📱 The Secret To Viral Content

In 2016, Jimmy Donaldson (AKA Mr. Beast) was ditching school. Why?

He was spending 12 hours in his car every day studying YouTube.

Back then, Mr.Beast had less than 4K subscribers and only making a few dollars.

Now, he’s the largest creator on YouTube, and worth $110M.

Last night I saw a video where Mr.Beast said “It’s all knowledge. If you know what I knew, you could get to 10 million subscribers within 6 months.”

So, I spent the last 8 hours researching his content style, and what tactics he uses to create magnetic content.

Let’s get into it.

• ⬆️ Raise The Bar
  

• 🎥 The YouTube Formula
  

• 🤫 3 YouTube Hacks

PS: 99% of his advice can be applied to any type of content (even newsletters like this one).

Read time: 5 min 1 sec

⬆️ Raise The Bar

When talking about creating viral content, people always debate the ‘algorithm’ of the platform.

But Mr.Beast doesn’t focus on the algorithm.

Instead, he says “Anytime someone says algorithm, replace it with audience”.

What will get YOUR audience to open and engage with your content?

This has two factors:

#1 - Are they interested?

Mr. Beast followers want to see videos like ‘100 Million Orbeez In My Friend's Backyard”. Profit Snack readers want entertaining business news.

Find out what your audience wants to see and present it an an entertaining way (we’ll get to that part later).

Alex Hormozi takes a similar approach. In an interview, he said, “We focus on content that ONLY we can make.”

Alex’s audience wants to see his day-to-day. Not more money-making tips.

As long as your audience likes your content and they engage with it, the algorithm will push it.

#2 - Will they come back for more?

If your audience did not like your first post, they won’t open the second.

This is why Mr. Beast says it’s easier to get 5 million views on 1 video than 50K on 100 videos.

To get consistent engagement, you must consistently raise the bar on the quality of your content.

For Mr. Beast, this looks like:

• Improving 1 thing every time. Mr. Beast says starting with your 2nd post, improve 1 thing from last time. This could mean putting more effort into a script, learning a new editing trick, etc.

• Feedback loops. For every video, Mr. Beast has someone “rip apart his YouTube video”. If you’re not getting feedback from your audience, you won’t know where to improve.

Over time these habits compound and eventually, your content will be a must-see for your audience.

🎥 The YouTube Formula

The make-or-break point for content is in the first 10 seconds.

So you have to impress, and you have to do it fast.

Mr. Beast follows the same formula for every video. And in this interview, he goes more in-depth.

The first 3 seconds start with:

• Your title/ thumbnail. I think Mr. Beast says it perfectly when he says a good title/ thumbnail makes your audience think “It will bother me if I don’t read this.”

Your best friend in these 3 seconds is curiosity. Can you make them so curious, they’re willing to spend 10+ minutes on you?

The last 7 seconds start once your audience has opened your content.

For the intro, follow this formula:

• Give ‘em what they clicked for. If your title says “Why Tether Is A Scam” your first few seconds should be “Today, I’ll tell you why Tether is a scam”

• Convince them to keep watching. Do this by promising something more entertaining than why they clicked. In the Tether example, this could be something like “watch how I lost $200K in 3 hours.”

• Stay on topic. Mr. Beast says the fastest engagement killer is going off-topic. If it’s not critical to the plot, get rid of it.

Here’s this in action in one of his recent videos “Lamborghini Vs World's Largest Shredder” (118M views)

Here’s the thumbnail:

First 5 seconds of the video: 

“This is the largest shredder in the world, and this Lamborghini is going to fall in it. We're also nuking an entire life-size village, shooting real tanks at a literal Lamborghini, and crushing this store with the world's largest domino.”

Peak their curiosity, prove you’ll give them what they clicked for, and keep it entertaining.

🤫 3 YouTube Hacks

If you’re new to YouTube, here’s a breakdown of Mr.Beast’s tips for new YouTube channels.

#1 - Make 100 videos and improve something every time. 

The sooner you can learn to create content that people want to watch, the sooner you’ll get views.

BUT….

#2 - Do NOT follow a content plan. (ex - ‘I post every Monday)

Content plans keep you in a box. Upload only quality videos and if it takes a month, then it takes a month.

The first rule does not mean 1 video a day. It just means 100 videos.

A mediocre video will not bring your audience back for more - a key component to boosting engagement.

#3 - Find someone willing to give you harsh (and even mean) feedback.

The compounding impact of feedback is invaluable. When you upload content, you should think it’s perfect. But there’s no such thing as perfect content. Find someone willing to tell your why yours sucks.

Then follow the 1% rule where you improve at least one aspect of your content in each post.

That’s it for today folks!

The Profit Snack Team