Content Lessons from the #1 YouTuber's Leaked Memo
Imagine having access to the content secrets of the #1 YouTube channel in the world.
Well now, you kind of do.
Because a few months ago his production team leaked an internal memo with all their content secrets inside of it.
It’s full of curse words and breaks every corporate rule in the book. But it’s full of lessons that every marketer should read.
If you don’t know who I’m talking about, his real name is Jimmy, but he goes by “MrBeast.”
He’s built a $100M+ YouTube media empire by creating videos that sound flat out impossible to pull off.
Here are two examples:
“I Spent 50 Hours Buried Alive”
“Last To Leave The Circle Wins $1,000,000.”
These are real videos. Not clickbait.
And while the video concepts themselves are straight up ridiculous, the way they film them is the impressive part. It's broken down to a science that we can replicate it in our own world.
The leaked memo is like if Michael Jordan handed you his playbook on shooting a basketball.
(But even better because you don’t need to be 6'7" and a superhuman athlete to make it work).
Here are my takeaways.
P.S. - I’m going to speak on the memo as if you’ve already read it. So if you haven’t, check it out. It’s linked at the bottom of this article.
Successful content is a science
I used to think the skill of creating great content was a gift reserved for 'creative people’.
Social media makes you think that great content creators have a super-special-creative gene that the average person just doesn’t have.
But Jimmy proves this isn’t really the case.
In his memo, you’ll notice immediately that his approach to content is scientific-first. He puts YouTube videos under a microscope and dissects them until he knows exactly what makes them successful.
Before launching his YouTube channel, he spent 5 years of his life locked in his room studying virality on YouTube. He watched every successful YouTube video and studied why they have so many views.
He didn’t just pick up a camera and start recording beautiful videos to start. He studied the DNA of a good video, then tried to replicate it over and over.
He still does it to this day.
He analyzes the correlation between lighting and viewer drop-off. He studies the anatomy of a good thumbnail that drives high click-through rates.
He even breaks his videos into 3-minute chunks that have their unique ingredients.
It’s not luck that his videos are successful. They’re a result of studying what success looks like and replicating it.
There’s no doubt he's a creative person. But his approach is much more scientific than creative. We can all learn something from that.
Retention is king
Now let’s move onto what exactly makes his content so effective. Let’s start with an exercise…
If I asked you “What makes a movie or TV show video great,” What would you say?
Maybe you’ll say it’s the script, the storyline, or the actors.
While all of these components are contributors, all great content does one thing universally:
It retains your attention.
All successful content keeps you intrigued and engaged throughout. In other words – it’s simply entertaining.
Whether that’s done through humor, fear, or curiosity, there’s always a sense of anticipation and excitement that keeps you glued to the screen.
It makes you question what’s going to happen next. Will he survive this? Who killed her?
Mr. Beast knows this and uses it to his advantage. He creates content with the primary goal of retention at the forefront. He keeps you in a state of anticipation, waiting for the next payoff.
You must deliver on people’s expectations
Before you run off to create a thumbnail to maximize clicks and views on your content, think about this.
What causes people to click on your content can also harm retention.
People are familiar with the term clickbait,” where marketers create images, titles, and previews to entice you to click, then show you something completely different when you get to the content.
It's the worst.
And if you’ve experienced clickbait, you know how frustrating it is. And while it can drive clicks and views, it hurts you more than it helps.
Because by tricking people, you fail to deliver on their expectations. As a result, viewers get mad and leave.
Unless you’re paid solely on clicks, clickbait is a risky tactic that often backfires.
Jimmy and his team are experts at creating thumbnails that convert while setting accurate expectations for the viewer.
It’s so important that he has a whole team dedicated to just making thumbnails.
“Imagine you clicked on a video titled “World’s Largest Bouncy Castle” and the thumbnail had a giant yellow bouncy castle beside a bunch of huge buildings. Then when the video plays, it's not a yellow bouncy castle, it’s red. It’s also not the world’s largest. It’s also in a field with no buildings like the thumbnail. You’d feel like you were lied to and click off because the video did not meet the expectations of the title/thumbnail.”
Storytelling is an art form
We know how important retention is, but how do you actually retain people? The short answer: through storytelling.
Effective storytelling is what makes Mr. Beast's videos so hard to stop watching. He’s a mastermind at crafting compelling stories that get viewers extremely invested in what’s going to happen next.
Here are his keys to effective storytelling:
Get people invested early
The best way to retain people is to get them heavily invested in the story quickly. The more invested they are, the less likely they’ll leave.
But you need to do this quickly.
The mistake a lot of creators make is dragging out the start of a story, causing viewers to have to wait a long time to get all of the facts.
You’ll see this a lot in movies, but it doesn’t work well in shorter-form content, like on YouTube.
Jimmy focuses on accelerating the story in the beginning to quickly get viewers the information to the point where they’ll become invested.
“Let’s say we have a 10-minute video about a guy surviving weeks in the woods. Instead of spending the first three minutes on his first day, we’d show multiple days in that time. Now, the viewer has seen him survive several days and needs to see how much further he can go.”
2. Re-engage consistently
No story is thrilling 100% of the time. There are inevitably going to be ebbs and flows as it progresses. The problem with that is, people get bored and want to leave.
So, how do you retain them?
Jimmy uses a brilliant tactic to keep people hooked. He calls them “reengagements.”
When the storyline interest dips, he will interject a small and unexpected twist to it. These aren’t always huge twists, but small ones that are meaningful enough to keep viewers guessing.
He quickly manufactures interest, re-capturing your attention before you leave. You’re now back on the dopamine hamster wheel waiting for the next payoff.
“As soon as one storyline slows, introduce something new to keep the viewer guessing. The moment they feel like they’ve seen enough, they leave.”
3. Give the audience a payoff
You can have the perfect thumbnail, create an interesting storyline, and retain people’s attention, but you must do one final thing to deliver satisfaction viewers are seeking.
Give them a payoff.
Imagine watching a thrilling movie. If you found out nothing interesting was going to happen in the last 30 minutes of it, would you keep watching?
Probably not.
The reason you stay glued to the end is to see the payoff. Everything is building up to it, and the pressure is released at the end. It’s usually through getting an answer to a burning question, like “who did it?”
(This is why people hate cliffhangers so much).
The payoff is the crescendo and release of the tension that you’ve built up through storytelling. It’s the reason people stay to the end.
If done correctly, it will leave viewers satisfied and wanting more next time.
“If you’ve kept people this long, the ending has to hit. It’s the difference between someone saying, ‘That was okay,’ versus, ‘That was the best video I’ve seen in months.’”
Check out the memo here.
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