- It can be exhausting trying to figure out
the YouTube algorithm, right?
But luckily for you,
this expert might have the answer.
- There's one thing I can guarantee
the YouTube algorithm will love in 2024.
- This is Jake Thomas,
and he's already helped countless creators
take their YouTube channels to the next level.
And whenever we collaborate with Jake...
Yeah, the videos get tons of views.
- Watch time, likes, CTR, comment, shares,
all those metrics might change in regards
to how important the YouTube algorithm thinks they are,
but here is one thing that will never change.
- We're going all in to give you the ultimate guide
to what the YouTube algorithm really needs,
which is...
- Picking a good idea that your audience is interested in
and using psychology to present that idea
in a way that makes them wanna click.
- Notebooks, are they ready folks?
We're covering all of this right now.
(fingers snap)
- There are three steps,
and the first is knowing your audience.
I know everybody says that,
but what does it actually mean?
When it comes to writing titles
and coming up with good ideas,
I wanna know five specific things,
and the first thing I wanna know
is what is my audience's biggest desires?
- Yeah, I think we should answer these questions together.
So vidIQ, a YouTube education channel,
the main desires of our audience
is to get more subscribers, get more views,
grow their channels, ultimately monetization.
So what is the main desire of your audience?
This is how Jake identifies it on YouTube channels.
- So we're here on Danny Maude's channel,
and we wanna filter by most popular,
and we can see out of the top eight videos
we have driver swing, driver swing,
and driver swing.
So three of the top eight videos are about driver swing.
This is one example of
if you know what your audience's biggest desires are,
and you can make videos that help them achieve that,
then that can help you grow your channel.
But desires aren't the only thing I wanna know.
I also wanna know what my audience's dreams are.
So here we are on Kaylyn's Coffee Talks and Flows.
So what I'm talking about
knowing my audience's biggest dreams,
it's very similar to desires,
but it's a little bit more deep
and a little bit more towards their end goal.
We have change your life and change your life,
two massive outliers
that are the top two videos for this channel.
So if you know what your audience dreams are
and make videos about their dreams,
that can help you grow your channel.
- What are the biggest dreams of your audience?
When it comes to vidIQ and YouTube education,
I feel our community is dreaming of monetization,
possibly even going full-time at some point,
maybe even one of these.
- Let's switch to kind of the opposite
of dreams and desires.
Let's talk about fears.
I also wanna know what my audience's biggest fears are.
Money habits keeping you poor,
middle class habits keeping you in the rat race.
Things I stopped buying to make more money.
- Creators fear failure.
If they're not seen and if they're not heard,
then nobody's going to watch their videos,
nobody's going to subscribe to their channel.
They can't monetize their channels
or turn their passions into full-time jobs,
and that means they'll have to quit their YouTube channel
and get a real job and do boring stuff.
- If we look at Mr. Beast's channel
and filter these by most popular,
we have, you know, I spent 50 hours buried alive,
solitary confinement, sitting in snakes, right?
Really common fears that people have.
So making content about your audience's biggest fears
can work in almost any industry.
And finally, we have interests where interests
are not so much desire and benefit-based,
but, you know, what are people interested in now?
- And we know one interest
that our audience is absolutely fascinated with,
the YouTube algorithm.
Yeah, check the title of this video again.
- So we have Pox's channel here,
we'll go to popular.
You can see there's a huge pattern here.
Every operator, every operator,
every operator, every operator.
Pox's audience, they really want to know things
about every operator.
And then I also wanna know
what my audience's current beliefs are.
I'll show you what I mean by that
and why it's so important in a second.
- Jake was able to demonstrate there how to find
the desires of very different target audiences
for very different channels with a simple research strategy.
And that is step number two, research.
And right now, Jake's going to show you
nine ways to do this.
It's pretty good, isn't he? Yes.
- So we've already talked about this one
and that is just going to your competitors channels,
filtering their videos by most popular
and seeing what has worked for them.
Now, the biggest pro is that these topics in these videos
have a high likelihood of success.
Your audience and YouTube has already shown you
that this works on YouTube.
However, the big con is that everybody's doing this.
Then there's a step below this,
which is going to your competitors' channels
and then looking for outlier videos.
So let's say we had a basketball channel,
we're here on Jimmy Range's channel
and just kind of scrolling through
and taking note of how many views they get,
roughly, 3 to 2 or 478, that's a big outlier.
Then we go down here and we see 470 and 464
and they're about the same topic.
"Nobody Realized What Just Changed For Bryce James..."
This is about one of LeBron's sons
and then "LeBron VS Bronny James at 18..."
Again, one of his sons.
So clearly, we got two outliers back to back.
And then you can also do the same thing
with your own channel.
You can look, you can filter your videos by most popular.
You can look and try to see
what are the outlier videos.
- What? I didn't realize Jack
was gonna scrutinize our channel.
- However, there is one big problem with this.
So a lot of these videos are old.
- I think what Jake's trying to say here is
that we haven't made anything good recently.
- VidIQ has a great solution for that.
So we'll go here, we'll go to view trending videos,
and this is gonna show us what is working right now
with their views per hour feature.
So this is kind of like a cheat code
to figure out what is happening now.
- Oh, what a relief.
I thought he was gonna lay into our channel
and instead he was just showing a really cool tool
that we have here at vidIQ,
which you can download in a link in the description.
Also, Jake, Light Mode.
Oh, my Eyes.
- Another one of my favorite features
that they have is their competitors tab.
I can see the top videos from my competitors.
These topics are probably going to work well.
You can see, we've got ball striking and ball striking.
So if I have a golf channel,
I'm probably gonna make a video about ball striking.
And the next thing we can do to figure out
what our audience wants is to just ask YouTube.
So I'm gonna pretend that I have a technology channel
and I wanna make a video about laptops.
So I might do best laptops.
Best laptops for students 2023,
for 2023, engineering students.
This is YouTube telling me what my audience wants to watch.
If I had a fitness channel, I might do best ab exercises
for women, men beginners at home with weights,
with dumbbells ranked.
If you want to take it a step further
and go a step out, you can look at Facebook groups.
So here we are,
let's pretend that I had a a dog or a puppy channel
or in the new puppy and dog owners advice and support group.
It has like a couple hundred thousand people in it, I think.
So we can just scroll this group
and see what is, you know,
what are these people talking about?
And this will help you learn your audience even more.
- Give Jasper, give.
You see, I need some help with this dog.
- So this was one interesting thing that I found.
We have this post, "Am I the only one who feels guilty?"
And then this post here, "I'm feeling like a lousy dog mom."
So seeing these back to back posts,
it's like a light bulb going off in my head,
you know, if I have a channel that talks to dog moms,
I would probably address that pain point and that complaint.
(upbeat music)
And you can do the same thing on Reddit.
So if I had a Marvel channel,
I would be on this Reddit probably all day.
Scroll through and seeing what people are talking about,
especially if you're talking about news.
- Did anyone else go cold Turkey
on the Marvel franchise after watching "End Game?"
I was just emotionally spent after that.
- Continuing with the off YouTube channel research,
here we are on Twitter, let's say I had a cooking channel,
we have this Tweet Hunter X
and this automatically sorts tweets by most popular.
Here we have, you know, gut health,
gut health, gut, health, gut...
So if I'm on the cooking space or the health space,
I am talking about gut health a lot.
And then going back to YouTube,
this is one of the best ways to get ideas
is just to see what your audience is saying.
And even if you are not getting that many comments,
you can go to your competitors channels
and see what people commenting on their videos.
Here's a comment, we got eight replies, 146 likes.
He clearly avoided the one star hotels
in actually dangerous locations.
I bet he would've had a very different experience.
So that is an interesting comment.
Then that could be another video idea.
And then earlier I also said that I want to know
what my audience's current beliefs are,
asking ChatGPT is probably the easiest way
that you can do that.
Let's pretend that I had a productivity channel.
I might ask ChatGPT, what are 10 myths
people who are trying to be more productive in belief?
- [Rob] Yeah, I decided
to ask vidIQs AI coach the same question,
but about YouTube creators and myths they believe.
The benefit of the AI coach is that it's connected
to your YouTube channel so it can give you more insights.
And here's the entire list, pause and read if you want.
- I might also ask, what are the common beliefs of people
who are trying to be more productive?
Or I might ask, what are their best practices?
What are their biggest excuses?
Now that you know what your audience is into,
the third step is to turn those ideas
into clickable titles using psychology.
The easiest way to do this is to use the DJ Khaled method.
This is where you remix proven topics
with proven frameworks.
Earlier we were on Larry Cheung's channel
and we saw this massive outlier.
Now this massive outlier could be an outlier
because it was talking about a very hot topic.
However, it could also be because of the psychology
and the way that it was presented.
So we have "Housing Market Predictions:
The 2023 Housing Crash Has Just Begun."
What we could do is remix this framework
with another proven topic for our channel.
So if I'm vidIQ, you know, we found earlier that,
you know, based on their trending videos,
here we have, you know, algorithm
and we've got algorithm, two of their most popular videos
are about the algorithm.
So we could turn this framework
into YouTube algorithm predictions.
The 2024 shift is starting now.
- Oh Jake, this is brilliant, not so fast,
lemme write this down.
- Another example is here is here's another outlier.
This has 478,000 views,
"The Lakers Won't Stop Robbing The NBA..."
It's a great title that's full of drama
and it's also kind of, you know, opens up a loop there
like, you know, what does this mean?
So we'll go back to Nathaniel Bandy's channels.
We'll look at his trending videos
and here we see his top four videos
are all about Super Mario Brothers.
So we could turn, you know,
"The Lakers Won't Stop Robbing The NBA"
into "Super Mario Brothers
won't stop taking advantage of us."
- Oh, how about, "YouTube won't stop making dumb decisions?"
I probably shouldn't make that one, should I?
- And then to make this process even easier,
we've got a shameless plug here
of my newsletter "Creator Hooks,"
so every week I send you five viral video ideas,
kinda break down why they worked
and how you can model them for your own channel.
So the world's cheapest turbo kit on a Camry, you know,
we could rewrite this as world's most expensive lens
on a budget camera or world's most dangerous hike
wearing flip flops.
- And Jake's free weekly newsletter
is linked in the description just below the live book.
- Remixing proven topics and proven frames
is the easiest way to turn your audience's interests
into clickable titles.
But the problem with that method
is that you're never really creating anything new
and you're always relying on other channels
to have success before you.
So one great way to turn ideas into clickable titles
is to apply these 10 ways of building curiosity.
- What? Jake's giving us 10 things this time.
Our editors really got their work card for them.
- The most common way is opening up a loop.
You might also know this as curiosity gap,
where there's a difference between what you know
and what you want to know.
This is also a cliffhanger.
It's essentially starting a story,
but not finishing it
so people feel compelled to click on your video.
So here we are on Nathaniel Bandy's channel.
Let's go to his trending videos.
And you can see just by looking at the thumbnails
that Super Mario Brothers is trending like crazy,
that is a proven topic for his channel.
So if I had a gaming channel,
I might make a video title
"The Best Super Mario Brothers Game Nobody Plays,"
that opens up a loop.
What is that game? What's the game that nobody plays?
- And you know what? I think would be really helpful
to help you generate ideas is a simple task,
fill in the blanks.
So rewrite this title for your channel,
The Best blank that Nobody blanks.
And as an example for vidIQ and YouTube education,
"The Best Subscriber Hacks Nobody Uses."
It's really quite simple
when you have a formula to work of, right?
Here's some more. - So if I had
a basketball channel,
we saw that talking about LeBron and his sons
is a proven topic.
So I might make a video titled
"Bronny James Will Change College Basketball Forever."
That starts a story, but it doesn't finish it.
You know, why is Bronny James
is gonna change basketball forever?
Next up is the easiest way to build curiosity
and that is asking a question.
And so earlier we were in this Facebook group
and we found that a lot of dog moms feel guilty
or feel lousy.
So you could build curiosity by asking a question
like, "Are You Feeling like a Lousy Dog mom?
Do this Every Day."
- [Rob] Jasper,
you really need to stop doing this every day.
- We also have this finance channel
and we found that the housing market crash
is a super hot topic.
So you could ask a question,
"Will the Housing Market Crash in 2024?"
This title also uses another element of curiosity
that we'll talk about soon.
And then we have a classic,
but very effective way to build curiosity.
And that is to reveal a secret,
31 facts about gut health that most doctors won't tell you.
So you kind of feel like you're getting insider information.
You know, most doctors won't tell you
is very secretive language.
Taking things to the extreme.
So using words that ends in est, you know, like the easiest,
the best, the fastest, the slowest.
That's a great way to make things unique.
So this tweet was ready for the easiest meal ever.
So we can make a video titled, you know, maybe
"The Easiest Meal Ever is Delicious and Full of Protein."
So it combines a benefit with some curiosity
because it's the easiest meal ever.
The hardest way to build curiosity,
but it's one of the most effective
and that is being counterintuitive.
So pretty much going against
what your audience thinks is true.
So you could make a title, you know,
"Why More Time Won't Make You More Productive."
They use to-do lists.
So you could make a video titled,
"If You Wanna Be More Productive, Stop Making a To-Do List."
So when you tell 'em to stop doing something
that they are currently doing, that's counterintuitive
and that builds a lot of curiosity.
Now here's a way to build curiosity
that's currently trending like crazy,
but it is incredibly effective.
So we're on Mr. Beast's channel, we're at most popular
and we've got contrast here.
So contrast is pairing opposite things together.
So "$1 vs $1 million Hotel Room."
So using our audience research tips we found earlier,
we know that sometimes dog moms feel guilty.
So one interesting title we could do with this is,
"Why Only the Best Dog Moms Feel Like Lousy Dog Mom?"
And then going back to vidIQs channel,
we know that small YouTubers works well.
So one way to to build curiosity using contrast
would be a title,
"The Biggest Advantage Every Small YouTuber Has."
- I'm not gonna lie, that is a brilliant title.
Keep an eye out for it in a future video.
- And next up for building curiosity
is talking about the future.
We have algorithm hacks,
so talking about the algorithm
is a proven topic for this channel.
So one idea might be,
"Employee Reveals 2024 YouTube Algorithm Secrets."
- And if you think about it,
the title of this very video is doing exactly the same job
because it ain't 2024 when I filmed this or published it.
- Second ago, we talked about,
you know, the housing market predictions
and housing market crash.
And one of the titles I came up with is,
"Will the Hard Housing Market Crash in 2024?"
Next up we have the simplest way to build curiosity
and that is just slapping the word weird or odd,
or strange on your title.
Those are like curiosity power words
and they're super simple to incorporate in your titles.
So here we are, I'm on vidIQ
and I know that ball striking and ball striking works well,
and also drills work well.
So I could make a video titled,
"This Weird Ball Striking Drill Added 30 Yards
to my Golf Swing."
Another hard but really effective way to build curiosity
is to talk about constraints.
So doing things pretty much on hard mode
or doing things even with excuses.
So here we are on Alex Katani's channel, this comment.
So my question is, what did you do for media?
Like what camera did you use?
You know, how did you edit videos?
Is it possible to do this on your own
or leveraged video editor?
So one idea could be, "How I Grew my Instagram
to 100,000 Followers
by Myself Using Only a Phone."
Obviously this is a long title,
so you could use a "by myself" in the thumbnail
or using only "an iPhone" in the thumbnail
or you know, "100,000 followers" in the thumbnail.
So kind of mixing and matching these different elements
of curiosity, putting some of them in the title
and then putting some of them in the thumbnail.
And then we have versus videos to build curiosity.
We know that Super Mario Brothers Wonder
is trending like crazy right now.
So we could make a video titled,
"Super Mario Brothers Wonder VS New Super Mario Brothers."
That's kind of joining the conversation
in the audience's mind.
Also back to Larry Cheung's channel,
"Real Estate vs Stock Market:
Which is a Safer Investment in 2024."
So that has three elements of curiosity,
real estate versus stock market.
So it's, you know, a competition.
We have, you know, asking a question,
which is a safer investment in 2024?
And we also have talking about the future.
Another great way to talk about versus videos
or challenge videos is to do what Mr. Beast did
and to use contrast to build curiosity in your versus video.
So you know, here we have,
you know, $1 versus $500,000 plane ticket.
So it's one, it's contrast,
but it's also that versus and that challenge,
and that competition that builds curiosity.
- Throughout this video, we've talked about golf channels,
finance channels, Mr. Beast, lifestyle, YouTube education,
basketball, gaming, the list goes on.
That is the beauty of these psychological title
and method that can be used by any channel
of any size in any niche.
And if you thought this video was really helpful,
here are all of the other collaborations
we've done with Jake Thomas.