Eric Siu and Neil Patel break down how creators hit 10M+ views on YouTube Shorts. Strong hooks, ruthless editing, mass-appeal topics, and a 34-second sweet spot matter most. They cite Jenny Hoyos, Paddy Galloway, and Blake Rocha as examples of creators who funnel viewers successfully.
Today we're going to talk about the secret to getting 10+ million views on YouTube Shorts. So just FYI for everyone, I'm recording on the go right now. Neil is still on the go because he hasn't found his mic yet. So, you know, we're trying to figure this out, but we're still recording content here. So the secret to getting 10 million+ views on YouTube, I watched this video and Neil, do you remember when we were in Boston, we were having dinner with the CEO of Wistia and then this other guy, Jay Clouse.
Yeah.
And so he did an interview with this This 18-year-old girl, her name is Jenny Hoyos, H-O-Y-O-S, and this girl knows how to get like 10+ million views on her Shorts. So she'll make a video on like $1 boba or like, you know, these fries have been discontinued at McDonald's or like, you know, all these types of videos, right? That like are mass market. So I wanted to share some of the ideas that I found from that video. I found it really insightful. I shared it with my team as well. So hopefully we'll do some better Shorts. Down the road, we've started doing Marketing School Shorts again. We started kind of editing, changing up our editing style. So, Neil, you want— here, I'll start here and then you can react to some of these, okay?
All right, go for it.
All right. So, a couple things. One is sometimes when you make a video like a Shorts, for example, just changing 1 second, like shaving a second off, will cause the video to explode. It's like every single second matters. Like, you can't even waste a second. And so, that's one of the things. And the other thing is, I mean, this kind of goes without saying, but she's exceptional at storytelling. At 18 years old, she's really good at figuring out, okay, it's always like, what's my hook going to be? And then she doesn't even think about the story. Then it's like, what's my hook going to be? What's my closing statement going to be? And then she plays around with the story and then she continually edits over and over. And sometimes it'll take her hours and hours, maybe days to come up with one idea. And it'll take her a long time to shoot. So I'll start with that first.
Yeah, but if you also look at what she's doing to succeed to get to 10 million views, she's doing mass consumer appealing topics that apply to everyone. Not consumer topics that apply for a few people, but literally mass consumer topics that apply to almost everyone. And she's talking about stuff that's somewhat clickbaity, right? She's going against conventional wisdom. The way she's posing questions, doing her headlines, which is causing tons of people to view.
Yep. So that's a big thing, right? So the total addressable market for your idea matters a lot. And so Paddy Galloway, who consults with MrBeast and, you know, he works with all these YouTubers, it is the idea that will carry it at the end of the day. And I've tested this, like I've been doing more long-form podcast interviews and sometimes the topics around like love or the topics around living to 200 years old, Or the topic is that you know sugar will kill you or whatever, right? Like these are much bigger ideas that have a larger TAM again total addressable market, and they might not necessarily convert as well. So you have to take that into mind if that that's what you're trying to do. I would say you know the lesson here is sometimes you might talk stories and then some of your shorts might tie in more with trying to convert someone, right? Another good example of this is I don't know if you're there for this this guy that we had speak at the the last. Leveling Up event, Blake Rocha. He's exceptional at storytelling. And what he does is he makes these Shorts and he makes these TikToks and then he funnels people at the very end of it. He says, hey, if you enjoyed this video, I'm going to show you how to make $10 million on Airbnb or something like that. I'm just making it up. And at the very end of it, it's like, hey, if you enjoyed this video, go hit me on Instagram right now, blah, blah, blah. And then he actually sells courses that way because he gets the top of the funnel and he drives them to Instagram to close them through DM.
Yeah. The other thing too is when you hook people with your intro or your headline, when you're doing Shorts and you want a ton of views. So like if you're talking about sugar, you know, sugar's going to kill X amount of people, or like if you're talking about like why sugar's going to kill or whatever it may be, don't answer it right away. So in your Shorts, drag it on a little bit. The content needs to be interesting still at the beginning, middle, and the end. But you don't want to give the answer to whatever you're answering until the end. That'll keep people engaged throughout the whole short, which will cause you to get way more views versus, you know, if your headline is, will sugar kill? Does sugar kill more than cancer? I'm making this up. And if your answer is yes by 63%, again, I'm making it up. The moment that you end up saying that within the short, people are like, okay, cool, next. Well, if you start talking about Does sugar kill more than cancer? And be like, X amount of people each year die by cancer. And here's how many people actually consume sugar worldwide. And here's the things that sugar causes, diabetes, etc. And you start naming again. I'm not a doctor, so I'm making this stuff up. And then you end up breaking down. If you add all those things up, here's how many people deaths are related to that versus cancer. And you can just be like, look, the difference is is 63%. But if you start doing more storytelling and you drag out the answer versus just saying yes.
So, you know, one other thing that she does is she tries to make all her Shorts around 34 seconds. And she's been very explicit. The algorithm with YouTube versus TikTok is completely different. And she's focused more on YouTube now. She used to be focused more on TikTok. Like she'd get a million views on TikTok. Now she's just more focused on Shorts. And so the— she also made a comment that's interesting to me. She's like, her theory is that her controversial opinion here is retention doesn't matter as much as views.
Yeah.
And most so she's like, people think it does because she's seen some videos that have like 70% retention and some that have 90% retention, but the 70% retention ones just do way better. And so, you know, she does pay attention to the percentage of people that swipe away. So when you look at your YouTube Studio, you can see the percentage of people that swipe away right when they see your video. And so if they swipe away within the first couple milliseconds, if like greater than, you know, 30, 40% of people swipe away, it's just not good enough. You got to be able to hold their attention. And that's the thing, like the hook again, hook story. And then she doesn't really have an offer. She just kind of ends it abruptly, but she's found her sweet spot to be around 34 seconds. So there's only so much we can pack in this 6 minutes over here. I just recommend that you go watch that video. We've had it circulating amongst our editorial team. And that is it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.
Thank you.
