I made 48 viral videos and this is what i learned...

we're going to cover some hardcore YouTube tips that are directly pulled from over 41 million viewed plus videos but here's the thing we're living in a world where attention is scarce where less is more where our goal should be to opt for shorter simpler words so we have stronger impact clear titles under seven words tend to attract more views I spent 100 days in the metaverse seven words check this out I stayed in secret hotels five words in the title anyone can apply these and the truth is everybody starts at zero you got to just press record today we're talking about Five Lessons From my videos with over 1 million views these are videos I've posted and some of the other think media team members have posted um but I asked myself and what are some of the lessons here's number one clear titles under seven words tend to attract more views so here's one of the vi videos I posted 1. 6 million views and the title is best cheap smartphone accessories for video six words in the title how to get free stuff on Amazon three million views it has seven words in the title free sound effect packs for YouTubers royaltyfree eight wordss um how to use your smartphone as a webcam for free 10 words in the title so seven is not like a magic number but the goal is how few words can we use eight words in this title best video editing software and video editing tips this one has eight words and so I did an average of the title length of the top 40 think media videos all of these videos have over one million views and the approximate amount of words in the title was 9. 5 words you know there's a great book I'll link this up in the description it's called smart brevity and we're living in a world where attention is scarce where less is more where our goal should be to opt for shorter simpler words so we have stronger impact and we want to tailor our messaging to the audience one of the kind of my favorite entertainment creators is named Ryan tryan and his video Concepts and titles are always very lean I spent 100 days in the metaverse seven words check this out I stayed in secret hotels five words in the title and here's some viral YouTube title tips so did you know that YouTube titles can be up to 100 characters that's the maximum amount of characters counting spaces and letters but only 70 show up in search results so if you can keep your YouTube titles under 70 words or at least know that what comes first in your title is super important because the first thing seen well if the last 30 characters are going to get cut off what you lead with in your title is going to be very important the goal would be to aim for 55 to 70 characters to avoid your titles getting cut off because at 55 there's other places where um that is the max before the title starts getting cut off all the more important to say those first few words matter and then for sure you want to focus on the first 40 characters if you want your title to be readable and not cut off so here's a question for you ask yourself how can I create the shortest most impactful YouTube titles that clearly convey my message you know how can you balance brevity with Clarity in your YouTube titles understanding that the thumbnail will also play a role and how can you write YouTube titles that are easy for your audience to understand and remember here's tip number two start titles with how to or best now remember we're talking about education content here and that's what think media and our think media podcast channel is focused on and so when I looked at the themes from the top videos how to or best showed up in a lot of them best copyright free music for YouTube videos top three sites how to create a YouTube channel for beginners stepbystep tutorial best video editing software and video editing tips here's tip number three the easier your video is to understand the better and so if we look at some of the viral videos over a million views we look at this video here it's called Adobe Premiere Pro tutorial how to start for beginners the thumbnail says how to start you've got the logo there you have a lot of minimal space or um if you will what would be the word for you have margin that the title is not the thumbnail is not crowded um and it's a very simple Concept in a simple desire I want to start I'm a beginner and it's been refined down to have Smart brevity to just be a clear package this video with 1.

8 million views I posted on how to make a YouTube video beginners tutorial in the thumbnail leveraged the YouTube logo and also said step by step tried to make it very clear this YouTube short actually only got 88,000 views but it says the the title is six words seven words and it says how you make money as a YouTuber and the topic is very easy to understand I think it's important to know that the average adult reading level in the United States is around seventh to 8th grade reading level so if you're thinking about reaching broad appeal now you want to stick around until tip number five because I'm not saying we should Chase viral and a lot of these principles need to be filtered through who are you trying to reach with your YouTube channel who's your IDE ideal audience perhaps your ideal audience is PhD doctors you know who are speaking at an entirely different level you want to keep that in mind but here's a big idea if you're going to get a lot of views you probably need to reach a wide amount of people and the widest amount of people as far as the US data would tell us speak at a seventh to eth grade reading level so we're talking about making the concept of the video as clear and as simple to understand as possible so that it can have the broadest appeal possible in terms of How It's packaged and titled now today's video is actually brought to you by vid iq. com slink and uh you can check this out in the description this is a suite of tools and you can um start and do a trial for 30 days for just $1 but here's what's uh kind of cool let's check this out for a second and look how we could use some of these tools to apply what we're learning when you log inside of vid IQ you would connect it to your YouTube channel and so once you do that there's all kinds of Cool Tools like the generate tool the um outliers tool to study top performing video ideas and learn from them but I actually want to go to the AI coach and look at some prompts we could do here you could do the basic chat or the advanced chat with the AI coach and I'm going to type in a prompt here that says this give me five title ideas under 70 characters for a video about how to get started in real estate investing with no money so going into this video idea I know what the concept that is that I want and here are the title ideas start real estate investing with no money beginner's guide how to invest in real estate with Zer dollars no money no no problem real estate investing tips now here's the key though think about what we just learned my prompt was influenced by give me title ideas under 70 characters because of what we just learned a few minutes ago now imagine saying here um give me five title ideas under 55 characters because remember there's some surfaces where that's the only amount shown and if we're talking about smart brevity let's use AI to help us lean out our refine our Concepts and create punchy titles so here are five title ideas under 55 characters start real estate investing with zero down strong and what what are we learning from some of these viral videos let's you know we're assuming here that your Niche would be real estate so you could apply your own channel using vid IQ to do this but think about having a strong wide reaching now again not everybody wants to do real estate investing but you want to reach everybody that's interested in that with a very simple concept very powerful to consider how you could do this no money no problem real estate tips and that start real estate investing with zero down is a one two three four five six seven word title pretty powerful how to invest in real estate with no money again A lot of times I feel like we we sometimes make well this is a complex thing and sometimes we make complex things even more complex but genius is making complex things simple if you can't explain it simply you don't understand it well enough it's been said so something about refining your ideas down to make them as simple as possible if you want to reach more people so that's one way you could use uh vid IQ now also check this out if you use the AI coach because it's connected to my channel I could do a prompt like what lessons can I learn from my most viewed videos on this channel and what's cool about vid IQ because there's lots of great AI tools out there but a couple things one it's connected to your channel so it can look at your Analytics two it's leveraging an API from another a AI um service like chat jbt but they're training it to be a YouTube coach so that's why it's different than the other AI Services out there because it actually is being if you will programmed to be a YouTube coach so I've got a few more tips for you but let's see what the AI coach connected to think media could learn from some of my top viewed videos on think media number one the popular mean sound effects video has got 2. 5 million views and it talks about how uh free resources or tools for Content creators such as sound effects music or templates is something they'd be interested in great educational content how to create a YouTube channel for beginners got over two million views highlights the importance of educational content tutorials and stepbystep guides your audience highly values those now check this Insight out though continue to create detailed beginner friendly tutorials more people at are at a beginner stage than are at an advanced stage so depending on how many views certain top videos are going to get this Insight now by the way you're here and you're subscribed I'm I'm hoping you're getting value out of this video and uh we're going through tips that I used actually AI to prepare for this video I use viq to prepare for this video uh and I synthesized those but imagine being able to have an AI coach you could talk to connected to your channel that could be giving you insights as you just start asking it questions and having this conversation with the AI so pretty cool right so these are some a few different things engaging thumbnails and titles comprehensive guides oh that wasn't even one of my tips there's something about if you want to stand out on YouTube longer form content is doing right really well right now if it's if it's comprehensive not just long because you sat down and talked for 45 minutes and had no structure or no plan plan longer form content that is structured teaching stepbystep vid IQ said it way better comprehensive indepth guides that cover the entire process of something or a skill the entire processes or skill in detail ensuring that viewers can follow along and learn effectively pretty cool so ultimately um if you want to check out vid IQ that is just one of The Suite of tools it's their AI coach and you could try that at vid iq.

com think it's just $1 probably the best dollar you you can cancel before the month is over and get a whole bunch of wisdom and insights um but if you click the link in the description or go to vid iq. com think you get a full 30 days for a dollar to tap into all the tools so you can boost your channel get views it's going to be a fun time if you check out that tool number four thumbnails are crucial for video success so of course multi-million viewed videos over a million viewed videos have had good thumbnails I think we could all see that but let's look at some of the lessons we can learn first this is a how-to video so tapping into an earlier tip how to record your screen with internal audio on a Mac now that's the audience desire so having a specific audience desire but let's look at the thumbnail simple Simplicity here's another example only five words in this title best DSLR settings for video over a million views and very simple thumbnail best DSLR video settings yellow arrow point to the camera you know what you're going to get clear good lighting and uh this is also seven years old my thumbnails have got a lot better since then you know some of the huge thumbnail mistakes I see people make is too much text their thumbnail is just packed with text I like to try to have three or less words or no words repeating the entire entire title repeating the entire title text in the thumbnail so if you title your video like how to lose weight at home exercises for women over 40 then your thumbnail is like how to and it's like just packed with text it's an echo but it's also it's redundant it's unnecessary but it's also just busy you don't want your thumbnails to cause an xiety unless of course it's kind of like scariest water slide in the world maybe it is because you're like oh that looks it'll be wild to watch this video because it's so you get what I mean you don't watch your thumbnails to cause design anxiety like where am I looking there's so many things happening why are there so many words why are there so many elements in this thumbnail I don't know what's going on Simplicity clear busy and confusing I don't want to get confused you know on YouTube If you confuse you lose Clarity is power so if we look at this thumbnail there's only two words in the thumbnail start here the title is different if you have zero subscribers do this first and some very simple icons speaking to the creation of the camera and then the YouTube logo itself so I want to encourage you avoid repeating title text in your thumbnail instead use visuals and concise text like two words that say start here or try this to grab attention two words that you know secret trick or like this worked or you know just thinking about one two three words that complement the title now there's also an interesting insight and that is having the problem in the thumbnail and no person or having the person in the thumbnail so when I looked at think media 30 of the top 1 million viewed plus videos had a person in the thumbnail but 10 did not have a person 25% because here's the thing sometimes not including your face in the thumbnail can help your videos go viral especially this is especially effective if your content focuses on solving a problem like a video editing software tutorial right people just want the Final Cut tutorial and they may or may not if someone's face is in it again you just have to think about it and you you make your own decisions right you might say I don't like the way that why is that guy wearing a blue hat why why does he have you know the face of a boy but the hair of an old man you know what I mean like there there's different things and so you just don't click on it whereas you might be like I don't know I I don't I don't know who the teacher is but it looks like it's good and it's being recommended to me I'm G to click on it because of the problem or the promise not the person and so by prioritizing the problem over the person you can attract clicks from a wider range of viewers just something to consider strategically again the takeaway here is both are included in our over 40 videos with over a million views but 25% just focus on no person in the thumbnail all right number five viral videos are overrated viral videos are overrated so we're talking about viral videos success leaves Clues so I think you're like you know I don't want to go viral or my Niche is really small even still I would suggest that every video every tip in this video is applicable to help you reach more of the people you want to reach and while I understand too that there's massive opportunity in the creator of economy and not everybody is going to get a million subscribers or get a million views following these tips can get you to a thousand subscribers 10,000 subscribers and I would argue could get you to part-time or full-time on YouTube without going viral and let's talk about that because viral videos are overrated here's a couple examples the two most viewed videos of all time onth media are these two videos 30 30 funny sound effects YouTubers use there is nobody in the video all they are is it just starts and there's like 30 sound effects and then popular meme sound effects they got some crazy views 8. 6 million views 6.

9 million views here's the question does the audience attracted by this viral video aligned with my YouTube Channel's goals now if it was that of complete disalignment I would delete or private the videos if it was totally offbrand because think media is video tips video editing how to create content and so downloadable sound effects for video editing is on is is is on brand however can you let me guess tell me in the comments what audience do you think is mostly downloading B like the popular meme sound effects do you think that's 45 year old professionals who spend a lot of time on LinkedIn do you think that's you know 38y old real estate agents who uh like are doing really well and want to scale their business with YouTube I'm just kind of describing you know a lot of times the people we help we'll serve anybody like I think anybody watches our content we' help a lot of entertainment and like uh you know creators that are are wanting to Vlog and stuff but like our the people we help best are Educators and professionals who want to build real businesses and a lot of times want lead needs clients and sales do you think these two videos are attracting those so this is just the question to ask is that sometimes viral can be overrated and even crazier is the meme one grew think media by 177,000 subscribers and the funny one grew think media by 22,000 subscribers but are those subscribers do they like me shows you how much I deal with insecurity and uh you know questioning my worth I did they subscribe for me did they subscribe for Omar you know one of our thick media cre creators over the years no they didn't subscribe for anybody actually they just subscribed for a utility based thing so then the question is now they're subscribed watch the Insight I upload a video like hey Sean here you know ready to help 40-year-old dad just uh and and they unsubscribe or don't watch or don't click so what's that doing to your Channel again these retentions I wrestle with you want to know why I'm I'm up at night I'm just thinking about should what should I do with those meme videos just I'm saying viral can be overrated and does the audience attracted by the viral video align with your YouTube Channel's goals better question your online business goals let's take it a little bit deeper we had a viral short on the think media podcast Channel this is this is funny okay so I interview Eric warry and one of the things we do which is a great practice is we cut out clips from our video podcast great that's great we upload them as shorts a that's great we upload them on other platforms I'm excited are you excited this is great but this particular clip number one starts with Eric worry talking about Rob DCT okay so you can see it on screen there he is Eric he's talking about Rob DCT from Ridiculousness I'm in the video I think I say one thing I like go yeah as like Eric's talking that's like the the total amount I'm in the video okay it's not about YouTube It's kind of about business but okay so I think you see where I'm going so this short really doesn't even have me in it again since I absolutely demand to be the center of attention that's not what I'm saying I'm just saying again if you're trying to build a personal brand Channel but you're attracting people who don't want to follow in listen and connect with you as a personal brand or if you're even trying to build a company brand are they following Eric are they do they care most about Rob and and I'm not even really overthinking this I probably am overthinking this but like if you see where this is going what what do these subscribers matter for the future of the channel it's cool now let's look this video got 9. 9 million views so far but let's talk in like a month this video is still taken off like it'll probably have 20 million views in its lifetime time at its current trajectory it grew the channel to 25,800 subscribers this is also a side quest of a viral short shorts people watch shorts and Longs people watch Longs it's just true you don't really see a transference of the audience so while I would argue with people who go well shorts Destroy YouTube channels maybe that's not what I believe but here's what I believe these 25,800 subscribers if by the way if you're watching this and you subscribed because of that Rob dck video which is probably a low likelihood but let me know in the comments that would be absolutely amazing there's almost like no chance that somebody would be here for a long form live stream from a 44 second short with Eric war and Rob DCT is like the main thing do you see what I'm saying so with kindness I just want to say like those 25,800 subscribers are like the worst subscribers in the not it's not kind but I mean you I mean I do mean that it's like no it's actually I I love you guys and and you'll probably watch my other shorts you'll probably never see this because you're just this is what happens when you really have certain shorts growing on your channel and Longs growing on your channel you just kind of create two different audiences so you can keep serving and helping your shorts people and they like to watch and you get like a p very small percentage of overlap but besides the fact of shorts versus Longs subscribers virality I my point is who did this video attract like what kind of people that are like oh and by the way the comments I get comments all day long on this video oh man I miss Robin big oh man no Rob doesn't actually spend time with this Ridiculousness like MTV is ruin it's just like an ongoing conversation 247365 on this dang short now if the video did bring in $1,800 which is pretty markable for a short but I think we can land the plane saying that the Insight is viral can be overrated like what did this video align with my channel goals with my business goals no not really and and hear me it's a part of a podcast and yes the related video feature people can click through and they could go over there and I don't want to take it down I've debated taking it down or just making it unlisted um but I'm also always studying and by the way I'm your guinea pig that's why should watch this channel to be like let's learn from Sea's mistakes his pain his foibles and um his insecurity because then we can go further faster because of all of those insights and so ultimately um here's the big idea viral is overrated and if you don't even need viral views to go part-time full-time if you got the right strategy in fact as we land the plane if you haven't watched our free master class on how to make serious money on YouTube without going viral must watch think masterclass. com you can watch it on demand there's a link in the description down below or you can go to the website think masterclass.

com but let's talk about the viral could can be overrated but viral can also be good and this would be a good example of if you could get 4.