Would you like your videos to hit a million views?
Or maybe 10 million or more?
While there is no exact science to creating a video that will be viewed millions of times, there is a method that greatly increases your odds.
No doubt you’ve heard that if you want to do something, you should find someone else who has already done it, and then do what they did.
This method works a lot like that, except of course we’re never going to duplicate content.
But we will investigate to find out what YouTube videos have insanely high spikes in viewership, and why it’s happening so that we might be able to do the same thing ourselves.
Here’s how it works:
Let’s say you’re in the dog training niche. You have your own YouTube dog training channel where you pump out dog training videos and promote your own dog training products.
You’re creating a video a week and each of your videos typically gets 10K views in the first week.
But then you get a spike. A BIG spike. Your latest video gets 100K views in its first week, which is a 1,000% spike.
At the same time, you also monitor your competition, watching other dog training channels to see how their videos perform.
Every week or so you check these channels and look for spikes in viewership.
For example, dog training channel X gets an average view count of 5K or 7K views in the first week. But then you notice their latest video has 150K views, even though they only have 10K subscribers. Obviously, something notable is going on with that video.
Your job is to figure out the reason these videos (yours and your competitor’s) have spiked. When you discover this, you’re going to use this information on your future videos to increase the chances that they will spike as well.
What makes a video spike?
It could be any of the following, a combination of these, or even another variable:
In the case of a video viewing spike on a channel with low subscribers, the answer is usually that the topic is something YouTube wishes to promote, and this particular video is chosen by YouTube to be a good representation of that topic.
If the video has a good impression to view ratio, watch time, retention and so forth (viewing metrics) that can be enough to convince YouTube to send plenty of traffic to the video.
Take as much time as you need to really pour over the videos that spike and figure out what’s happening.
Is it the topic?
A tag?
The title, or a particular word in the title?
Did it get shared someplace with lots of traffic? (Such as Reddit)
Is it piggybacking a popular video? Which one?
Is this a micro-niche that needs to be filled?
How is the video structured?
What happens in the first few seconds?
What grabs the viewer?
What keeps them watching?
Do the comments provide a clue?
Your job is to learn why these videos spike and then try to replicate the spikes by emulating, not copying.
Because we don’t know exactly how YouTube makes decisions on what videos to feature, and because you never know exactly what people will want, this is not an exact science (not even close.)
But as you spend more and more time dissecting spiking videos, you’ll learn what elements to use in your own videos to increase (sometimes GREATLY increase) the odds that they, too, receive huge spikes of traffic.
One last thing for people who don’t use videos in their marketing (yet): It’s entirely possible to sell $10K – $50K of a product – such as a course – from a single video with a huge viewership spike.
Food for thought.
Men Wanted for Hazardous Journey
Urban legend has it that Ernest Shackleton placed an advertisement in the London Times that garnered 5,000 applications.
That’s not the weird part.
What is strange is that anyone – much less 5,000 people – would answer this December 29, 1913 ad which read:
“MEN WANTED for hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful, honour and recognition in case of success.”
There’s something seductive about the unvarnished truth. It pulls you in and makes you a co-conspirator of the positive side, or the silver lining.
Let’s say you just saw a movie, and I say to you, “Wasn’t that the greatest movie you ever saw in your entire life? Aren’t you just over the moon thrilled that you saw it?”
It’s doubtful you will agree. In fact, you’ll probably tell me everything you found wrong with the movie, even if you did like it.
But if instead I say, “Wasn’t that movie horrible? Wasn’t it just the worst movie ever?”
Now you’re likely to tell me what you LIKED about it.
It’s human nature.
When you read an ad that says, “This is the greatest, easiest, simplest and safest make money online program ever in the history of the internet,” what’s your reaction?
I can almost guarantee you’re going doubt every word of it and immediately begin figuring out why it won’t work.
But if instead I say, “This is a proven program that works time and time again, but only if you follow the steps, only if you’re prepared to do the work and put in the time, and only if you’re committed to learning as you go and sticking with it despite setbacks.”
What would you think about that? I’m not blowing smoke up your skirt with this second ad, and in fact, I’m telling you this takes WORK and TIME and might not even be all that easy or fast.
Which of the two are you more inclined to believe, and why?
And do you think your customers are any different than you?
Forget the hype and go with honesty.
Just try it. Test it out.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe your market is the one market that thrives on hype. (It’s possible.)
Or maybe your customers are so sick of false promises, they will follow anyone who does the opposite and simply tells them the truth. (It’s more likely.)
You won’t know for sure until you test it out, but I think you already know the answer.
One last thought to mull over: A cough syrup called W.K. Buckley brags that, “Canadians have hated it for 100 years.”
In fact, their slogan is, “Buckley’s Mixture: It tastes awful. And it works.”
It’s a household name in Canada. It contains no sugar and no alcohol, ingredients used in other cough syrups to mask the lousy taste.
A quick search on Amazon finds this original formula with 670 reviews and a 4.5-star rating.
The first review states, “Tastes Like a Horror, Works Like a Wonder.” They give it 5 stars.
The second review advises that if you don’t like the taste, you should, “SUCK IT UP BUTTERCUP!!!!!” Also 5 stars.
And the third review states, “Ever Drink Drain Cleaner? …after one taste, my body decided it would rather never cough again than to have to taste this again. SO, I GUESS IT WORKS!!!”
Imagine what their review rating would have been if they had said nothing about the bad taste, or worse yet, claimed it tasted good. By admitting upfront that this stuff tastes horrible, they immediately overcame their biggest objection and cemented their claim that this stuff WORKS.
Before researching this article, I’d never heard of Buckley’s Cough Syrup, but I just ordered my first bottle, because I do believe it works.
Why? Because they also told me it tastes awful, and if they’re telling me the truth about that, then I figure they must be telling me the truth about how well it works.
Tell me what’s wrong with your product, and I might buy that, too.
