Jenny Hoyos breaks down her most viral video ever (160M Views)

Jenny Hoyos made this YouTube short that got 160 million views using a strategy that she perfected by creating over 150 videos over the last 2 years so today I sat down with her and she's going to break down exactly how she did this and how you can do it for yourself too I'm here with Jenny Hoyos we're going to be talking about shorts today and her shorts strategy and all the things that she's been doing with her Channel I want to start with going through just one of her actually her most viral video ever about 160 million views I built a secret room with 0 so first off why don't you start by just telling me like how you came up with the idea and the sort of concept behind the video before you decided to make it yeah so whenever I'm coming with ideas I'm always looking for trending topics or things that are already outliers on YouTube and I already knew that secret rooms were destroying it on YouTube like secret rooms always blow up and I didn't want to make the video for the longest time because I thought it was cringe but I started getting a lot more views when I realized like it doesn't matter if I'm cringe it doesn't matter what people think and it doesn't matter if I know I'm being cring if I'm getting views honestly so I decided to make the video anyway and I wanted to my unique twist to it by making the room on a budget since at the time that's what my Niche was about like doing things on a budget so that's how I came up with that idea yeah I think that's a really great way just like looking at Trends on YouTube and seeing what's doing well for other creators and then doing that with your format that you know you can Excel with exactly so let's go through the actual video itself start with maybe the hook SEC room with Z there's a whole room in here what are you doing you're destroying the house so how did you come up with this hook and what did you try to accomplish like with your shorts hooks in general in all my my hooks I always have a three-step formula for one I want there to be immediate shock and in this video we had immediate shock with me breaking a literal hole in the wall and then the second thing is I established expectations of the video and I did that by simply saying what we're going to do in the most concise way as possible I'm building a a secret room with 0 I'm building a secret room with z and then after that we we had immediate conflict as well with my mom getting mad at me what are you doing you're destroying the house what to also show more expectations of the video of that we are going to tell a story and there's something more than just me building this room and we followed that up with the third thing which is giving a reason to watch until the end we did that by showing a blurred image of what the secret room was going to look like but it wasn't too blurred that you couldn't see that it wasn't cool it was just blurred enough to see like it's going to look cool if that makes sense so how important would you say shorts hooks are to the performance of the video oh my goodness hooks are the most important thing for me I think it's it's the most important thing because if you have a really good hook again it's not only going to stop people like from scrolling like this is what actually catches people attention if you don't have a good hook then the rest of the video doesn't matter so not only is it important for getting people onto the video but the hook is what gets people to watch until the end the hook is what gets people invested do you know what percentage of your views are coming from like the actual shorts feed versus people clicking on it 99% of views yeah so it's really all about like getting people to stop scrolling through the shorts feed and then getting them to watch and especially I think the element of including something in in the hook that makes people watch to the end is really powerful and that's something I think a lot of shorts creators aren't really doing a lot of people just know of course you want to do a good hook but including that element that gets people to watch the end is really powerful you have to yeah so after the hook is over where where do you go after the hook is done in terms of just progressing the content and the storytelling I'm I'm trying to think how to award this okay so right after the hook we just got right into the content with me already making the room and we wanted every single next thing to happen to have a significant amount of progression and in between the next steps and different things that happen we also did more rehook throughout the video so the next thing we did was I covered the walls so that's like immediately there's something completely different like that's visually shown and then right after I do that I tell the viewers again oh I'm building a secret room with with 0 and then we get to the next thing and we keep just building on it with more re hooks in between so do you think it's important to start action like right away after the hook or do you ever have shorts where you have the hook and then it's a little bit slower oh the action needs to be as soon as possible in fact the action is so slow on this video like ideally the action is in the hook so I have videos where the hook is the action or I'm already doing like step one well technically there is um there is some form of action but because I had the uh the reason to watch to the end was a little bit longer it kind of delayed the next course of action so now what we actually do is um we we like to do a lot of question hooks which which can tell us not only what the video is about but also what's going to happen at at the end in the same line I don't know if that makes sense but in this video like it's two different lines cuz you have to say what you're doing what to watch until the end but with a question it's just it's already telling you what's going to happen at the end and what you're doing okay let's go to the next part of the video us for walls it's just a bunch of progression and re hooks the whole time yeah so here you have like some conflict of like you ran out of wrapping paper and you have to go get some more so you're there's a little bit of like problems come up but then you kind of solve them just cause effect rehook cause effect rehook cause effect rehook so many re hooks there's like six in here yeah and real quick if you want more help taking your skills to the next level as a Creator I just finished completely updating and overhauling our free YouTube Creator boot camp where I'll take you through step byep the best way to grow a YouTube channel from zero even if you've never made videos before or don't know what to create and in that boot camp we go super in-depth and I also give out a ton of extra free bonuses like a free mini thumbnail course and some extra free training sent to your email again you can check that out completely for free at the link in the descript deson and back to the video before you get to the ending of the video what do you do to kind of build up to that final moment in the video yeah so we always have that one open loop in this case we had the room completely blurred and as we were getting to the end we showed less of the room so the viewer had less an idea of what it actually looked like so as we're building up to the end we we like to give viewers a little bit and then what they were actually waiting for we just completely give it to them at the end and that's the very last thing that they see yeah and then we'll go through the ending here no one can find it then I got popcorn to enjoy watching I love this ending so much it looks so ni yes okay I love Yeah another thing that I love about the ending as well is not only did we close the loop of in the beginning we showed the Blurred room and at the end we showed the same shot but not blurred and on top of that we even had my mom come back in the video to close like a a separate Loop that was like unintentionally opened that now because we we close the loop that people didn't even know was open it get it lets people rewatch the video it gives them new context new information for them to rewatch and the reason why this video is doing so well is because of that this is one of our only videos actually this is the only video on my channel that has a average view per view of 1. 4 my my other videos on average have 1. 2 and average view per viewer is just like basically how strong your rewatchability is yeah so that means the average person who watched this video watched it 1.

4 times verus watching it 1. 2 times on average so there's a lot of obviously someone can't watch a video 1. 4 times but that's the average so you get a lot of people watching twice or even more exactly so when you're like opening Loops in video what does that mean and how do you design that for your content yeah so in every video I always have a problem that needs to be resolved or a question that needs to be answered so opening a loop is basically showing what that question is or showing what that problem is and you close it once you get the solution or the answer I think that makes sense so when you're designing your loops and like the problem solving is there there any sort of elements that you like to put in that you find are a little bit more entertaining than others yeah I I like to just sprinkle jokes throughout um but we we like to make the jokes not like we when we do it we we like to use a lot of jokes to make entertaining but we also don't we're very weary on the jokes that we use though so it needs to be relevant to the content it has to be very broadly appealing and it needs to like be so seamless so it doesn't have any segmentation loss so a lot of times with videos you can tell that there's like different things and different sections of the video where it almost feels like you can like leave at different parts cuz there's multiple payoffs so you almost want it to be like there are just like many payoffs and not enough of a payoff for you to leave if that makes sense there's there's a lot of little things like that so let's talk more about the endings of your shorts cuz I think from the shorts creators that I've seen I think your endings and your shorts are are really outstanding and contributes to thank you so much uh contributes to your performance a lot so this we talked about this video but let's talk about your endings of of videos in general what do you generally try to accomplish with the ending of a short and how do you think about designing the endings yeah so the goal with the endings are to get people to rewatch the video so we want to keep the endings as tight as possible and we want it to be the payoff and cut the video immediately because if we let it run on a little bit longer you lose people and if you lose people in the end then that means there's less people who are rewatching the video so we not only want to cut it as soon as there's the payoff as soon as the question is answered or the problem is resolved you want to end the video immediately but we also want to end it on a note that gives people new context for them to rewatch or maybe even a laugh so that when they rewatch it it it gives them a little hit or even also we want to keep in mind the the shot selections that you're using at the end in the beginning or what you're even saying cuz we have videos where we would accidentally say the same thing at the end and in the hook which actually hurts rewatchability I especially notice that you do a lot of endings it's just like a really funny joke and it's like it just gets me like I'm just sitting there watching this short and I'm just laughing think so hard that I haven't even realized another 15 seconds as fast and I'm I've watched the whole video again a second time that's the goal I think it's a really really great way to end videos and especially with shorts like kind of give some more elaboration on the idea of like an Abrupt ending I think that's so powerful and and really important so would you expand more on that point yeah so we want the endings to be abrupt but we still want it to feel like a good payoff like we still want the viewer to laugh but we we like to do a lot of twists in a video so for example I had a video where I was trying to break an unbreakable glass and the whole video I was doing different methods and this thing wasn't breaking and then at the end I just go this thing doesn't break and I and I smash it on my mom's head and it it just like smashes um and that that was actually breakaway glass so it it wasn't the the unbreakable cup but like it's it's stuff like that where like people were like oh my goodness I did not think she was going to hit it on her mom's head like and the fact that it actually broke it's such a weird funny twist that still closes the video we want it we want the ending to act as a joke but also answer the problem and close the loop all at the same time in one line and that is the perfect ending yeah I noticed one thing you do with your jokes in the endings a lot especially is like subverting expectations yes so like the video we just showed for example like the whole concept is about it's a secret room and then at the end your mom's just chilling in there hanging out exactly and originally she was mad and now she like loves it so we also had character development and we have a couple of videos where we have character development as well and that that really helps with uh retention so it does the video doesn't feel as stagnant especially when a lot of videos there could be repetitive things so we want um to progress with repetition yeah I think like the whole doing the jokes around the concept of the video like the ex like you set up the expectations at the start of the video and then the jokes like almost throw those expectations out the window while at the same time still solving them it's it's really entertaining I think for sure oh thank you so much yeah that's the goal this has been the interview with Jenny I think it's just actually really outstanding like just amazing information thank you so much for being here uh anything you want to shout out or just where can people find you at yeah so you can check out my channel Jenny Hoyos and if you want to work together email team Jenny hoo.