Ali Abdaal's Scriptwriter Shares Pro Retention Tips… | Channel Chats Ep.8

George you've helped multi-million subscriber YouTubers like Ali Abdel and Mike Shake write their scripts and you specifically focus in helping people maximize their attention so keep viewers watching which is obviously super important as YouTube monitors watch time on a video when it decides where to push those videos out to bigger audiences or not um you're going to run us through some retention graphs in this talk to show us kind of typical mistakes and patterns you see in retention graphs to help the viewers get higher attention and we're going to get to a nice introduction in

a second but first I want to get some value for the viewers I want to ask you straight off the bat what are some typical mistakes like common things you see YouTubers doing wrong that bombs their attention sure I think uh it comes down to one thing a lot of the time uh although that can appear in in different ways basically um the payoff whatever whatever the payoff is that we're building towards in a in a script or a video um that needs to be pretty Crystal Clear basically to the people who are watching um

I think that's really the the cause of a lot of people going is is if they're thinking right they're making that decision where they have to say I'm going to spend 10 minutes watching this video or 15 or 20 or more and what's worse is the fact that one click away is their YouTube homepage and they've got hundreds of other videos or they've got Netflix or they've got Apple TV they've got whatever else I essentially need to know what it is that I'm going to see not only at the end of the video but in

the next 20 seconds yeah well the next minute and I think that starts with being clear in your own head when you're either planning your video or writing it is is like sitting and actually thinking about what is that thing what is the most interesting thing that people are gonna wanna see next and have I signposted that in my video do they know what they're what they're waiting around for basically and when that fails to happen when you don't have that clear in your head that's when you start to see people disappear yeah that makes

complete sense like viewers have a million options that they could be watching they need to know the reason why to stick around on your video in the first 10 20 seconds right yeah yeah that's right and I think a lot of the time you that needs to be just obviously made clear in the hook but I think people can lose track of it once that hook is over they think oh they're in now and they're going to watch till the end like in some cases fine but it is about well between the ultimate payoff and

where we're at now there's another eight minutes and they gotta know what they're waiting for before the end yeah I've heard that from a few other YouTubers I've interviewed on this podcast in previous episodes like so important to get that hook right and establish the payoff that the viewer is going to get um okay that was an amazing opener let's learn a little bit about you um do you want to tell us a little bit about your your history who you've worked with and just kind of how you work with creators now I guess to

help them sure uh So I entered this whole um bizarre Multiverse that we live in uh as a full-time scriptwriter for Ali Abdul who is uh I think now the world's most followed productivity expert but I think at the time he probably had around two two million subscribers I think and I got that um and for me that that was really the best possible start that I could have had in all of this because uh naturally he uh his name opens a lot of doors and so when I went freelance just over a year ago

um the world was sort of my oyster uh to an extent um where he retweeted the fact that I was uh looking for clients and I basically had the ability to pick and choose people who I really like working with since then and so over the course of the last year it's yeah yeah it was cool it was a very fortunate position to be in um and so gradually over the course of the year I've been moving more out of that uh education edutainment style thing and pushing more towards the entertainment side of things uh

which is I'll let you say at the start more recently I've started working with uh Mike Shake who's nearing three million um and that brings with it an entirely different challenge rather than kind of ground up script writing which is what I was doing with Ali and various other clients that I've had now it's a case of they dump hours of footage on my desk essentially and then it's my job to kind of do the pre-edit essentially and arrange it write the voiceover that weaves it all together and kind of create a story from uh

from the footage that we've got so lots of different challenges lots of different opportunities in this space and a lot of fun to be had and so my my new kind of vibe and what I'm trying to go for these days is to be more the kind of like the script writing guy if if we're putting a label on it and thinking more about the craft of script writing as that relates to retention um so it's partly about trying to keep the line as flat as possible but it's also about thinking how can we get

people as engaged as possible with this video how can we get people feeling like part of a community um because I think ultimately that's that's like the 3D aspect that is behind the very 2D this is what my graph did this is what I need to fix so you're saying that getting higher attention on our videos isn't as simple and straightforward as simply looking at a single attention graph and deconstructing what that graph shows you there's more to it for sure there is a lot more to it so this is an example of a pair

of graphs that on the surface basically do the same thing if you kind of think of the the amount that's below the line the amount that's above the line they broadly look very very similar but the one on the left massively outperformed its sub count and the one on the right as you can see had a pretty bad ratio of Subs to views obviously UK a lot when it comes to numbers like that but this is one of the clearest examples that I have from videos that I've reviewed where the line is not enough by

itself and the kind of breakdown that I had for this by looking at it was essentially the one on the left the one that's done very well uh was a listicle it was a top 20 uh I think it was the top 20 Minecraft seeds uh for the month of August or whatever um and with a video like this what you see in the graph is a lot of uh like continuous spikes essentially and each of those spikes roughly coincides with each time they move on to talking about a new Minecraft seed the reason for

this at least as far as my interpretation goes is that the whole point of this video is showing somebody who's interested in this game something that they're gonna want to then take away and try for themselves and it's like a victim of its own success essentially where as soon as somebody finds the seed that they think looks really cool they're gonna quit the video and leave now on this yeah exactly exactly on the surface that is something that you would assume would send bad vibes to the algorithm because it's somebody who's leaving the video nice

and early the difference is when you search this Creator's name or when you search I think sorry not his name obviously then his name would come up top when you search top Minecraft seeds or whatever that kind of Niche would be his videos are always top of search and the reason there is that you get a lot of viewer satisfaction the video does exactly what it says it's going to do and it delivers exactly what what you're expecting uh when you start watching a video like that and so the result is every time he uploads

one of his videos you go back and this channel had I think fairly High returning viewers um the difference as a strong positivity around his brand like he's built up like viewer loyalty and yeah positive like a sentiment towards the channel yeah exactly that um and so there the returning viewers thing almost uh I'm trying to think of the right way to phrase it but kind of uh makes amends for the perceived slightly wonky downward spiky retention graph whereas the video on the right again I would don't like to call out what these videos are

because I'm not trying to make anyone feel bad um but it didn't have that same level of kind of viewer satisfaction created by it uh again I can't remember exactly what the title was but I remember watching the video and thinking just if I was to watch if this was the first video I found of this channel I probably wouldn't be coming back whereas the video on the left 100 if that's the niche that I'm in and that's a video that I'm interested in sure I clicked away after a minute but that's because it absolutely

delivered what I needed it to and I will 100 be back for the next one um so this is yeah one of those clear illustrations of the fact that the line is not enough by itself so is the takeaway there then you know because on the surface these lines look very similar uh and you'd say you could say that people stuck around and watch each of these videos for the same amount of time unfortunately to how long this video was so is the takeaway there then that single video retention isn't so important when a channel

has high returning views video after video after video uh potentially I I mean this is it it's I I'm always so nervous on these things to give kind of blanket rules because it's not only the difference between it's not just about returning viewers it also completely depends on the niche that the videos are um so get something else I've spoken about in the past is um kind of uh documentary style videos maybe like video essay those kinds of things you'll often see those videos will uh drop off really hard in the first kind of 30

seconds to a minute um because again it's like that's that's quite a heavy investment if you're diving into a whole video essay it's like right I'm settling in for something that's going to be fairly long and you're still deciding in that first minute if it's something you're interested in but a well-made video essay documentary once you're in you're in and those types of videos tend to then be fairly flat once it hits that first that first kind of dip then they flatten off completely um and so again I think it comes down to the viewer

satisfaction thing again and but potentially that then means we can say what you've just said about returning viewers but again I'm always wary of getting those sorts of black and white rules because yeah just it takes a lot of time actually spent looking at the individual channels case and seeing which video is performing well which ones aren't um but for sure you can't you can't just look at the line of the graph and say my video did well or my video did not do so well I have another thought as well looking at these two

um lines I've noticed the video on the left is 12 and a half minutes whereas the video on the right is a minutes 47. so say on average these videos had 35 retention 35 retention of the first video is going to be actual watch time a lot longer than for the second video isn't it to people obviously watching more minutes of the first video and I know that the longer a video is the harder it is to keep people watching so for this argument say a 35 percent 35 watch time on a longer video video

one could be seen as a more positive signal than 35 watch time on video two so I'm thinking maybe that played a part here as well yeah yeah no you're right and we uh with one of the clients that I work with at the moment we did very recently a video that was nearly an hour long and his usual videos are eight to nine minutes long and again the overall retention was pretty trash by the end there were very few people left watching it but the average uh yeah the watch time was was magnitude higher

than normal and it's it was a one out of ten it's been one of the most yeah successful videos that he's done recently even though it loses a lot of people at the start so yeah you're right to to point out the another layer of context that you've got to think about yeah got this there's so much to YouTube isn't there I wish it was just one thing we could look at and monitor um but yeah it's a really great thing I bring into our attention that there's more than just what meets the eye at

the surface there's more to think about here so problem YouTubers have specifically what what more often smaller YouTubers is keeping viewers watching their videos and we can learn a lot currently from retention gratitis is something you do a lot um and you've got some grass with us today that you typically see can you help us let's look through some of these retention graphs and see what they tell you uh about the video and how these videos can be improved if that's okay yeah of course yeah so I think this is it like the caveat to

everything we just said about there being context is there are patterns that you can kind of observe and some of them are easier to pick apart than others um and this one we're looking at on screen now is is one of the most common ones and one of the ones that you can say with some certainty what the issue is um so again to describe the graph essentially if you're seeing this kind of spiky spikiness that we saw uh with the graph we were looking at just now but particularly when the spikes line up with

the dotted gray lines which are essentially the the video chapters okay is it like the spike indicates yes yeah okay um these are all moments that your viewers are skipping ahead to uh and it essentially indicates that they don't feel the need to fully stick around in between each of these points and they're regularly sipping ahead to get more information in more quickly um this could be for a couple of reasons it could be that you're taking too long to deliver the information but uh a lot of the time and this is particularly an issue

with listical videos um it's that the tendency is to assume you should deliver the information as you would in a conversation where you make the point and then you start explaining the point um the issue with this is that it gives the viewer complete permission to skip ahead particularly when the point is very easily understood in a matter of seconds um very conscious of now laboring this point for exactly the same reason uh is that in a sentence if I've understood what the point on the listicle is or whatever the point you just made is

you don't need to spend two minutes discussing it so the way speaker that I encourage people to fix this um and it tends to work very well and we can talk about it as an example that is below this graph uh where I kind of implemented that in uh creative video yes yeah um but you just swap the information around uh and so you can do that in a number of ways it could be that new uh kind of hint at what the point is and then spend a little bit of time giving some context

and then explaining what you're talking about so that's kind of delaying the payoff essentially or in the style of creative Booth film Booth you can do a kind of a metaphor or something that doesn't make it quite clear what it is that we're about to build up to but it's something that is uh visually engaging or mentally stimulating or something that gets you watching without yet giving you the payoff and again It's tricky because you don't want to you're not trying to play with people in the way that you're uh just saying I'm not going

to tell you what this information is right until the very end because people will get bored with that and they will click away but it really can be as simple as where you start by giving what the point is literally just move that sentence to the end of that segment of the video and see if it still flows and if it does still flow that's going to be probably a more efficient way of of doing it yeah so when people typically start a chapter and they know it instantly like they find out instantly what that

touches about and the information that's going to be delivered in that chapter they skip ahead because they've got no more reason to to watch that chapter so what you're saying is find a way to not make it immediately obvious what information the chapter is going to provide by rearranging the flow information but also still make it interesting enough to keep people watching and not lose interest in the whole video is that right yeah exactly okay that's that's really interesting I've seen this done a lot with um I follow a YouTube channel called game ranks and

they do a lot of listening videos like 10 best games of 2023 so far and but instead of naming their chapters they'll just have they'll call the chapter number one number two number three yeah you can't visually see what the chapter is about and uh and then I've also seen some credits I think Ali does this as well sometimes they use they have kind of like vague ambiguous names for their chapters and so like rather than like do this it'll be um the the 3020 rule but we won't know what that all is they have

to watch the chapter to understand what it is um yeah so yeah yeah pretty much that's kind of it's that's like yeah that's kind of the the second half of it is making sure once you've done the work on the script you don't and just give it away in the title cards anyway but I was Consulting with or doing doing some Consulting with um Ali's team fairly recently and despite the fact they do often do well at not giving away what it is from the chapter alone they will sometimes still start the segment by saying

the 30 20 rule is and then they'll talk about it for a minute and it's like you the mistake is still mistake but you know what I mean it's still there um so it's partly in not giving away in the chapter but also in how you construct the the script um it's like a two-part operation so there's an art form to doing all right and you house Edge from film booth and creative put this video together and you believe this video is a good example of how to do it correctly um so yeah the thing

first initially I mean this is maybe a slightly separate point but the very first thing um we're doing with this video is uh we're starting out by asking the audience a direct question um it's not yet clear what we're talking about in relation to the video but it's immediately something that is going to engage the viewer and uh get them actively paying attention actively participating if you like in the video um so yeah I'll just we'll play it and so great yeah let's watch that and see this in action these numbers on screen this is

the revenue generated and in one month buys three different YouTubers that I know and these are their subscriber counts which I'm going to put in a random order for you now I want you to guess which channel is making which amount of money and then I'm going to give you two more seconds before I reveal the answer surprised one of the main reasons I started this channel because I wanted it okay um so what did we see there so George what was that an example of yeah so um like I said beforehand initially it's asking

the audience a direct question it's getting them involved in the video making them a participant um there are also a lot of kind of editing choices that the guys made on the other end so immediately it's like a sort of little pop sound effect uh as soon as the question happens there was also Ed said a very deliberate choice to leave the uh answer on screen for not very much time uh because that would again make people sort of like pause check it out go back uh almost like you know re-reviewing the information that they've

just taken in um but the main point of this intro is that we're creating a puzzle for the viewer which is is not yet clear why we're talking about it at all we haven't given any context to this but it's something that is interesting for YouTubers because it's like oh it's money and it's all sub counts and oh it's probably not going to be obvious it's not going to be the smallest amount of money is made by the smallest sub count but but if not then how is it that's along with maybe very few subscribers

is making loads of money in uh so all these questions open so many curiosity gaps uh and then again we show them the answer but we don't explain why that is and still we don't yet have context for what the video is going to be but it's a very kind of engaging uh start the video essentially um so again oh sorry Greg gone I was just going to say wow that's so interesting and I'm sure a lot of smaller YouTubers would be surprised that there's creators out there thinking about this stuff in this much detail

um so yeah it's great to have you here and give us a little Glimpse behind the curtain all this looks but that was yeah I should say that that's kind of almost a separate point but then the as for what we were discussing just before about reversing the order of information I think if you watch this in the next bit up to the first payoff as it were the first kind of reveal um you might see a bit more about what I was talking about with with reversing that information um so if you probably play

till about 40 seconds uh you'll it'll it'll say myth one um whatever it says so yeah cool you you tell me when to start we'll jump in now and just give me the heads up and stop surprised one of the main reasons I started this channel because I wanted to open people's eyes to just how much business savvy YouTube channels are making without having millions of subscribers on millions of views because the reality is most of the YouTubers I talk to make 10 times less than they desire because their beliefs about YouTube monetization are all

wrong so in this video I'm going to debunk those beliefs so you can start earning what you deserve faster so how are those small channels done it well it's because they don't Focus all their energy on getting more views but instead better marketing and better systems that help generate revenue from the views they do get and that's the first myth you need to forget about on YouTube views does not equal more money I mean sure there are big entertainment channels get okay that was it cool yeah so what essentially we're doing there is once we

get past that kind of little game at the start we're then starting to address more directly audience objections audience uh preconceptions if you will so immediately we're saying uh to back up that little game we did at the start YouTubers that make the most money don't necessarily have the most views oh interesting why would that be um and the reason for that is now we widen the Curiosity out a lot more because the beliefs that a lot of YouTubers have around monetization are all wrong and so immediately I'm thinking right I don't know what these

things are whatever my preconceived beliefs are about YouTube monetization I'm in this moment uncertain if they are right or wrong because I'm being told that they could well be wrong um and then I'm shown the exact transformation that I'm going to get by the end of the video it's going to be whatever those preconceived notions I have they're going to be debunked or I'm going to feel enlightened so that I can more effectively monetize my YouTube channel and once we've kind of gone through all of that stuff we then reveal that this myth the first

myth that we're talking about is more views does not equal more money and that's nearly a minute in before we've had that first little payoff whereas what I think a lot of people would do would be in this video we're going to debunk five myths about YouTube or YouTube monetization starting with Miss number one more views does not equal more money and then we talk about it for a minute and I've got it I I understand like I don't need I don't need you to tell me for a minute why that is the case I

can sort of start to Intuit it um so that's just an example of how simply reversing that order of information can do wonders for retention yeah that second example you gave of the typical YouTuber yeah you're skipping aren't you as soon as that chapter starts yeah you know what the chapters about you on to the next chapter then the next one yeah so the overall watch time for the video is way lower yeah so interesting so it sounds like you're just playing with a delicate balance of building curiosity and it's kind of like establishing payoff

but delaying the reveal uh is that funny yeah yeah it is that but and this is it can sound almost a little bit uh yeah like gimmicky or uh almost a bit disingenuous to withhold that information but I think honestly it creates a more enjoyable experience for the viewer um I was working uh very briefly with um she runs a graphic design Channel I don't actually want me to mention her name so I won't mention her name um but uh she actually taught me something really interesting when I was looking through her kind of scripting

template um she had these kind of notes on like what we want to achieve in export the part of the video and what we want to achieve here and what we want to achieve here and the phrase she used was we want the viewer to feel smart and the issue with giving away that information super super fast is that the viewer gets it and they get bored and they move on whereas when we're actively taking time to engage their brain in a way that doesn't give away all the answers it gradually gives people the chance

to work out what it is that we're going to be talking about and makes them feel smarter when they start to figure it out as you build towards the reveal rather than giving all that information away and making them think well I got it I'm skipping um so it's a more rewarding experience for you and them I suppose I suppose that makes them more active viewers they're constantly figuring things out for themselves and having a closer engagement with the video throughout it yeah exactly exactly right we've been hearing great tips so far on how to

get more views on YouTube but if you're like me you'll know that no matter how hard you work some months views might be up and other months our views might be down and when looking at ad Revenue that means that some months we might earn a lot and other months we might not and I for one do you not like that monthly inconsistency that comes with our YouTube earnings so I went away and I found out that YouTube is like jevin Dobby that you'll see on screen now and even smaller YouTubers like Brendan Washington are

using a platform called you screen to solve this problem what is you screen and how does it help us earn monthly recurring income you might ask let me explain so going back to jevin he's you screen to build the Creator film school that you'll see on screen now where you can see here he's teaching his audience the skills they need to create awesome videos and if they want to as viewers can join the creative film school by just committing to a 29 a month membership fear jumping back to Brandon here he's used your screen to

open the creative fam Academy where if we scroll down we can see he's hosting a ton of courses for his viewers that they can access when they join his monthly membership which if we scroll down here we can see is ranging from 4.99 for the basic stuff to 79.99 a month to join and just focusing in on some of the you screen features Brenda's using to convince his viewers to sign up to that monthly fee we can see here he's offering live stream trainings to his viewers they can join an internal Community inside this membership

space and they just get access to a ton of extra guides courses video content and Q A's and jumping back to jevin here even though his views on YouTube might be going up and down each month if he can convert 100 of his viewers to sign up to his 29 a month membership well that's two thousand nine hundred dollars he's making every month regardless of how many views he gets on YouTube seeing these creators doing this solidifies inside me how great I think building a membership space around your YouTube channel it generates you recurring consistent

income every month and it just means that you're not obsessing over whether your views are up or down on YouTube monthly and month out in fact if you look on screen now you'll see that I'm using new screen myself to build up my own membership platform I need to use one of their templates to be honest to make mine look a bit better because looking a bit basic at the moment but it's a work in progress and by using you screen to build out this membership space I'm able to send emails directly to people that

sign up and become members I'm able to offer free trials and provide coupon codes to my viewers and jumping over here you'll also see the behind the scenes of what the community space looks like inside a you screen membership area where members of my membership space can come and have a chat with each other speak to me and just build a community inside my membership platform and later if I wanted to I could bring my membership space into to my own white label mobile and TV app which means people could access it on iPhone Android

fire stick Roku TV all of those Usual Suspects it's a no-brainer for YouTubers like you and me making educational content to build membership sites alongside our channels to just get that guaranteed recurring Revenue I recommend using your screen to do it thankfully they're sponsors of this podcast so if you want to get set up you can use my partner link that you'll find Below in the description to this video thanks okay that was awesome um so we're back at the list of uh common retention graphs that we see and what we can learn from them

and improvements we can make on to number two the gradual realization you want to talk is through this graph yeah so again this may be one that you recognize and the the tricky thing with a graph like this is that there are none of those really steep drop-off moments where it's easy to focus in and think this is there's clearly an issue in this this part it's more a kind of gradual gradual reduction in viewership over the course of the video um again context contexts there's a lot of different things this could be but again

the common thing that I've found in the videos that I reviewed and again I up until very recently reviewing three videos every single week in my newsletter writing videos every single week for different clients across different niches um is that it comes down again to to pay off and so the three things um that we can usually boil it down to um so the first thing is potentially the audience realizes gradually that they've already experienced the the grand payoff the biggest kind of aha moment they're going to get in this whole video maybe it's come

early on um okay so an example sort of quicker drop at the start I thought not not necessarily so I what what tends to happen and the reason I call this the gradual realization is that nothing distinctly happens that makes you think oh I'm not really yeah I'm not enjoying this anymore oh that was a bad joke like let's skip away or whatever it is it's it's more a case that you're kind of instinctively waiting for that next payoff moment that next little little injection of oh yes cool I've learned something let's keep watching let's

keep watching um this is a particularly prevalent when videos are edited really well um they might look they always trick you into thinking they're being very engaging but the substance underneath you gradually start to realize oh when did I actually last learn something in this at all and you won't necessarily say it like that right this is a split second thing that happens in your head um but it's the case where at various points across the video people start to think um perhaps this video has kind of done all it's going to do for me

I'm going to skip away but it's not a distinct moment where the video just crashes and burns or does something really really bad which makes everyone leave it's like a gradual realization so what one example I can think of for that first realization that the big payoff has already happened was I reviewed uh a video for uh it was a a review of a horror video game being done by a non-horror fan um and I think that was basically the title it was like a non-horror fan reviews X horror game um and it was really

really cool it was really well edited they were super engaging it was like all all good signals um but they basically after about a minute were like yeah so even though I'm not a horror fan this game didn't scare me too much and then the video is just a review of the game and a very good review of the game for sure because of the expectations you set up at the start and the types of people who might be watching it to think oh I kind of like the look of this game but I'm not

really into horror should I bother buying it they've got their answer and then the first minute yeah exactly um and so again it's like you you might think well I'll carry on watching just to see if there's anything else for me in here but again it's a gradual realization ah I've had my big payoff I'm good to go um so that's the first yeah so the gradual realization is throughout the video the viewer is gradually realizing that there's not really going to be much more to this video and and they gradually decided to come off

that makes sense exactly um so that's the first potential reason for it the second one is yeah playing off of that really and kind of to what you just said even if you don't realize oh maybe I've had the biggest payoff and therefore there's nothing much for me it might just be the fact that generally you're not sure what the next payoff is and this is something we spoke about right at the start is just knowing what it is that I'm looking forward to in the next next few minutes um and the the third and

final reason potentially is just a case of overwhelm um where depending it could be on your presentational style it could be based on the editing style cut cut cut something like that it could be that you haven't broken up the information you're going to give into a particularly digestible format so coming up with uh a framework for something you're explaining is often a good one or at the very start highlighting the number of tips or bits of information or whatever it just gives people the the confidence that okay this is all I'm going to have

to digest that's uh that's a manageable amount of information um so if the video becomes overwhelming for any number of reasons that's often again the point where you're not seeing a specific bit of the video that's really bad and therefore people leave but it's just a gradual sense of like okay no I'm I'm done and once you lose the thread of a video particularly if it's uh something educational if you miss one thing and you spend a second having to compute what's just been said they've already moved on to the next thing you don't have

a second to think about it it's just easier to think I'm I'm gone again um so it's just putting yourself in the view issues at all times basically interesting yeah that makes sense like I've seen videos before where they seem really clean and Polished and the editing is great but maybe I'm being thrown too much stuff at once and I'm finding it hard to process everything that's happening uh every second so it gets a certain point I'm just thinking I'm a little bit lost here and yeah it'd be easier decision is just to leave the

video than to go back and re-watch it again and and try and keep up um so that makes complete sense that editing problems or pacing issues causing people viewers to feel like that really interesting um and I want to go back you said about um payoff hasn't been clarified I'm just conscious do you think there's scenarios where the YouTube is established like the overall payoff for the video at the very start um do you think there's ever a need to have like more micro payoffs like numerous mini payoffs throughout the video before you get to

the Grand payoff yeah for sure um this is yeah something that I've spoken about on Twitter in the past and I am putting into uh this comprehensive script writing course essentially um yeah very much so uh again it depends what the what the video is so there's something on a you know the most recognizable level Mr BEAST's most recent video the grand payoff is what happens when you drive a train into a big pit but the mini payoffs on the way are well what happens when you drive a van into a big pit and what

about a button to a big pit and all of that so it's like it's building up to the big thing at the end but it's exactly the same for a piece of educational content um where it might be that you need to understand certain building blocks in order to understand whatever the ultimate point of the tutorial is um so another video I wrote was uh about um how Thomas Frank the the notion and productivity YouTuber makes uh so much money with his uh notion uh kind of side of his business and the ultimate payoff there

like the grand payoff is how does he do that like what is it why does he make so much money but the first building block of understanding that is well he stopped posting on his main Channel and so already that's like an interesting thing we tee that right at the start it's like he in order to achieve X he had to do why but why in itself is intrinsically interesting like he's got a three million sub or two million whatever it's two and a half million sub uh Channel that's actually yeah main Channel yes yeah

um so why why is it that he's abandoned that first of all and second of all why is it that that has created the scenario in which this much smaller channel is now making him more money um so again that's the first payoff we build up to is the the abandonment of the main Channel and so in any situation and this is where good storytelling comes in to either education or entertainment it's giving people the the necessary building blocks to understand the grand payoff that are themselves intrinsically interesting makes complete sense I'm yeah so useful

um I just want to summarize this quickly then so pacing to avoid the gradual realization issue that we're seeing in this graph we YouTubers need to make sure their pacing is on point and isn't too overwhelming or fast um clarify that clearly clarify their payoffs and if they have to have multiple pairs throughout the video to keep people interested for the entirety of the video um and also don't give away the payoff at the very start of the video and give people a reason yeah that's it that's pretty good okay all right let's move on

to is it the final one the final retention graph that you typically see that gives Clues as to why YouTubers aren't losing viewers the late drop off what is a late drop off judge uh plain and simple right at the end of the video people start to disappear in droves in a way that they haven't been throughout the rest of the video um along with obviously like a little dip at the start a little dip at the end is is always going to happen um but your main task is to stop people realizing the video

is about to end um and again this comes down to a bit of a choice about what you want from your YouTube channel and what your aim is at the end uh I always say that the most effective call to action in a video is to try and make people watch another one uh because that's going to get more watch time on your channel generally it's going to boost the next video that they watch it's all round good it's gonna get people familiarized with you and your content more um and start to see you as

more of an authority in whatever space it is that you're creating content in um and so the idea that at the end of a video you need to suggest you need to implore that they should like the video and subscribe and maybe comment and whatever else uh what whatever it is you're trying to do at the end just pick one thing uh for me that is trying to make people watch another video and this is an example of a video where uh somebody basically they kind of spend about a minute summarizing what's happened in the

video don't need to do it we've just seen it sure people don't care people are too attention deficient um and then they they give every call to action Under the Sun um it was a more extreme example this one because most people don't it will usually just be oh if you like this video you'll like this one as well and don't forget to subscribe which is which is fine um but ultimately what we want to avoid is giving people decision fatigue and if you can only make them do one thing try and make them watch

another video and I have a little a little system for that if you wanted to talk about that so yeah that makes sense a common problem that YouTubers make that cause their viewers to leave is they just drag the end of the VR too long uh with too many call to actions or an unnecessary outro and we see a graph like you've just talked us through here George um yeah really interesting to hear that you've got a system to that YouTubers commitment to stop viewers leaving their video at the end um do you want to

talk us through your assistant yeah um so this is something that I started implementing uh I guess two or three months ago or whenever that tweet came out actually um it essentially it seems to have this kind of magical effect and I said on Twitter more recently this is the closest thing to a hack that I have discovered since doing all of this and obviously there are no hacks etc etc but it just uh when you use this formula on your call to action at the end it the end screen click rate just outperforms the

channel average uh nearly every time I've had other people dming me their end screen uh yeah screenshots like the ones you can see there where it's it just it just seems to work so um yeah it's amazing but we can maybe talk through uh how I rewrote somebody's call to action uh to implement the the technique okay yeah here's your original tweet uh one is through it George yeah okay um so when I was first kind of figuring this out uh I wrote down a call to action on somebody's video that they'd sent me and

essentially rewrote it so the first thing that I did here and something that I do across script writing that is one of the most effective things that I have found for um being able to see clearly what it is that your script is doing and what the purpose of certain parts of your script um is is to essentially label or highlight what certain sentences are for um so this is the call direction that we have at the moment um I won't read it out if you want to read it you can pause it uh but

what I did first of all was to label as I say what each of these five sentences are so if we scroll on to the next tweet you'll see how I labeled them essentially um so we've got the link first of all uh and that is not the URL that is the link back to what is in the current video right so I mentioned earlier that sorting your food in advance can be extremely powerful so that familiarizes the audience with the idea that we're talking about something that's just happened um like I said earlier what

we want to do is not let people know that this video is about to end so that's all good mentioning something that's happened in the video already kind of seems like well we're just continuing to talk about this topic yeah it doesn't necessarily suggest that the video is ending that you're just referring that's something that came earlier yeah exactly um the next sentence uh it sort of forms a promise so and in my deep dive video about brining I explained exactly how that works and how you can apply it so again by itself all good

um interesting enough then the call to action so I'd recommend checking that video out right here then it comes it goes back and Carries On talking um it's probably the one thing I started doing that's had the biggest impact on my cook again interesting like that's something that I that I would want to know if I want to improve my cooking but it's kind of taken a step back we've already been told to click and now we're being told another reason why we should uh and then it ends with some pleasantries which are obviously very

nice and there's a balance to be struck when writing your YouTube video you don't want to seem like a cold dead robot person yeah you don't want to say watch this now go away like leave yeah you don't but also you do uh you're gonna find a pleasant way to do it yeah exactly exactly um so those are the the labels that I added to them um that's really interesting can I just ask you why why did you step back after the call to action and have another sort of curiosity Gap sentence there so I

I haven't this is how the original video looked and this is I mean before I can recreate it is figuring out what the the current purpose of all the sentences are because it makes it easier to see what needs to go basically all one is to rearrange sure so have we gone to the next one that's when I start rearranging uh the stuff that's there okay um so we want to open the Curiosity Gap earlier so essentially I move that straight after the link um and then change some of the language to try and deepen

the Curiosity so I think before it said something about oh but uh this brining technique that I have has whatever it said uh has been good for my cooking uh oh and in my deep dive about brining I explain exactly how it works yeah um so the choice here is basically to remove the reference uh oh actually maybe that's the next sentence um so we're on something else now are we yeah something else so essentially we're trying to just make the the language more impactful uh and again something else we're not being too specific with

it we're keeping it vague we're keeping that Curiosity Gap wide um and again something that's had an even bigger impact on my cook um so again we're just we're trying to get people excited about whatever it is that that is going to come up if they watch the next video okay so you've you've injected something else and even bigger impacts for these reasons something else because there's curiosity around that what is it an even bigger impacts um yeah because it's even bigger than the amazing video they just watched on that YouTube in the first place

exactly and then we got made of the pleasantries I'm afraid to say um okay all right so yeah you can just end the video and you don't need a nice sign us but we're not done there is there is another phase uh after this as well um just to basically make the promise more effective um okay let's just take stock what you've done so far then so the first four sentences have stayed uh although you Rewritten the Curiosity Gap uh oh wait a second link curiosity okay so before it was link promise call to action

curiosity app now it's link curiosity Gap before the promise then promise then call to action so you've rearranged some things as well as removing the pleasantries yeah essentially um the Curiosity Gap basically needs to to come next in my opinion because again we're figuring out we're getting to the heart of why people would care essentially um we need to hook them with that we we might want to make it clear that this next thing that I'm about to say uh is going to be something that you need to hear and so again that Curiosity needs

to be kept nice and wide um early on essentially makes sense yeah yeah okay so the link is is you've rounded off the video with the link um I mentioned this beforehand and then you raise curiosity um before making the promise yeah makes complete sense great that's that makes sense so far should we move on sure sure um so the last step is essentially combining the call to action and the promise um because it just it feels a little more natural uh to speak in that way so if you skip onto the the next screenshot

I think um yeah you can say that so rather than saying but in my deep dive on whatever the topic is I'll show you what it is so make sure to click that video to check it out you're kind of repeating yourself if that's the case so the last step really is just combining those two things um so what I yeah I started to talk about it just now I got slightly losses to where we were but the the reference to brining specifically originally kind of gives away what the technique is that you're going to

uh need um for the next one so I've consciously made that more vague um so you've taken brining out of the link uh uh or whatever it was but I think the promise originally okay so let's double check because just so people didn't follow um okay yes uh and in my deep dive video about brining I explained okay but having that I recently the viewer knows that you're probably going to be talking about brining in in the next uh video that you're sending them to so you've taken it out of the promise in the finished

product to increase our curiosity exactly um and that allows you to then say and as I have done in the combined call to action promise not only will I show you how you can use this technique but I'll show you what it is because you don't know what it is at this point uh so it's just yeah like you say an additional kind of bit of curiosity for them um and then being super specific with the promise essentially the transformation that you're going to receive by clicking it um so you're really it's first of all

making it relevant to what you've already spoken about uh which in turn makes it seem like you're not going to lead them to another video You're Just continuing to talk about whatever the topic is you've been discussing sure then you widen that Curiosity Gap getting them you know Keen to find out what it is you're going to talk about next and then you hit them with and this is what I promise you will receive how you will be transformed if you then go ahead and click this video and then you get out amazing and it's

more concise isn't it than original you've only got three sections you've combined two sessions into one and you've removed one so you've gone from five to three sentences there yeah exactly um so as you can see yeah in the the kind of last tweet uh about this I basically said the aim is setting up a point that links to the current video widen the Curiosity Gap and then promise a specific transformation they will get and that's the system and that's if people follow this in the end of if they're not doing this already and they

start implementing it in the end of their videos they should see much higher uh amount of people clicking to watch their next video that's that's the uh that's a theory and I would love if anyone does try this because I get people that DM me their kind of results from this um feel free to tweet your end screen kind of uh percentages after trying this because I'm I'm so confident in it as a system at this point that uh I would yeah I would just love to see that stuff working for for other people as

well yeah guys definitely do that talk tag George at George George Blackman underscore uh would you give this a try and let me know how it goes I'm I'm definitely going to implement this in my next two videos because although I do put a call to action to the next video because I know I want to get returning viewers watching my next video my next video um exactly how I script out and structure that call to action section I don't really need too much thought so yeah I have a system to follow like this um

yeah I'm really excited to try implementing this into my videos and see how it goes it's really really interesting George cool cool and and thank you and the last I suppose thing is you've got to make sure the video you're picking is relevant that's the last thing um it's got to be like spend a minute just thinking if somebody has watched the entirety of this video what is it that they're gonna really want to learn more about or what is it I can make them think uh they don't yet understand without watching this other one

right A lot of the time your videos will have kind of crossover and it's just finding whatever what will cause the most curiosity and what will give the the best transformation to the viewer if they click on yeah 100 that makes sense at the end as well you outline the benefits that we get from having people watch our videos for longer um watching one of your videos for longer means you're going to get longer viewer session times our videos are more likely to show up in the suggested feed when a new viewer first lands on

our content and it deepens the connection uh with the audience love it so useful okay George that has been incredible like I know retention and script writing is something people just feel it equipped on they don't have that skill set and watching this video I'm sure so many creators particularly smaller creators have the most trouble with this are going to get so much value so really appreciate you being here and just sharing tips on keeping people watching and just discussing retention uh and it's like not as a standalone thing but as part of the bigger

picture that was that was so interesting and so useful to to hear about so thanks for that of course no problem thank you very much for having me on it's uh it's useful to to talk this stuff through because it kind of gets it uh straight in your own head as well so um yeah it's been really cool yeah yeah huge learning experience for me you know I've been doing YouTube myself for five six years but there's always something new to learn and I've learned a lot in this call um and I want my videos

to continue learning with you I know that you do put out material where YouTubers can keep getting tips from you a weekly basis I'm showing your newsletter sign up page now that we will link to in the description maybe you've talked us through this newsletter and what people can expect when they say absolutely yeah sure so it's a weekly thing I've been doing it for just over a year now and we've just crossed a thousand subscribers so come and join us uh thank you very much uh it's been good fun um as I said earlier

I'm kind of pivoting the direction of this thing now it's going to be less focused on retention graphs and more about the fact that I've now worked with a lot of very interesting and very different very broad niched uh creators and so it's essentially going to be uh one kind of actionable script writing uh tip or piece of advice that you can Implement every single week based on what I've learned working for those creators so come along and get some free free value so useful yeah people watching sign up to Jordan's newsletter I've been signed

up to this newsletter for maybe over half a year now and I've learned so much around script writing and getting more views growing my channel uh I'm just hearing the tips that George shares from like the industry work he does so definitely sign up if you're watching this it's phenomenal value so make sure to check it out thank you very much great oh that my pleasure I can't give you enough phrase there so yeah thanks again for being here George um hopefully we'll cross paths in the future I'm always following your work so it's great

to finally I've caught you and had a chat and uh yeah all the best in the future cheers thank you cool see ya bye