in this video we're going to talk about 1,000 subscribers and why you haven't hit that Milestone yet so let me know in the comments below how many subscribers you have right now and how long it's taking you to get them if you're consistently making what you believe to be high quality videos but you're still stuck under a th000 subscribers then it's likely that you're not making videos that meet the three pillars of viral content and that means that even even if you are spending 10 hours or more in some cases a lot more on your
videos they're essentially invisible to what you and I know as the YouTube algorithm it's like throwing a perfectly good party but forgetting to send out invitations so in the end nobody shows up but as is always the case with YouTube education there is good news once you know what the three pillars are your videos are going to stand out and have a much higher chance of going viral and don't worry these pillars don't form part of a secret cult or ritual it's just a formula that actually works I would go as far as saying I
haven't seen a small Channel following these exact three pillars I'm about to share with you and not reach 1,000 subscribers faster than 95% of most other channels out there and none of this is Magic this isn't Hogwarts unless of course you are a Harry Potter channel in which case uh subscribe as Maximus even Muggles in our YouTube world can succeed with hard work and a commitment to consistently apply the concepts we're about to talk about and today that doesn't include strategies like picking trending video ideas or finding outlier videos to recreate we've already talked about
them at length here at vid IQ so instead we're going to focus on three completely new strategies to help your content go viral and we need to start with pillar number one which is creating linked videos this is because one of the biggest traps we see new creators fall into is that they post videos that might be labeled as isolated content this is where you post videos that aren't linked in some way to your other videos which can cause two major problems first of all it doesn't keep your audience the one that you're trying to
build on your channel and it confuses the algorithm on who might be the ideal viewers to serve your video too for example let's say you decided that you want wanted to start a cooking channel very Noble and fun Endeavor but you're not the first person to think of that on YouTube and so you post videos such as how to make the perfect Pasta easy vegan dessert recipes and how to sharpen your kitchen knives now you may be thinking at this point that this is all the same Niche cooking related content but they're not as closely
connected as what you might think a viewer who came for pasta tips might not care about knife sharpening or or someone looking for vegan desserts might not be interested in making the perfect Pasta in the very simplest of terms you are not encouraging your viewers to watch multiple videos on your channel and that reduces the potential for more watch time and establishing a long-term relationship with a viewer channels that build themselves around search-based content often struggle with this they provide a singular function to the viewer they answer one question one time but don't then build
on that first impression with interconnected content on a consistent basis now that is not to say that Discovery through search isn't a bad thing it's great actually especially for small channels search traffic is often the first breakthrough for many creators but ideally you want to convert that viewer who found you through search to watch your next video through browse when YouTube recommends it to them on the homepage or through the suggested videos column on a video watch page and that's achieved through connected videos something that's just as familiar to the viewer as the previous video
they watched on your channel there's definitely something to be said for keeping things familiar like a comfortable pair of socks or you know content so let's solve this problem of interconnected videos all you have to do before you create your next video is simply ask yourself these free questions to make sure your videos don't get ignored especially by your return viewers question one does this content appeal to my core audience question question two does this video connect to my other content and question three will viewers that watch this video also be interested in watching my
next video or previous videos a great example of a successful Channel that's doing this is flex alert the vid IQ Channel we know this because we can look at our own analytics and they tell us that we're generating over half a million views per month in return viewers using this exact strategy one particular example on the channel is a series I launched a few months back called YouTube launches new update that covers all of the things that impact creators both positively and negatively and this video idea has very quickly formed into a weekly series because
it's familiar to our regular viewers whether they are subscribers or not as you can see the regular view count spikes very sharply whenever one of these videos is released and because the viewer has already seen one of these YouTube update videos recently they don't have to discover it through search YouTube recommends it to them through browse and they watch it now the videos don't have to be part of a really obvious and structured series they can be connected through the specific audience the videos appeal to for example notice how each of these videos are very
similar and all speak to a small Creator audience that are wanting to grow their YouTube channels this type of content encourages viewers to binge watch two or three videos in one session which skyrockets average watch time and helps our videos get recommended to the right viewers and of course not only that but because our content is targeted at a very specific audience the algorithm can more accurately predict who will find these videos satisfying this leads to more views more familiarity with a Content a better relationship with a viewer and eventually fingers crossed that subscriber so
if we think back to that earlier Cooking Channel example for a moment if you decide to make a video about vegan desserts you are being pretty intentional about your audience and if a video does well you just stuck your Channel's flag firmly in the vegan audience sand and all of your content should consider that type of viewer going forward but creating linked content will only help you get 1,000 subscribers fast if you know how to get people on your channel in the first place one of the biggest hurdles you need to over come if you
want your content to go viral is knowing how to package your title and thumbnail in a way that grabs attention and makes your audience click on your videos without this it does not matter how many linked videos you make those videos are never going to be watched and it's going to take forever for your channel to hit a th000 subscribers so what actually makes a clickable title and thumbnail well there are the well-known techniques that we've talked about a lot here at vid IQ recently including creating curiosity gaps and using contrasting colors in the thumbnail
itself and these are great very important but after studying hundreds of viral channels over the past 12 months I've noticed there is one thing they're all using to get more clicks that's not talked about as much and that's something called the shock value or the wow factor which is the second pillar of this viral method to explain what I mean a little bit more here's an excerpt from Mr Beast leaked handbook on how he produces videos if you want to read the whole thing yourself just Google it as a title I spent 50 hours in
my front yard is lame and you wouldn't click on it but you would hypthetically click on I spent 50 hours in ketchup both are relatively similar in time and effort but the ketchup one is easily 100 times more viral an image of someone sitting in ketchup in a bathtub is exponentially more interesting than someone sitting in their front yard titles are equally as important for getting someone to click a simple way to up that click rate even more would be to title it I survived instead of I spent that would add more Intrigue and make
it feel more extreme in general the more extreme the better I don't like bananas won't perform the same as bananas are the worst Food on earth now of course none of us are Mr Beast and I'm sure there are different degrees of shock value each of us would wish to implement so it's not to feel like we are click baiting our audience but just like your on camera presence you do want to dial up your titles and thumbnails to 11 let's see how this works in the YouTube world with an example from Simon squid this
title adds a good amount of that shock value or wow factor we're after by promising 30 years of business advice in Just 2 hours the contrast between 30 years and a 2hour video seems almost impossible naturally this grabs the audience's attention and makes them want to click the video in fact after discovering the power of shock value we decided to run a few tests on the vid IQ Channel and the results have been pretty impressive for example we applied the shock value to this title and thumbnail and now it's performing four times better than the
average video on the channel just like in the Simon squib example we use the same simple contrasting formula and it worked I was going to say like magic but remember we're all Muggles here so it simply worked because the audience reacts in a somewhat predictable and engaged fashion to this type of packaging we promis the audience that they can hit 1,000 subscribers in just 9 Minutes of advice which seems almost impossible and makes the audience think wow I have to click to find out how so now let's break down how you can apply the same
formula to your videos to create more shock value or wow factor and get more people clicking on your videos step one you need to start with a core idea so let's say you wanted to make a video about how to make the perfect pastor this is a good start but it doesn't grab attention so in step two what you need to do is Elevate the promise so instead of saying perfect Pasta we could say how to make restaurant quality pasta we've raised the stakes by promising not just good pasta but restaurant level quality which is
much more interesting and then we arrive at step three which brings everything together adding the powerful contrast to create the shock value or wow factor we need to push the bound of what seems possible one of the most effective ways to do this is by adding an unexpected time constraint for example instead of just saying how to make restaurant quality pasta we could add how to make restaurant quality pasta in just 3 minutes by promising both quality and speed where creating a curiosity in the viewer's mind they'll think how is this possible to make great
Pastor that quickly this curiosity creates a strong urge to click and find out the answer now then there is something important to consider when you're trying to add this viral pillar to your workflow to create the best packaging but includes this shock value it does require you to at least sketch out your title and thumbnail before you start recording your video if you know you want to create restaurant quality pasta within a time constraint before you record that will make what you say the story you share and the footage you film very intentional to meet
that promise that expectation you set both for yourself and ultimately the audience who watches the final video all right we've now reached the third and final pillar to creating viral content to reach 1,000 subscribers and that is maximizing your retention this is because retention is like the secret key to helping your videos get more views and subscribers YouTube has repeatedly shared that your average view duration is one of the most important metrics it uses to decide whether or not to find new audiences for your content if viewers are watching more YouTube it signals to us
that they're happier with the content they found it means that creators are attracting more engaged audiences and it also opens up more opportunities to generate revenue for our partners in other words more watch time means everybody wins the only problem is most creators have zero idea how to keep their viewers watching Beyond the first 30 seconds where you lose the majority of your audience which results in those sharp drop offs and ultimately prevents the algorithm pushing your videos to a wider audience but recently we've discovered two powerful retention techniques that help our retention graphs go
from looking like this to this and the first technique is to Simply promise something of value to your audience if they watch right until the end of a video Mike Shake is a master of this he's grown to over 4 million subscribers by teasing increasingly exciting events at the start of his videos and then slowly rewarding a viewer by reintroducing these clips as full story acts as long as a viewer continues to watch so I'm going to test three weapons that get progressively older and measure how effective and Powerful they are but what if you
run some sort of educational Channel well another extremely effective way to boost your retention is to promise something of value beyond the video itself such as a downloadable worksheet that adds to the education provided within the video we recently tested this and the results were quite revealing a minute in we made this promise we've also included a downloadable worksheet in the description that you can use during a critical part of this process that we'll cover in a lot more detail when we get there and it helped the video perform 13 times better than our average
video video count but not only that thousands and thousands of people have downloaded that worksheet to help them grow their YouTube channels let's talk about the second technique now and editor have a little bit of fun with this it's called the rehook it's a way of keeping your audience interested throughout your video and here's how it works every time you start a new section or Topic in your video you create a mini hook for it this reminds the viewers why they should keep watching instead of clicking away for example imagine we're creating a rehook for
that pasta video we talked about earlier which is titled how to cook restaurant quality pasta in just 3 minutes let's say for the second point in the video it's about how to get the perfect firmness here's how you could write a rehook for this section to help boost your retention now for this bit editor I will need a chef's hat thank you and this is is what I'm going to say now learning to boil your pasta is important but if you want your guest to scream oh my goodness this pasta is perfect then you need
to learn how to cook your pasta to the perfect firmness so the first thing you want to do is and then if I actually knew how to cook I would tell you how to do that but unfortunately I don't I just have a novelty uh spoon so this rehook does three important things it tells a viewer what's coming next it explains why this information is use and it gives them a strong reason to keep watching so by using re hooks for every topic in your video viewers are more likely to watch the whole thing helping
to boost your retention and making your videos get pushed out by the YouTube algorithm to a wider audience so these are three pillars that will help shortcut your way to a th000 subscribers but there's still a few skills you need to learn if you want to turn your YouTube channel into a full-time income one of the most important is how to successfully recreate outlier videos that we've kind of teased in this video that's why I highly recommend you watch this video next where we break down this important skill step by step
