0:01 Today we're talking about how to get
0:03 more views. If you feel like your
0:04 content isn't getting the traction it
0:06 deserves, I'm going to break down
0:08 exactly why that's happening and how to
0:10 fix it. Cuz the truth is there's only
0:12 six reasons why content performs poorly.
0:14 And if you solve for these six things,
0:16 you will get significantly more views
0:18 and grow much, much faster. Now, I know
0:20 this works because content and marketing
0:22 is all I do all day long. I have a
0:24 million followers. I've done billions of
0:25 views. And I've also worked with
0:27 hundreds of business owners behind the
0:29 scenes to audit and fix their content.
0:31 that's not working. So, in this video,
0:32 I'm going to walk through all six of the
0:34 major content mistakes you might be
0:36 making, and I'll break down the exact
0:38 step-by-step tactics for how to fix each
0:40 one. All right, content mistake number
0:42 one is called bad sampling. And this
0:44 really is the explanation for why your
0:46 content is being ignored. When you say
0:48 your content is being ignored, what you
0:50 really mean is that you post and then
0:51 you get low views. And the problem
0:54 really is, you have no idea why that's
0:55 happening. So, here's what's actually
0:57 happening behind the scenes with the
0:59 algorithm when you press post. And this
1:00 will explain exactly why you're getting
1:02 low views. First, the algorithm takes
1:04 your video and analyzes the transcript
1:06 and the caption or description. And this
1:08 is how it indexes what topics and
1:10 keywords your video is about. Then it
1:12 takes your video and it shows it to a
1:15 super small sample of 100 to 200 people.
1:16 Now, when you're brand new on social
1:18 media with a new account, these couple
1:20 hundred people are legit randos that
1:21 have no connection to you. And the
1:23 algorithm picks them specifically
1:25 because they've shown behavior to enjoy
1:27 videos about these topics and keywords
1:28 before. Now, when you do have some
1:30 initial following, the algorithm will
1:32 take that sample from your existing
1:34 followers. Typically, people that have
1:35 engaged pretty well with your content in
1:37 the past. Now, regardless of the path,
1:39 with this initial sample, the algorithm
1:42 is trying to rapidly determine how much
1:44 or how little this sample group likes
1:46 the video. If the sample data comes back
1:48 strong in that these 100 to 200 people
1:50 really like it more than average, the
1:51 algorithm will start pushing that video
1:53 a lot. But if this sample of people do
1:56 not watch or engage, the algorithm will
1:58 nuke the video and the growth will stop.
2:00 So in this case and all cases, if your
2:02 video got low views, it was because the
2:04 sample data came back weak and those
2:06 first couple hundred people did not
2:08 watch or engage at the average you
2:10 needed. Okay, so the big question is
2:12 why? Why did that sample group not
2:15 engage? Why was the sample data so weak?
2:16 And there's really only three reasons
2:18 why this could happen. The first reason
2:20 is fake followers. If you bought fake
2:21 followers because you thought you could
2:24 trick real people into trusting you
2:25 sooner because of your following,
2:27 congrats, you played yourself because
2:29 the algorithm is running that sample
2:32 process to bots that don't watch videos.
2:33 And I know this is super common because
2:35 I've worked with so many brands that
2:36 have 50,000 followers and are only
2:38 getting 800 views. And when I asked
2:41 them, it's because 48,000 of the 50 were
2:43 paid for fake followers. So, if this is
2:44 you, no judgment, but you're going to
2:45 have to start over from a fresh account
2:47 or it's never going to work. Now, the
2:48 second reason that initial sample data
2:50 comes back weak is because you have the
2:52 wrong followers. Let's say you have a
2:54 following with a few thousand friends
2:55 from high school. Well, now if you start
2:58 posting deep educational content on a
2:59 topic they don't care about when the
3:01 sample data goes to a bunch of those
3:03 people, the data is going to come back
3:05 weak because they don't care about those
3:07 topics. Or maybe you did grow an account
3:10 from scratch talking about fashion, but
3:11 now you want to switch from fashion to
3:13 science. When you post those science
3:15 videos, the sample data of the fashion
3:17 people is going to come back pretty weak
3:18 because those fashion people don't want
3:20 to watch science topics at the same rate
3:22 they watched fashion topics. And so if
3:23 this is you and you feel like you have
3:25 the wrong followers, you're either going
3:26 to have to start fresh from a new
3:30 account or slowly grow and add more
3:32 science followers slowly over time,
3:34 churn more fashion followers slowly over
3:37 time, and re-calibrate so that over time
3:39 the sample mix is better skewed to
3:40 science. You're going to have to pick
3:42 one of those paths. Now, the third and
3:44 final reason why that sample data came
3:46 back, and by far the most common, is
3:49 that you just made a bad video. And it's
3:50 tough to hear this, but it's the truth.
3:52 The algorithm is a math equation. It
3:53 does not have feelings. So, if your
3:55 videos have low views and are not
3:56 getting pushed, and you don't have fake
3:57 followers, and you don't have the wrong
3:59 followers, it's cuz you didn't make a
4:01 video that was good enough to beat the
4:02 others. When you're playing the content
4:04 game, you're playing in the big leagues
4:05 where you're competing for attention
4:06 with massive creators and brands that
4:08 have been doing this for a decade. So,
4:10 if your video isn't preferred by the
4:12 initial sample, it's just that it was a
4:14 bad video and didn't beat the baseline,
4:16 and I call this whole problem bad
4:18 sampling, and this is what you need to
4:20 fix if you want your content to stop
4:22 being ignored and get more views. Now,
4:23 here's the good news. I have a system
4:25 and playbook for how to approach content
4:28 to fix this problem. I know exactly what
4:30 to change to turn those bad videos into
4:32 good ones, so the sample data goes from
4:34 bad to good. So, for the rest of this
4:35 video, I'm going to break down the five
4:37 biggest problems or mistakes that your
4:39 videos are making that contribute them
4:41 to being bad videos. I'm also going to
4:43 walk through the tactical changes for
4:45 how to fix those so you can start making
4:47 good videos. Also, before we go through
4:48 this, if you're a business owner and you
4:49 want to get better at content, that's
4:51 why you're watching this channel, I
4:53 built a free community just for you.
4:55 It's called Wavy World. We have 31,000
4:57 entrepreneurs in it, 60 free trainings
4:59 just like this, and like I said, it's
5:00 completely free. Invite link below if
5:01 you want to join. All right. Now, the
5:03 first big reason why your videos are not
5:05 working is called no man's land. And
5:06 this has to do with your channel
5:08 positioning and idea strategy.
5:11 Specifically, how you pick which videos
5:13 to make. If your videos are not working,
5:15 it's probably because you're stuck in no
5:17 man's land. Let me explain what I mean.
5:19 Typically, content works that's either
5:21 extremely entertaining or extremely
5:23 educational. It's either really
5:25 interesting or really useful. Most
5:27 people try to play in the middle. Kind
5:29 of interesting, kind of useful. A lot of
5:31 people call this edutainment. This is a
5:32 big reason why you're failing. If this
5:34 is how you're approaching your content
5:35 strategy, what ends up happening when
5:37 you try to play the edutainment game is
5:39 that your content is neither extremely
5:42 interesting nor extremely useful. You
5:44 have less useful value, but you claim
5:46 that is entertaining and so you play in
5:47 the middle. It ends up not working and
5:49 you lose both games. If you're playing
5:51 the entertainment game, you are legit
5:53 competing with every entertainment
5:56 source on Earth. Mr. Beast, Kaisen,
5:58 Netflix, all of them. Every single
6:00 viewer on the internet has a pool of
6:03 non-working, non-sleeping time that they
6:05 funnel into entertainment use cases.
6:06 You're competing for a slice of that
6:08 time. Now, if you're playing the
6:09 education game, you're competing with
6:11 all the sources where people get
6:14 tactical answers to questions. ChatGBT,
6:16 Google, other entertainment creators,
6:18 all of that. Both games are hard, but
6:20 regardless, you need to pick one and
6:22 optimize everything for that. If you're
6:24 stuck in no man's land, kind of
6:25 entertaining, kind of useful, you're
6:27 going to lose both because the
6:28 entertainment value will get outkicked
6:30 by the best entertainment creators and
6:32 the usefulness value will get outkicked
6:34 by the best educational creators. If
6:35 you're in the middle, you will lose.
6:37 Now, let's get really tactical about how
6:38 to position for each of those games. If
6:40 you pick the entertainment game, your
6:42 entire goal is to come up with video
6:44 ideas that drive mass shock, mass
6:47 emotional transfer, and apply to a large
6:49 number of people. You could be pure genp
6:51 pop entertainment like Mr. beast, or you
6:53 could be category entertainment, like
6:55 tech stories, but it's still
6:56 entertainment focused. But either way,
6:57 on this side of the table, you're going
6:59 for mass shock, mass emotional transfer,
7:01 huge tam. Now, if you play the education
7:04 or value game, your goal is to come up
7:06 with topics and premises and angles that
7:08 help the viewer maximally understand the
7:10 tip you're giving so that they can use
7:12 that learning and apply it in their own
7:14 scenario. Again, you could be pure genp
7:17 pop education like mindset tips, or you
7:19 could be category education, like
7:22 specific tech tool workflows and demos.
7:24 But either way, here you're going for
7:26 tactically applicable learnings. Now,
7:27 don't get it twisted. If you're going
7:28 for educational content, you would
7:30 prefer that they're enjoyable to watch.
7:32 Nobody wants to watch some super stale,
7:35 boring Harvard professor type lecture.
7:37 But the educational value must be the
7:39 highest priority for educational
7:40 content. You don't want to say you're
7:42 doing both. You're making educational
7:44 value that's extremely tactical and
7:46 you're making it enjoyable to watch.
7:47 There is a big difference between
7:50 edutainment and enjoyable education. And
7:52 this is a massive mistake that I see
7:53 creators and brands make. They don't
7:55 commit to either game. They're lost in
7:56 the middle and their content never cuts
7:58 through. Okay, one more bonus tip on
7:59 this education versus entertainment
8:01 game. It's very popular. Once you pick
8:04 one game to play, it's very hard to
8:05 switch back and forth on the same
8:08 channel. Don't do that. Some creators
8:09 are able to switch, but only when their
8:11 personal brand is so big that people
8:13 will watch because of their face, not
8:14 because of the strategy. So for
8:16 beginners, whether you're a creator or a
8:17 brand, switching back and forth rarely
8:20 works. Pick one game per channel and
8:22 stick specifically to that. And you can
8:23 win with both games. So the way to pick
8:25 which game to play is to ask yourself,
8:28 what value am I giving to the viewer in
8:30 my videos? Is it something they can walk
8:33 away from the video and use right now or
8:34 not? If not, you're playing the
8:36 entertainment game. If yes, you're
8:37 playing the education game. It really is
8:39 as simple as that. Both games can win,
8:40 but you have to pick one per channel.
8:42 All right, content mistake number three
8:45 that is causing you low views is bad
8:46 ideas. It sucks to hear, but the reason
8:48 your content is being ignored almost
8:51 always is because your video ideas are
8:53 just not good enough. They're either not
8:54 interesting enough, not useful enough,
8:56 or not clear enough. Now, let's unpack
8:58 this because ideas really are the most
9:01 valuable piece of the content puzzle.
9:02 But the term ideas is kind of hard to
9:04 know exactly what it means. So, let's
9:05 unpack the full thing. If you're looking
9:08 at the end content workflow, you've got
9:11 ideas, scripting, recording, editing,
9:14 posting, and analyzing. Of that full
9:17 workflow, ideas by far are the most
9:18 important thing. And I can prove it to
9:20 you. There are millions of videos every
9:22 day that go viral that are unscripted
9:25 with no edits, shot in a bedroom, zero
9:27 cuts, takes 10 minutes to do, they get
9:28 10 million views. The reason those
9:31 videos work is because the idea was a
9:33 banger. That's all they needed to do.
9:35 Not saying every video is like that, but
9:36 ideas by far are the most important
9:38 piece. Now, let's really break this
9:39 down. When I say idea, I'm talking about
9:42 the topic plus the premise plus the
9:44 hook. Those three things come together
9:47 to create the video idea. The topic is a
9:49 oneline sentence explaining the concept.
9:52 The premise is the approach or angle or
9:54 lens that you put on the topic. And the
9:57 hook is the visual and spoken execution
9:59 that you use to explain the topic and
10:01 premise in the first 3 to 5 seconds.
10:04 That idea combo is the most important
10:06 part of content by a mile. Anyone who
10:07 says anything different has no idea what
10:08 they're talking about. Now, let me give
10:10 you a tactical example of what a winning
10:12 content idea actually looks like. We're
10:13 going to go through the whole thing and
10:15 I'm going to explain exactly why it's a
10:17 winner. This guy, Yanni, has a huge
10:18 following where on his channel he breaks
10:21 down his journey to restore a old
10:23 vintage bowling alley in Chicago. He
10:25 went from zero to a million followers in
10:27 the last 4 months or so. Absolute
10:29 nuclear growth. Now, let's analyze the
10:32 idea, the topic, premise, hook from this
10:34 video that got 1.5 million views.
10:36 >> Today is day 33 of rehabbing my
10:38 60-year-old bowling alley. You might be
10:39 wondering why I'm balling. It's because
10:41 Johnny from the Bowlers Journal pulled
10:43 up to write a story about this project.
10:45 So, of course, I had to show him my games.
10:45 games.
10:46 >> Okay, so the topic, the oneline
10:49 explanation is this guy is rehabbing a
10:51 vintage bowling alley. The angle or
10:52 premise for the series is that he takes
10:55 you on these daily vlog mini missions
10:57 around his process to restore the
10:59 bowling alley. The specific angler
11:01 premise for each video is a different
11:04 mission or task. Now, in this specific
11:05 video, the one we're looking at, the
11:07 angler premise is that he's got a guy
11:09 from a famous bowling magazine coming in
11:11 to interview him, and the entire video
11:13 is baked around that concept. Now, for
11:15 the hook format, his spoken hook, he
11:17 always starts every video the same way.
11:19 This is day X of rehabbing my
11:21 60-year-old bowling alley. But most
11:23 importantly, his visual hooks are almost
11:25 always something bowling related, and he
11:27 always has motion. either the pins are
11:28 spinning, the bowling balls are
11:30 spinning, he's throwing the bowling
11:31 balls. So, it's immediate
11:32 recognizability and there's motion in
11:35 it. This combination, the topic, premise
11:37 and hook in this specific case is a
11:38 winning idea. But let's break down why.
11:40 Why is this a winning idea and what
11:42 specifically are the attributes that
11:44 make up a winning idea? First, as a
11:46 creator or a brand, we have to decide,
11:47 are we playing the entertainment game or
11:49 the education game? Remember, we have to
11:51 stay out of no man's land. So, Yanni
11:52 could have either decided, I'm going to
11:54 make entertainment style content
11:56 documenting my journey to restore this
11:58 bowling alley, or I'm going to make
12:00 educational content where I give
12:02 tactical tips to bowling alley operators
12:04 or business owners that they can take
12:06 and apply to their business. He could
12:07 have chosen either. He picked to play
12:09 the entertainment game. If you watch his
12:11 videos, he's not giving you explicit
12:13 walk away learning that you can apply
12:15 today. Maybe he infuses a little bit of
12:16 learning, but really, he's basically
12:19 filming a vlog or a TV show about his
12:20 process. That's entertainment all day
12:22 long. And this is completely fine.
12:23 Entertainment or education works, but
12:25 it's very important that he picked and
12:27 doubled down on the one he chose. Okay.
12:29 So, let's break down the core factors
12:31 across topic, premise, and hook that
12:33 need to be true for entertainment style
12:36 content and what exactly he did in his
12:37 that made it work. When you're making
12:39 entertainment content, the topic and
12:41 premise have to do three things. First,
12:44 they have to be shock inducing. Ideally,
12:46 it's something the viewer has never seen
12:47 before. In this case, you're going for
12:50 max novelty. Now, in Yanni's case, I'd
12:51 never seen somebody live rehab the
12:53 behind the scenes of a bowling alley
12:55 before. That's max novelty to me. And
12:57 the behind-the-scenes process to get to
12:58 see that is super unique. Now, this is
13:00 really important. If Yanni were the 10th
13:03 account that I saw to rehab a bowling
13:05 alley using this behind-the-scenes vlog
13:06 style, it wouldn't have been as
13:08 shocking. It wouldn't have gotten so
13:10 much traction. But because he's the
13:12 first one to do it, it works. Now, the
13:14 second aspect of entertainment style
13:16 topics and premises is that they need to
13:17 be curiosityinducing.
13:19 Some question has to pop into my head
13:21 immediately as the viewer. For example,
13:23 as soon as I saw this video that we've
13:24 been watching from Yanni, these
13:26 questions popped into my head. How is he
13:28 doing this? How long has he been doing
13:30 this? How did this kid get into the
13:31 bowling alley? What's going to happen
13:33 next? All those questions are popping
13:34 immediately in the first 2 seconds after
13:36 watching this. And the third aspect of
13:37 entertainment style content for the
13:39 topic and premise is that there needs to
13:41 be large applicability with some common
13:43 point of interest. And what I mean by
13:45 this is a large number of people that
13:47 could find this interesting and some
13:49 point of interest in the topic that they
13:51 could relate to quickly. So in this
13:53 case, anyone that has ever bowled, been
13:55 to a bowling alley or maybe even seen a
13:58 bowling related show on TV, might find
14:00 this interesting. According to ChatBT,
14:01 there are approximately 500 million
14:04 people in the world, 6% of the global
14:05 population that have been in a bowling
14:08 alley at least once before. That is a
14:10 massive, massive TAM. And so that means
14:11 there's a lot of people that would
14:14 relate to this immediately. Again, TAM
14:16 matters a lot for entertainment content.
14:17 It matters a little bit less for
14:19 education, but right now we're focused
14:21 on this video, which is entertainment
14:22 focused. So, as a recap, the three
14:24 elements that must be true for the topic
14:25 and premise when you're doing
14:27 entertainment style content. It must be
14:29 shock inducing. It must be
14:31 curiosityinducing. And it must be
14:33 largely applicable with some point of
14:35 common interest. Okay, so that is half
14:37 the idea. Remember topic, premise, hook.
14:39 That was topic and premise. Now, let's
14:41 go to hook. What does the hook need to
14:43 be for entertainment style content? What
14:44 are those same factors on the hook side?
14:45 When you're making entertainment
14:47 content, obviously the hook has to stop
14:49 the scroll. This is critical. And to do
14:51 that, you need to have the following few
14:54 aspects. First, you want recognizable
14:55 visuals. Just like that point of common
14:57 interest, I want to see a visual and
15:00 immediately recognize something in that
15:01 visual. In this case, the bowling pin,
15:03 the bowling alley, the bowling ball.
15:04 These are things with common points of
15:06 relatability that I recognize visually
15:08 in the hook. That's really important.
15:09 Now, this recognizability could also be
15:12 a facial expression on the viewer's face
15:14 that I relate to. If it's just somebody
15:16 face on, but they're really sad, I
15:18 recognize sad eyes, sad face, I start to
15:19 relate to that. You need some common
15:22 point of relatability in the visual. And
15:23 this is important because you want to
15:25 reduce the time it takes for the viewer
15:26 to contextually start to understand
15:28 what's going on. Now, typically this
15:30 works best with visuals that have high
15:32 color, high motion, high contrast,
15:34 something that grabs my attention, but
15:36 then the thing in the visual, the
15:38 expression or the object allows me to
15:40 understand more quickly what's going on.
15:41 Now, Yanni's visuals in the hook worked
15:43 super well, both because they're moving,
15:45 so they grab my attention, but also
15:47 they're common objects that I related to
15:48 immediately. I've been to a bowling
15:49 alley. I've seen bowling pins, bowling
15:51 ball. I haven't seen it in a while on
15:53 social media, but it immediately drew
15:55 back to my head. That's what you want in
15:56 terms of instant recognizability in the
15:58 visuals. Now, the second piece is that
16:00 this helps align to the words he's
16:02 saying. He's saying, "Day 44 of me
16:04 rehabbing my 60-year-old bowling alley."
16:07 When he says, "Rehabing my 60-year-old
16:09 bowling alley," I'm looking at the old
16:11 looking bowling alley. Those visuals and
16:13 those words are aligned. You want hook
16:14 alignment. That's the second key piece.
16:17 And why that's important is after just 3
16:18 seconds, I have immediate clarity that
16:20 this is about a bowling alley in a
16:22 bowling alley. He's rehabbing a bowling
16:24 alley. And I start to get the pieces
16:26 quicker. It's really important that you
16:28 start to get clarity on what's going on
16:30 as fast as possible. The visual helps
16:32 reinforce this quickly. Now, as a bonus,
16:34 what he did is he added music to create
16:35 some certain vibe that you want to be a
16:37 part of. He used a Frank Ocean song. You
16:39 don't have to use music, but it is
16:40 helpful if you can pick the right song
16:42 to kind of boost the vibe and help match
16:44 everything even better. So, in summary,
16:46 on the hook side, you need visual
16:48 recognizability either with an object or
16:50 facial expression that immediately
16:51 allows a viewer to understand what is
16:54 going on and relate to the scenario.
16:56 Two, you need alignment between the
16:58 visuals and the words being said, as
16:59 well as the words on screen. And three,
17:01 if you want, optionally, you can add
17:04 music or sound to help vibe match the
17:05 topic that's coming. So, the moral of
17:06 the story is, if your videos are
17:08 flopping, I can almost guarantee that on
17:10 the idea front, something about the
17:12 topic, premise, or hook that you're
17:14 making is not dialed in. If it's the
17:16 topic, you either haven't chosen a topic
17:18 that's interesting enough or a painoint
17:19 that's relevant enough for your viewer.
17:22 If it's the premise, you haven't framed
17:24 the angle or lens of the story to be
17:25 interesting enough for the viewer. And
17:27 if it's the hooks, either the spoken
17:29 hook was not clear enough, the visuals
17:31 were not interesting enough, or the
17:33 visuals and spoken hook did not align
17:34 enough. And it's important to note what
17:36 I just went through was an entertainment
17:38 case study. Yanni's video was an
17:40 entertainment video. For educational
17:42 videos, it's still topic, premise, hook,
17:44 but the characteristics and attributes
17:46 that matter change slightly. And here
17:47 are the differences. For educational
17:50 content, for the topic and premise,
17:52 instead of max shock inducing, you're
17:55 going for max clarity inducing around
17:56 the pain point you're talking about. It
17:59 has to be immediately clear what value
18:00 the viewer is going to get out of that
18:02 video from the topic and premise. You
18:04 don't need pure novelty around the idea.
18:06 Don't need to reinvent the wheel. But if
18:07 you could have novelty on your delivery
18:09 or the tip you give, that's great. The
18:11 way to think of this is instead of raw
18:13 shock, you need targeted shock towards
18:14 the viewer based on the pain point
18:15 you're talking about. All right. All
18:16 right. Now, I was thinking about this.
18:18 The most valuable thing I could give you
18:20 is the tactical playbook for how to
18:23 solve the ideas problems we just went
18:24 through. This is the most important
18:27 piece of the process. Here's my tactical
18:28 playbook for how to solve it.
18:29 Specifically, this is going to answer
18:30 the question, how do I come up with
18:32 better ideas more often? You have two
18:34 ways. The manual way is to come up with
18:37 original ideas, original topics, and
18:39 premises on your own and then really
18:41 workshop the topic, premise, and hook to
18:44 try to get it aligned and max it out.
18:46 This takes a lot of time and the
18:47 playbook to do this is pretty
18:49 sophisticated depending on your niche.
18:50 The much easier way and what I do
18:53 personally is to look for proven winning
18:55 videos in your space, ones that already
18:57 have high views and are outliers and
18:59 then mine them for the topics, premises
19:01 and hooks that already worked. Take
19:03 those, extract the patterns and apply
19:05 them to your own videos. That is the
19:06 easiest way to do this. It's the smarter
19:08 verse harder approach. Now, the way to
19:10 do this tactically, you go to
19:12 sandcastles.ai. You create a watch list
19:14 of all the accounts in your space that
19:16 make good videos. You go to the videos
19:19 tab and you filter only by that watch
19:21 list and sort by outlier score. What
19:22 that does is give you the best
19:25 performing outlier videos in your space
19:27 all in one area. You can then open those
19:29 videos and play them right there. So, I
19:31 literally go one by one by one by one. I
19:33 watch all of them. And this is much
19:35 faster than scrolling on a 4U feed
19:37 because you're not getting any noise.
19:39 Every single video is on target and
19:41 every single video is an outlier. You
19:42 don't have to scroll through hundreds of
19:44 videos to find a couple winners. In a
19:46 100 videos, you find a hundred winners
19:48 using sand castles. So, what I do is I
19:50 take this, I open a new tab, Google Doc,
19:52 and I write down best topics and best
19:55 hooks. And then I go and I watch one by
19:56 one by one. If anything is interesting,
19:58 I watch the whole thing. I write down
19:59 the topic. I write down the hook. Now,
20:02 after a 100 videos in a session, I now
20:03 start to see the patterns for what are
20:06 the best performing topics, premises,
20:08 and hooks. I take those topics and I
20:09 start thinking, is there anything
20:11 interesting that I know that most others
20:14 don't about this topic that I could
20:16 retell the story with? Is there anything
20:18 different that I could do to the hook to
20:21 ratchet up the shock, curiosity, and Max
20:23 Tam? That's how you do this process. So,
20:24 here's a tactical example for how I
20:26 would analyze this bowling video from
20:28 Yanni that we've been watching. On the
20:30 topic front, if I were to extract out
20:32 the one-s sentence Mad Lib format, it's
20:35 watch me restore X thing. Now, X thing
20:38 could be home renovations. It could be
20:40 vintage objects like watches and cars.
20:43 It could be another old business like a
20:45 vintage ice cream parlor. There's all
20:46 different sorts of things you could swap
20:48 in for the watch me restore X. It
20:50 doesn't just have to be a bowling alley.
20:52 And that's what I call remixing a topic
20:55 lens. You take a good idea, restoring X,
20:57 twist it, and now you have all different
20:59 types of topic rabbit holes that you
21:00 could go down. Now, on the premise or
21:02 angle front, if I look at what Yanni
21:04 did, he took the restoration process,
21:06 broke it down into individual daily
21:08 missions, and then summarized those
21:10 using his videos. So, for example, how
21:12 would I apply that to one of these other
21:14 topic mad lips? If I was restoring a
21:16 house, maybe one video is how I rebuild
21:18 the kitchen. Maybe another video is
21:20 talking to the tile manufacturer, and so
21:22 on. If you're restoring an old watch,
21:24 maybe every video is a different day or
21:25 a different piece of the watch as you're
21:27 rebuilding it. Now, on the hooks front,
21:29 if I look at just this video from Yanni,
21:31 I've got three observations that I'm
21:33 extracting out. Number one, always have
21:35 something unique moving in the frame.
21:37 Number two, always have the frame shot
21:39 where the visual context is immediately
21:42 noticeable. He always has some aspect of
21:44 the bowling alley, the lane, the ball
21:46 retrieval, the pins, the balls. He
21:47 always has something related to the
21:49 bowling alley immediately visible. And
21:51 number three, always have the main
21:52 person, the main creator, in this case,
21:55 Yanni, in the frame doing something
21:56 interesting. Those are the three
21:58 principles that you can extract from the
21:59 hooks. Now, I'm not going to buy a
22:00 bowling alley and recreate his exact
22:02 series, but you can start to see if you
22:04 look at it from a topic, premise, and
22:06 hook perspective. You can extract the
22:08 patterns that are universally applicable
22:11 to other ideas. And I gleaned all that
22:13 off just one video. Imagine if I went
22:16 through a 100 videos across 30 creators,
22:18 how many different ideas I would come up
22:19 with. That really is the process for
22:22 finding winners, analyzing the patterns
22:23 from those winners, and then remixing.
22:25 That is what all the pros, all the media
22:27 companies, that's what they all do to
22:29 grow faster on social media. That will
22:31 solve your ideas problem. I do that
22:33 whole workflow in sand castles.ai. Now,
22:34 of course, the last point here, cuz I
22:36 can already hear people in the comments.
22:37 As a business owner, you always want to
22:39 gut check. Well, if I do take that as
22:41 inspiration and remix it, will that
22:44 content format actually drive leads for
22:46 my business? And let's analyze this for
22:48 this bowling series for Yanni. This for
22:50 sure is going to drive foot traffic
22:52 locally in Chicago. when he opens that
22:53 bowling alley, they're going to be sold
22:55 out every single night. He also will
22:57 likely get other opportunities on a
22:58 general fandom perspective now that he
23:01 has 900,000 followers on Instagram. But
23:04 the real revenue driver here would be if
23:06 he was selling agency services, helping
23:09 other local businesses make content or
23:11 if he had an agency service where he was
23:13 buying many other types of old
23:15 businesses and restoring them. That's
23:17 the real lead genen driver. He's not
23:18 tapping into that. That's completely
23:20 fine. So, will this work as a content
23:21 format for his bowling alley? Yes,
23:23 locally. But there's a lot more revenue
23:25 on the table that this could work for if
23:26 he had a different model. Now, if you
23:28 were to run this playbook, you extract
23:29 this out, but you're doing it for
23:31 flipping homes or restoring old homes
23:34 and you do have a real estate practice
23:36 or some agency where you do this, that's
23:38 a much better model to fit into the
23:39 content. So, as a business owner, you're
23:40 always trying to do this process raw
23:42 where you analyze the winning content,
23:44 extract out the patterns, but then you
23:47 back fit those winners into content
23:49 product model fit. It has to make sense
23:50 for your business. Not to go too far
23:52 down the rabbit hole in terms of the
23:53 business conversion later, but that's
23:54 how I would think about it. All right.
23:55 Now, you can probably tell if you nail
23:58 the idea, the topic, premise, hook, you
23:59 are in a great spot. That is the hardest
24:01 part of the process in my opinion, which
24:02 is why I spend so much time breaking it
24:04 down. The truth is most people don't
24:06 want to spend the time to optimize their
24:07 idea process cuz they don't think that's
24:09 the problem. But if you get somebody
24:11 hooked that wants to watch, everything
24:13 else is so much easier. Now, the next
24:15 major bucket of problems is poor
24:17 storytelling and weak visual execution.
24:19 And I'm going to try to make this really
24:20 simple. There are three major
24:22 storytelling mistakes and three major
24:24 visual execution mistakes you might be
24:25 making. Let's rip through them really
24:27 quickly. On the storytelling side, these
24:29 are the three mistakes. The first one is
24:31 adding too many unnecessary details
24:33 right after the hook. I call this over
24:35 stuffing. Typically, people get so
24:36 excited when they have a great hook and
24:38 they have a topic they know a lot about
24:40 that they just over stuff way too many
24:42 details into the story. And this will
24:44 feel like the viewer is getting
24:45 waterboarded with extra facts that make
24:47 it really hard for them to connect
24:49 between the hook and the main problem of
24:50 the story. What you want to do is find
24:52 the shortest path to interesting after
24:55 the primary curiosity question is popped
24:57 in the viewer's mind. You just give a
24:59 couple contextual facts and that's it.
25:01 Anything you have good visuals for,
25:02 prioritize using these over everything
25:04 else. And only use things that are
25:06 additive to the story. Give the viewer
25:08 enough context where they can walk down
25:10 the rope from the beginning to the end,
25:12 but nothing extra. Now, the second big
25:13 storytelling problem goes handin-hand
25:14 with that, and it's called broken
25:16 storytelling. Maybe you do cut out a lot
25:18 of the fluff details, but the ones you
25:21 choose to use lead the viewer down the
25:22 wrong path. You set something up with a
25:24 hook, but then you lead them to a
25:26 completely different story, and you try
25:28 to come back at the end. The zigzag is
25:29 just too hard to follow. You want to
25:31 make the story super clear to consume.
25:33 You want there to be a clear logic line
25:34 from beginning to end. Now, the third
25:36 big storytelling mistake is not
25:38 rehooking. And this is really what takes
25:39 stories from good to great. If you're
25:41 able to pick the right facts and you
25:42 don't over stuff them and you keep the
25:44 viewer kind of on one story arc, what
25:46 you want to do is introduce another
25:49 relevant conflict 20 to 25 seconds into
25:52 the video. This will rehook and
25:54 re-engage the viewer and make them watch
25:56 to the end. So, for example, in Yanni's
25:58 video that we watched, the first main 20
26:00 to 25 seconds was all about this guy
26:02 Johnny that was a writer for the Bowling
26:04 Journal came in for an interview with
26:06 Yanni. But then at the 25 second mark
26:09 approximately, Yanni had Johnny ask a
26:11 question. Everybody wants to know how
26:12 did a 25-year-old buy a bowling alley
26:14 and get from zero to a million followers
26:16 so quickly. That is the rehook. It's a
26:19 second curiosityinducing hook after the
26:21 first one started to get boring. So for
26:23 you when you're auditing your content,
26:24 if you get through the idea stage, and
26:26 that's a huge if cuz that's the most
26:27 important piece when it comes to
26:28 storytelling. You have to make sure
26:30 you're not over stuffing the details,
26:32 you have a clear logic line, and you're
26:34 rehooking every 20 to 25 seconds. Now,
26:36 on the visual execution side, there are
26:38 also three common mistakes that I see
26:40 all the time. The first one is weak
26:42 visuals. The visual aspect of content is
26:44 a critically underrated piece of this
26:46 whole puzzle. And that doesn't mean you
26:48 need the most cinematic visuals in the
26:49 world. If you want cinematic, you can
26:51 use Veo3 if you don't shoot them. What
26:52 it means that you need to give the
26:54 viewer something interesting to look at
26:56 while they're listening. Also, it's
26:58 absolutely essential that these visuals
27:00 align with the words you're saying. Just
27:01 like in the hook where you want
27:03 alignment, you need alignment with the
27:05 spoken words throughout the whole story.
27:06 As you're delivering a sentence, you
27:08 should ask yourself, what is the best
27:10 visual I could be showing here? And then
27:12 go get that visual. Now, the second big
27:13 visual execution mistake is that the
27:16 visual format just ends up getting stale
27:18 or uninteresting. Now, visual format is
27:19 really a combination of the visuals
27:21 used, the layout they're in, and like
27:23 the angles that those visuals were shot
27:25 at. It turns out there are 36 core
27:27 visual formats that all content falls
27:29 into. I've got a full database of this.
27:31 If you guys want me to make a video on
27:32 just visual formats, breaking all these
27:34 down and the pros and cons, make sure to
27:36 drop a comment and let me know. And the
27:37 third visual execution mistake that I
27:39 always see is called visual switching.
27:41 And this is the pacing that the visuals
27:44 and camera angles change as the video is
27:45 going on. If it's too slow, you're going
27:46 to lose people and they're going to
27:48 churn because of boredom. If it's too
27:49 fast, you're going to overstimulate
27:51 people and confuse them because they
27:52 can't take it all in. So, you need to
27:54 find that Goldilock zone of visual
27:56 switch pacing. The best way to do this
27:58 is to take videos that you like that
28:00 you're really locked in on. Download
28:01 those videos, put them onto a Premiere
28:04 Pro or Final Cut timeline, make chops
28:06 every time the visual switches, and then
28:09 study about how long each section is.
28:11 That'll be a good proxy for visual
28:12 switch pacing. All right. Now, the last
28:14 two mistakes are super straightforward,
28:16 but they also trip a lot of people up.
28:17 Before we go into those, let's just
28:19 review what we've covered so far. First,
28:21 we talked about why your content is
28:23 actually getting low views in the first
28:24 place, and it's because of the bad
28:26 sampling data that's going back to the
28:28 algorithm. Next, we covered three
28:30 massive buckets of mistakes that you
28:31 could be making. And I say they're
28:33 three, but it's really like nine. The
28:35 first one was on positioning, and it was
28:37 to not get stuck in no man's land.
28:38 Either commit fully to entertainment
28:40 content and try to be the max
28:42 interesting you can, or commit fully to
28:44 education and try to be the max useful.
28:45 If you're doing education, you want it
28:47 to be enjoyable. You do not want to fall
28:49 in the edutainment in the middle. This
28:50 is where you're not as interesting as
28:52 the interesting people and you're not as
28:54 useful as the useful people. That's not
28:55 where you want to be. Now, the second
28:57 biggest mistake that we covered was bad
28:59 ideas. And this really is the killer.
29:01 I'm telling you, this is the one you
29:03 need to overinvest time in solving. And
29:06 that comes to topic, premise, and hooks.
29:08 We walked through exactly how to analyze
29:09 each of those and how to use
29:12 sandcastles.ai to build a system for
29:14 basically finding winners quicker and
29:15 extracting the patterns. The third
29:17 biggest bucket of mistakes we walked
29:19 through was poor storytelling and weak
29:21 visual execution. And we actually broke
29:23 down six kind of sub mistakes in there.
29:25 The truth is, if you can get through
29:27 those four pieces, the sampling data and
29:29 then the other three, the last two that
29:31 I'm about to go through end up being
29:33 really easy. And if you really boil it
29:34 all down, all you have to do is get
29:36 through ideas. Cuz if you get a good
29:38 idea that hooks somebody, visual
29:40 storytelling and spoken flow is actually
29:42 really easy to learn, train, and build a
29:44 system for. It's really ideas that is
29:46 the white whale. I say that over and
29:48 over because most people think their
29:50 storytelling, their persuasion, their
29:52 editing is what matters. No, it's ideas.
29:54 It's topic premise hook. Okay, so let's
29:56 finish these last two. The fifth biggest
29:59 mistake is poor topic consistency. And
30:01 this relates back all the way to the
30:02 beginning when I was talking about bad
30:04 sampling. Once you solve for ideas and
30:05 execution, and you're actually doing
30:07 this well, the algorithm is going to
30:09 start honing in on who likes your videos
30:11 and who it should push them to. And this
30:13 will work. I promise you it will
30:14 eventually start feeling like a snowball
30:17 rolling downhill if you don't make this
30:19 big mistake here. All you have to do is
30:22 not deviate from the topics and keywords
30:24 that you've spent so long training the
30:26 algorithm to feed you for. When you
30:29 switch topics around, beauty, science,
30:31 vlogging, travel. When you switch topics
30:34 around, it resets that bad sampling
30:36 problem over and over. You've got a
30:38 vlogging audience around travel. You
30:39 start doing fitness content, they don't
30:40 want to see it. You start doing beauty
30:41 content, they don't want to see it. You
30:43 start doing science content, they don't
30:44 want to see it. You don't want to bounce
30:45 around with topics. This is called
30:48 having a bad audience match. So, please,
30:50 for the love of God, once you figure out
30:52 a topic that works and people start
30:53 resonating and you get the snowball
30:55 rolling, double down on that, do not
30:57 deviate. If you want to try something
30:58 else for a different audience, do it on
30:59 a different channel. But pretty quickly,
31:00 when you're running two channels, you
31:02 realize this is stupid and you'll go
31:03 back to the main channel. Don't deviate
31:05 the main channel. Now, the last big
31:08 mistake, number six, is low volume. If
31:09 you have the rest working, you're not in
31:11 no man's land, you got great ideas,
31:12 you've got the flow for the
31:13 storytelling, you have the visual
31:14 execution, you're not deviating the
31:16 topics. If you have all those, all you
31:17 need is volume. The game then becomes
31:19 volume. And volume matters not just
31:21 because you're making more videos for
31:23 more people. The more data the algorithm
31:25 can get about those good matches, the
31:27 more it will feed and push you into
31:30 those matches. So volume is really your
31:31 best friend once you figure everything
31:32 else out. All right, guys. That's all
31:34 I've got for this video. As a recap, the
31:35 goal of this video was to try to give
31:37 you a framework for how to solve if you
31:39 feel like your content's being ignored.
31:41 And if you want more views, use this
31:43 framework as a checklist and kind of
31:45 like audit format to make sure you're
31:47 not making these big mistakes. Now, this
31:48 is the summary of what's happening. If
31:50 you feel like your content is being
31:52 ignored, you're getting low views. If
31:53 you're getting low views, it's because
31:55 the sample data is coming back weak. If
31:56 the sample data is coming back weak,
31:58 it's because you have fake followers,
32:00 the wrong followers, or bad videos. If
32:02 you have bad videos, it's because you're
32:04 making one or all of these mistakes.
32:06 You're either stuck in no man's land
32:07 where your videos are not as interesting
32:09 as the entertainment and not as useful
32:12 as the education. You have bad topic,
32:14 premise, and hooks, which are not
32:16 validated. You're not using validated
32:17 winners and you're not coming up with
32:18 the right ideas. You have poor stories
32:20 that may also have weak visual
32:22 execution. You are not staying
32:23 consistent to the topics that are
32:25 working or you're not putting out enough
32:27 volume. It's one of those five problems
32:29 in that order. Typically, it's ideas
32:31 that is the issue. As always, guys, I'm
32:33 trying my absolute best, if you're a
32:35 business owner, to help you level up
32:36 with content. You could hear it in my
32:38 voice. My voice is absolutely shot. I'm
32:39 giving everything I have to this YouTube
32:41 channel. If you like this content,
32:43 please leave me a comment and let me
32:44 know that I should keep going. I had a
32:46 doubt this week that I was considering
32:47 never making videos again on this
32:49 channel just cuz I was so burnt out. And
32:51 I mean that sincerely. So, I'm trying my
32:53 best to give you guys as much value and
32:54 really cover the non-obvious things. If
32:56 you guys want me to keep making videos,
32:58 please leave a comment. And again, if
32:59 you haven't joined Wavy World and you're
33:01 a business owner, there's 60 free
33:03 trainings like this in there. 31,000
33:04 entrepreneurs. People are just giving
33:07 free game. I'm giving free game. There's
33:08 no reason to not be in Wavy World. Free
33:10 invite link in the description. All
33:11 right. As always, guys, we'll see you on
