Two in a row!

First, this YouTube Short went viral:

And as I was writing a draft for this newsletter about what I learned from the one above, we had another video go viral — this one:

And now I have to rewrite the whole thing because the second video invalidated (or at least shed new light on) many of the things I thought I learned from the first one!

But that’s the best part about creating on the internet. There’s no textbook you can read about this stuff. You have to do it, and learn the lessons yourself.

So, here’s what I learned from our first and second viral videos.

What makes a video go viral?

Before we get into these two videos specifically, I want to tell you why videos go viral in the first place.

It’s obviously not an exact science and it varies by platform. What goes viral on YouTube Shorts may not go viral on TikTok or Instagram, and vice versa.

But I’ve learned there are only a few metrics that are super important:

Average percentage viewed

This is probably the most important number for YouTube Shorts (and likely Instagram and TikTok). It’s the metric that tells you how much of your video your viewers watched.

The higher the percentage, the greater your chance of going viral because the algorithm likes to share videos that people watched all the way through. Anything 80%+ is giving yourself a chance to go viral.

The lifetime average percentage viewed across all our videos is 67%. But in the last 28 days, that number is up to 81%.

Stayed to watch vs. swiped away

This measures how many viewers skipped your YouTube Short immediately vs. how many gave it a chance. Basically, it tells you how effective the first few seconds of your video are. How well you are “hooking” your viewer.

Videos that are dead on arrival — with no chance of going viral — usually have a high “swiped away” rate, which leads to a very low average percentage viewed. The first few seconds just aren’t interesting enough to keep people watching.

Our lifetime “stayed to watch” number is 65%. In the last 28 days though, that number is up to 72%.

Average views per viewer

This is more of a channel metric than a video metric.

Average views per viewer tells you how many videos each viewer is watching on your channel. An AVPV of 1 means each viewer is watching 1 video.

Anything over 1 is a good sign. It means people are watching a vid and then are interested enough to either rewatch it, or watch a different video on your channel.

I read somewhere that if you can hit 1.2, that’s a GREAT sign because it means people are binging your videos and the YouTube algorithm loves that. Our channel sits at 1.1 average views per viewer lifetime.

Now that we know why videos go viral, let’s see why ours did.

Not all viral videos are the same.

We had two very different kinds of videos go viral back-to-back. And they drove different outcomes for our YouTube channel. Let’s go through each of them.

Viral Video #1: ‘Girl dinner’

Here are the metrics:

Here are a few things to note. This video is just 18 seconds long. It’s a slice of life video targeting a specific niche (women who live with men), with one clear premise and a list to explore the premise.

Also, it has no dialogue. Why does that matter? I watched a Mr. Beast video where he said that if he wants a video to go viral, he doesn’t include any talking in it. 

The reason is actually super simple: platforms are global and a huge portion of viewers don’t speak english. So if you have a video where they don’t have to understand english to get the video, you’ve opened yourself up to a much larger pool of viewers.

I think this kind of format has a better chance of going viral for one simple reason: it’s shorter and therefore optimizes for average percentage viewed.

“Girl dinner” is 18-seconds long and people watched 97% (!) of the video on average. It’s much easier to get people to watch 18 seconds than 90 seconds. Keeping it short is a simple hack to get more of your video watched.

Also, the video has a “stayed to watch” metric of 80%, meaning the hook was strong for the niche we targeted.

It also took a total of about 5 minutes to shoot and edit. It’s really raw and feels very slice of life.

All that said, Tara and I don’t make many of these videos because they don’t capture our really specific point of view.

Anyone could have made this video. And it’s not a true signal to viewers of the kind of content they can come to expect on our channel. That’s part of the reason it only drove 12 new subscribers.

For those reasons — while this is the easiest way to try and go viral — it’s one we don’t really pursue.

Now… here’s the other kind of video that can go viral:

Viral Video #2: ‘Ultra-basic economy’

Here are the metrics:

First thing to note is that this video runs 1 minute, 21 seconds and still has an average percentage viewed of 80%. It’s also got a “stayed to watch” number of 80%.

That means 1) our opening hook was strong, and 2) people were entertained enough after those first few seconds to watch most of the video.

Now, we’ve made longer sketches before (45-90 seconds long) but this is the only one that went viral. And I think that’s due to a genius suggestion from Tara.

If you watch the video, you’ll notice we put a “cold open” at the very beginning. Basically, we drop the viewer into the third beat of the sketch where there’s maximum mayhem, give them a taste, then take them back to the very beginning.

Without this cold open technique, I don’t think this video would have gone viral. We will definitely be doing this again.

Second, this video is a premise-based video that explores something almost everyone has encountered: flying on the cheap airline and being nickel-and-dimed for every single thing.

It’s a common, everyday situation that plays out between two people in conflict, and then taken to the extreme.

It’s also a lot more produced than “girl dinner.” It’s got costumes, set backgrounds, two characters talking, etc. Instead of taking 5 minutes to shoot and edit, it took 5 hours.

Yet, this is the kind of video that captures our point of view and the kind of comedy we like. It’s a much clearer indicator of what our channel is all about.

I think that’s why it’s driven almost three times the number of subscribers (33) as “girl dinner” (12) with about the same number of views.

It brings you into a fun world you might want to hang out in by subscribing.

And even more importantly, it’s the kind of video Tara and I love to make. And that’s critical because…

You want to be known for the things you love to make.

This may seem obvious but it’s not. People make things all the time only because they think their audience will like it.

Don’t do that. Because if you make something you don’t like for them and it blows up… you’ll be known for work you don’t like.

Make things YOU like. And if it’s authentic to you, it will resonate with other people.

Thanks for reading.

- Thomas

P.S. This is the only newsletter I read regularly to…

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