91% retention 93% retention 97% retention one after another again and again and again through my personal experience in making engaging shorts and my research into the strategies of top creators I've created an in-depth process for consistently getting high retention by following the methods in this process you'll be able to keep attention so well that you can't stop going viral so without further Ado let's let's [Music] begin the shorts algorithm uses thousands of methods to decide if your content is worthy of getting views however there is one single element that is undoubtedly the biggest factor in
this every Creator acknowledges it as the single most important metric in terms of going viral and I'm sure you've heard of it as [Music] well just this simple line on the graph will decide if your short gets 10 views or 10 million views so let's make it as flat as possible now this upcoming advice can be used across all niches but for each person it might apply differently so in these next few minutes consider how you can tailor this information to fit your videos if you were to imagine your content as a car then the
composing of your shorts would be the engine without a good engine it doesn't matter if you have a super nice car a Lamborghini because you won't be going anywhere so to explain the concept of composing we can start by drawing a simple line on one end we have the hook and on the other end we have the payoff the line connecting the two is our storytelling I'll go through each point in this drawing and show you how to maximize retention in all of them let's begin with the hook and I'll get to the others later
your hook is basically the intro of your short it should be as concise and easy to understand as possible since we don't want to end up confusing the viewers or giving them too much information the hook should also explain the general idea of the video and mention a payoff now it might seem difficult to fit all this in less than 5 seconds but it doesn't have to be complicated find for yourself how this Creator communicated a simple but effective hook to his viewers [Music] yes even without a voice this simple use of text is still
a very strong hook his viewers want to see what he's referring to in the caption which is a good reason for them to keep watching we also immediately understand the concept of the video because the visuals convey what game he's playing and the situation he's in which shows that you don't always have to physically explain the idea for further reference here's another very good hook but this time it's a completely different Niche my grandma thinks Christmas is expensive so I'm going to prove her wrong by giving her the best Christmas present with $5 let's get
started so your hook can look differently depending on your Niche and video type but as long as you can set up a payoff and convey an interesting idea you'll be able to make your viewers stick around but only initially we still have to keep these people engaged until the end of the short or else they'll just scroll away before reaching that point that's where storytelling comes in in and we can start progressing down the line now this part is interesting because how you use storytelling will be very dependent on your Niche and video type if
you make voiceover or original content then there's a lot more room with what you can do for that group I recommend you integrate conflict into your script have things go wrong and then resolve the problem with the solution also use a lot of suspenseful words like but and however because it keeps people on edge waiting for what you say next next now in a more General sense there is something that's important to focus on in storytelling for every Niche faceless or not and before I reveal it try to catch it for yourself in this short
this is a Starbucks and down the street is another Starbucks and today I'mma start some beef howdy can you give me just like a really fun drink yeah we can definitely do that oh my gosh that's so fun Starbucks a went off this is the most fun drink I've ever seen I pulled up the Starbucks B and did what I had to do and then they said that you guys make super boring drinks okay so I was just going to see if you guys can make a more fun one than them yeah definitely this is
what the Starbucks down the street made the genuine shock on tor's face right so in the hook Ryan sets up the plot behind the video and now we want to see who will make the better Starbucks drink then you might have noticed he used a hidden storytelling tool in order to keep us engaged throughout the short let's see even though the concept itself wasn't very tense there was a lot of anticipation he framed things in a way that made made it impossible to scroll because of the building up towards the payoff the hidden tool that
Ryan used here was tension and obviously it worked because this short has nearly 100 million views so tension is the most important instrument of Storytelling and it can be applied in very broad circumstances as long as you're building suspense in your viewers now that we've resolved the storytelling and the hook let's move on to the payoff another integral part of your content so remember how I said ear earlier in the hook that you had to mention a payoff well now that we're actually here it's very important that you meet the expectations you set Ryan set
up that there would be a competition between the two Starbucks but what if he reached the end of the short after all of that tension and buildup and said well it's a tie that would be lame wouldn't it you want to satisfy your audience because the real trick to getting a ton of retention is returning viewers if you disappoint someone with your payoff then you'll have lost a potential loyal subscriber who would have given you a lot of Engagement in the long run so make sure to fulfill the payoff and look at that we've successfully
completed the composing [Music] pathway remember what I said earlier about composing being the engine of your shorts well you can think of editing as the physical part of the car the wheel the seats and the walls in the same way that a car couldn't function without an engine it's just as useless without a body to start let's talk about your pacing attention spans are pretty much fried nowadays especially when it comes to short form platforms like YouTube shorts therefore we need to go to Great Lengths to make sure our content is as fast-paced as possible
I remember on an old channel of mine in the gaming Niche I would spend a whole hour getting footage for a one minute short that way I could condense all of the most action-packed moments to make the pacing quick and entertaining this is so important because people nowadays value their time much more why would they spend 30 seconds watching your short that isn't even entertaining when they can just scroll away and watch Mr Beast so keep your shorts as fast-paced as possible as for certain tricks like captions Transitions and zooming there isn't one concrete answer
that I can give it's heavily dependent on the style of your content so I recommend recommend you search for other creators in your Niche and just do what they do now there's a whole another side of editing as well this aspect of it is often overlooked which is a shame because it plays one of the biggest roles in your engagement see if you can find what it is in this short these are the internet's weirdest websites spot the drowning child.com is like a lifeguard simulator where you're given a video of real people in a swimming
pool and you click who you think's drowning to see if you're faster than the Lifeguard what's my star name.com let you type in your name and will return with how a Starbucks employee will find a way to spell it wrong did you catch it as the sections of the video switched the music he used changed as well the soundtrack you pick for your shorts can be used to make the audience feel different moods during different parts of the short this gets them more invested into the video and enhances your storytelling but be careful because if
you pick the wrong soundtrack then it can backfire heavily another huge use of music is for building tension I talked about it earlier so you already know how important tension is if you pick a certain song with a buildup then you can create tension from thin air and manipulate people into staying engaged I can't show an example of this because of copyright but this channel is super good at it so check out his content to see what I'm talking about sound effects again depend on your Niche and type of content if you can use them
then add them to certain moments for more engagement but if it doesn't fit your video style then it's not a big deal the definition of Leverage is using something to its maximum Advantage if we go back to that car analogy leverage would be like attaching a jet booster to the back the car does work without it but we can make it go a lot faster and what I mean by this is there are some clever tricks to maximize retention outside of the traditional composing and editing some of these tricks will seem pretty weird but don't
underestimate how effective they are the first one is called engagement baiting do something that urges people to comment for example an intentional mistake until this guy slides the watermelon through it or a really crazy moment people will want to point it out and you might not know this but your retention increases as people use the comment section try it for yourself go to a short and you'll notice that when you leave a comment the short keeps playing in the background so get people to leave comments and you'll see a massive increase in your retention another
trick related to comments and this one is kind of underhanded but it works very well here's how you do it once you post your short switch YouTube accounts so that people don't know it's you then go to the Post you just made and leave a comment saying something like that ending was crazy or I didn't expect the ending most people check the comments before even watching the short so they'll see that and wait until the end because you've made them curious about what happens the funny thing about this one is a lot of shorts creators
use this without you knowing it next time you check the comments on a short and see one like that just know it might actually be the Creator in Disguise the third one is very simple but it's also very effective go to one of your shorts and find the related video section click it and link one of your other shorts a lot of people will click this link and since they're already in invested in your content they're more likely to watch for longer now I have a lot more leverage tips to share so I've linked them
in the description for completely free check those out if you're interested hopefully you got a lot of value from this video subscribe if you did and I'll talk to you in the next one
