overexaggerated.

Is there a curiosity gap? Yes.

But it went too far and snapped 👇

Now seeing all of these changes yourself is not always easy..

One the best ways to notice these is have someone else reviewing your thumbnails and writing potential thumbnail changes.

There are already a bunch of existing formats to create curiosity gaps, some that Jay Alto mentions are:

- Mid-Action/Cliffhanger
- The Question
- wow Factor

However I wanted to go more into the logic and thinking behind I look at these formats, to give you even more freedom.

Whew, that took a while.

If you got value from this thread, I need a small favor from you..

A while back I've started this challenge (👇) for which I only have a few days left 😫

And I still need 143 followers to keep my hair

 like and a follow would be very appreciated

https://twitter.com/Ryker_Strategy/status/1631293343614357509?s=20

Every Viral Thumbnails Has These 3 Elements

You see other channels grow every month, while you're stuck and frustrated.

Thinking, what are they doing differently from me?

Here's how to get 0 to 1M views/month on YouTube with

- ZERO prior experience
- ZERO Financial investment
- No hacks or tricks.

- In just 60-90 days.

I have to start by saying you may not have even uploaded a video yet.

Or if you're already on your journey, this will help you get to the next level.

So how can I say that you will get to 1M views in 90 days?

Honestly, 1M views/month is not a lot.

There are creators who grow to 1M, 4M, 5M or even 10M+ in a short amount of time.

The biggest difference between them and you is that they just have been improving every day with the intention.

And I'll help you do the same.

These are the exact steps to Improve just like them, 1M/month is only the beginning.

You can go a lot further depending on how much you actually do.

The guide Is separated into 2 parts:

Part 1: Daily practice routine
Part 2: Iteration Plan

PART 1.

These are the 5 things you need to improve at to become better at YouTube:

1. Ideas
2. Editing
3. Scriptwriting & Story
4. Camera & voice presence
5. Marketing (Thumbnails/Titles)

Out of these, Ideas are the most important.

But you need to improve your editing first.

There's also the 6th element that I didn't include: "Strategy"

As much as I and other YouTube consultants want to teach you about this, you don't need it.

You'll passively learn by seeing what works and by learning the rest.

More importantly, you need to get the basics down.

Ideas are much simpler to improve, but editing takes a lot more time and effort.

You may have the best idea but you will need a baseline level of editing in your videos to keep the viewers for the next video, hence building an audience.

Here's how you improve at each one:

1. Ideas

1A) note down ideas of other people, don't just blindly watch other videos. As you do that, also note down the editing, story, and other elements.

This applies to other parts of this thread as well.

Here are a few techniques for you

https://twitter.com/Ryker_Strategy/status/1631036642956812289?t=UGxM5hL_CTHJNWWzZwsz4A&s=19

1B) Think of 5-10 ideas a day and write them down.

Ideation is a muscle and you have to get better at it just like everything else in this list.

Utilize the aforementioned techniques and watch them improve over time

1C) Become more mindful of the moment, observe your thoughts and meditate.

Didn't think you'd hear this in a YouTube guide huh?

Everyone has a lot more to think and write about than they give themselves credit for.

For example:

If you use discord, look at the messages you've sent in the past or conversations you've had with other people.

You're bound to see some ideas and thoughts you already had but just didn't realize it.

Speaking of discord, if you're a:

- YouTuber/Content Creator
- Video Editor
- Thumbnail Designer

We're building a community for opportunities to learn and get work from each other.

As well as upcoming special events 👀  https://discord.gg/Az6zepdGz5

2. Editing

2A) Improve your technical skills

Learn the *how* for effects, zooms, cuts (J-Cuts, L-Cuts), motion graphics etc by searching tutorials.

Most importantly focus on cuts first, it's the foundation of every video.

Different tutorials and apply them to your next video.

2B) Understand the *TRUE* retention editing

This is not just fast-paced cuts and things always happening.

Understand the journey of the viewers through your video and how every aforementioned action affects them.

Both their overall experience and emotional journey.

2C) Music

Music is a very powerful driver of emotions

Understand the right timing to start and end.

Pay attention to how different genres, moods and speeds affect a scene.

Change each of these around and observe the changes.

Follow @OneHitWasTaken to learn more about this.

3. Scriptwriting

Just like music, your words are powerful

Whether you write a script or not you need to be mindful of the words you say.

3A) If you don't write scripts, focus on the flow of your words.

Make sure that the way you speak is not just clear, but the flow of information and topics should be easy to understand and digest.

In other words..

Not having a script is not an excuse to not control what and how you say things, in fact, it's even more important for you then.

The way you improve this is by watching back your recordings,
taking note of how and what you said, the way you reacted to something.

Another way to improve this is to take improvisation or drama classes, most importantly, observing yourself and tracking progress is crucial.

3B) If you write scripts, write fiction or non-fiction stories that have conflicts and resolutions..

Study writing techniques and apply them in your writing each time.

These could even be small stories from your day-to-day life.

Stories are everywhere, you need to start noticing them, making your own and eventually mastering them to add to your videos.

4. Camera and voice presence

4A) For visual presence record yourself talking about a topic on camera and pay attention to your movements:

- How open you are
- Gestures and whether they relate to what you're saying
- Pacing
- Variety, etc

Help the viewer visualize your words

4B) Similarly, for voice presence, improve your tonality, variance of speed, volume and punctuation of what you say.

Do this:

- Record yourself reading a book out loud and give voices to the narration and characters, do your best to immerse yourself into the world.

- Record yourself speaking about any topic you know, slow down and make sure you don't say any filler words like "Uhm" or "Hmm" and empty words such as "like" etc

5. Marketing, thumbnails and titles

5A) once again, observe.

Make a personal database of Thumbnails you find good, and note down what grabbed your attention and why they are good.

You can even note potential improvements

5B) When making your own thumbnails, look at your 5A database for inspiration, and make 5-10 thumbnails for yourself, use only 1.

Don't do A/B testing until you get 5k-10k per video, and if you do, you'll need to try thumbnails for longer as you'd have smaller view traffic.

5C) Similarly for titles, observe and make 5-10 a day with your observations in mind.

Make a database/list for those too

For 5A and 5B parts, you can follow @Scythe_Clicks and @theJayAlto

If you join our server, I'll also be giving thumbnail feedback to help you along 👀

5D) understand (your) audience.

In order to understand marketing, you have to understand who you're marketing for.

You cannot simply copy other thumbnails and think they will apply to your viewers.

The same goes for ideas, editing and even scriptwriting.

So now you have a routine to improve at each of this aspect, here it is

PART 1.5 The Routine:

1. Add 5-10 ideas from other videos to a list

2. Think of your own 5-10 ideas and write them down

3. Observe your thoughts and conversations, notice your ideas and write them down.

4. Learn 1 editing skill a day, once you learn them, master one after another, starting with cuts.

5. Observe your thoughts and feelings while watching your and other people's videos, including visual and story changes in the video.

6. Observe how genres, moods and speeds affect a scene when watching videos, and write it down

7. Use your existing videos to try different music for the scene and how/when it starts and ends. Try 5-10 songs and pick the best one.

8. Watch your last video or (raw) footage, observe the clarity of your sentences, structure and arrangement of information, and write down at least 3 observations each time.

9. Read about writing techniques, pick one and write a 1-2 page story every day, applying what you learned.

Keep journal of each technique you learned and applied

10. Record yourself talking for 15 minutes about any topic or telling a story, .write down things you can improve.

11. Record yourself reading a fiction book for 15 min focusing on character voices and narration, to improve your speaking range.

12. Record yourself for 15 minutes to practice your clarity, get rid of filler words.

(Make a separate YouTube brand account for all analysis tasks)

13. Look at YouTube and track 5-10 thumbnails, why they're good and what grabbed your attention and how they can be improved

14. While looking at your list of tracked thumbnails, make 5-10 thumbnails for your own videos.

15. Observe and write down 5-10 titles to your list, and write down why they're good and how they can be improved.

16. Spend 10-20 minutes with your audience (even if it's a few viewers), ask them specific questions, and find out what they like.

Write this down into different viewer profiles that your content targets.

You can do this for content other than your one

In total, this should take you 2-4 hours each day, with editing being the most time intensive, 1-4 hours a day.

Yes, all of this is hard, but it's pretty simple now that I wrote it down isn't it?

There are no tricks, hacks, easy 0 to 100M views MrBeast strategies.

It's all HARD work and experience..

for most people it takes YEARS

I've just given you a way to get this at least 2x-5x faster, potentially saving you months or even years of pointless struggling.

PART 2. How to apply this

So now the question is Quality or Quantity?

Here's the truth, In the beginning, it doesn't matter.

Below 1M views a month, nobody's going to care, and that's a good thing.

If you find one of your favourite creators back in time, you'll see their first videos just as bad.

Some creators improve with intention, and some have done it for years, but do you want it to take years or 90 Days? Or even less?

But don't fall into this following trap..

You might be thinking to improve in scriptwriting, camera and editing all at the same time in one video.

But then the production time is going to take you too long, and you won't be able to iterate as fast.

Right now you need to simply learn, apply, analyze and then iterate on one of the 5 aspects

This way you can improve the fastest.

How to Get 1M Views/month on YouTube in 90 Days

MrBeast thumbnails are actually....

Average.

Yeah I said it, they are not the reason why he gets his views..

If you think otherwise you'll get stuck, and stop growing.

Here's what's NOT Average about his channel:

His branding is not average.

The audience he built is not average

His built trust is not average

His ideas are not average

Actually, His Ideas are not the reason he gets his views ANYMORE either..

Why? It's actually quite simple..

It's the combination of all those things built over a long enough time, build his audience.

Every video built his audience, his trust, and his branding.

All of that added up now, gives him 100M views.

If MrBeast started again, the same videos would not get the same views.

These ideas aren't something that gets 100M views+ on their own, if you understand this you can build your channel.

You have to see your every video as a chess move of a very long game.

The beginners have to just learn the rules.

The Grandmasters play on another level..

Needless to say everything MrBeast does IS good but many people simply focus too much on these factors while missing the crucial aspect of the AUDIENCE.

Think about YOUR viewers.

BUILD them up.

Yes, that takes time.

This is one of the BIGGEST reasons new creators don't grow..

And why experienced ones get stuck.

You're not doing enough.

Or they don't do work that truly matters...

For example:

1.  Make more videos.

2.  Then, think of better ideas.

What if instead of Subscribers...

YouTube would show Unique Active Viewers Instead?

Genuinely, what was the last time you clicked on the "Subscriptions" tab? 

Everyone wants to grow their subscribers..

But from the perspective of the viewer seeing many active viewers would mean to me that the channel is doing something good *right now* 

and it's worth actually checking out

A Potential New YouTube Feature?

Hot take🔥

a High Quality video is a waste of time if the return in views isn't proportional.

Why? 👇

Because you probably spent all that effort on the wrong idea. 

However, there's actually another reason to do "higher quality", more on that soon

Hint: what "good quality"means is relative to every viewer/audience

How your "High Quality" videos might be a waste of time..

I see YouTubers saying stuff like:

"Shorts fund is great but short-form will never be the same as long-form" 

or

"Views from Shorts are not earned"

If you want to make the best of shorts and the upcoming shorts fund you HAVE TO understand this principle

👇🧵

2/

Sure, the algorithms are different, and what good content means is also different.   

However, let's start with this:

-&gt; Do you watch both shorts and long-form? 

For most of you, yes.

-&gt; Do you watch the main channel after watching the Short or vice-versa? 

*Maybe*

3/

So if you're basing your results on converting shorts views to long-form views based on the aforementioned statements, and NOT on:

- Your content,
- Your niche
- Your format
- Your value
- Your Story 
etc

You'll always fail at it or be ineffective at best...

4/

I always use this example when talking about converting shorts viewers to long-form and that's https://www.youtube.com/@schrodingerLeeshorts

The way he leveraged his content to make both shorts and long-form is a perfect example of what I mean.

5/ 

At first, Lee started out as a streamer and began making content over time

Although he made a few long-form videos, he stopped doing them for months and focused on making shorts, before starting to edit his long-form content.

So how was he successful?

6/

He DID NOT treat his shorts viewers any differently from long-form, and here's why you shouldn't as well.

The way you would edit the video is different.

The Way people consume shorts is different.

But the viewers themselves *Are The Same*..

Here's what I mean by this:

7/

Remember how you might watch both shorts and long-form? 

-&gt; Do you change your memory or personality each time? 

No, only the context in which you behave. 

Meaning that if your content reaches beyond the short, I will want to learn and watch more.

8/ 

Lee's original content is the stream, and the environment from which content is created happens live.

You're not just watching a streamer, you're watching the interactions with his friends, who have distinct characteristics, making their characters very memorable.

9/

This interaction and progression of this world and his story was very engaging, it pulled you in, almost making it like a multi-seasonal series.

A single short is not enough, you want to know more, you want to see what happens, and of course, it's entertaining all the way.

10/ 

Because of this, you start binging it more and more, you might end up watching all of his shorts and then...

💥BAM!

You end up wishing for a full-length long-form video.

11/ 

Needless to say, his video was also very engaging, fun and interesting to watch.

You have to be good on every level, not just short or just long-form

12/

This might've simply been a coincidence, however with how good his shorts editing is (giving characters to subs using emojis etc) 

Makes me think that he knew that his best video could be timed in a way that a lot of hyped fans can't wait to see more.

13/

This brings me back to what I was saying earlier:

TREAT YOUR VIEWERS THE SAME

If you can have good storytelling, enough value, and make the content of a short bigger than the short itself, you can do the same.

14/ 

Now I am not saying this is easy, for some niches this is going to be pretty challenging. 

However, keep this in the back of your mind when thinking of ideas, maybe there's a way for you to make your content with a bigger world in mind

15/

To summarize in short:

Do
🌍-&gt;🎦-&gt;📦-&gt;✂-&gt;🎞

Instead of
🎦-&gt;📦-&gt;✂-&gt;🎞

So that📦-&gt;🚹 and  🎞-&gt; 🚹

Becomes: 📦-&gt;🚹-&gt;🌍 and  🎞-&gt; 🚹-&gt;🌍

See how this now makes a loop?

Get them interested in your 🌍.

I will go even deeper about understanding views and the viewers in an upcoming thread 

🧧Follow me if you don't want to miss it and for more on YouTube. 

And if you found this thread helpful retweet the top tweet 👇
https://twitter.com/RykerWasTaken/status/1620418057570230277

The SECRET to converting short-term to long-term viewers. (Most never think about this)

👀 https://twitter.com/MoonportMedia/status/1612152899815067648