4:19
Neil Patel and Eric Siu break down YouTube success in 2025: target big AI topics, spend serious time on thumbnails and editing, and load 10-minute videos with multiple hooks to keep people watching. Retention beats everything else.
Neil Patel and Eric Siu break down YouTube success in 2025: target big AI topics, spend serious time on thumbnails and editing, and load 10-minute videos with multiple hooks to keep people watching. Retention beats everything else.
How to win at YouTube in 2025. What do you think is the number one strategy?
I think we should just talk about what we're doing, which we kind of have been. My take on it is, one, if you want to get a lot of views, we're going for larger TAM ideas, which is funny because I've created a ton of AI content in the last couple of weeks. So that's all coming, right? And whatever I tied in with AI and marketing, which is my specialty or business, it just works well. And also the vlog. I enjoy doing the vlog because people leave comments and I think it's building affinity from a community standpoint. And that's not hard for me to do. I'm spending a lot more time on the ideas. You are as well. And our team is spending a lot more time on the editing. The packaging piece, I kind of just used to defer it out to my team. Now I'm like, I spend a lot more time on the packaging for the thumbnail and the headline, and I come up with 3 different concepts and they might come up with different ones, but we're a lot more on top of it and we're taking a lot more seriously. So even though we do Shorts and things like that, even though we do this podcast, I'm more excited about the long-form stuff. So.
Yeah. What I found with YouTube is It's all about retention, which is obvious, but what people focus on is the hook for the video. What they don't focus on is continually creating hooks throughout the content. So if you have a 10-minute video—
Open loops.
Yeah. How, how can you end up creating a hook 4 or 5 times or have 4 or 5 different hooks more so, so then every few minutes you're keeping them engaged because they know there's more and more coming.
I'll give them an example of your video real quick. Yeah. So Neil had this one, this video on AI agents. And so let's say on the first part he's talking about, oh, you really need to use ChatGPT for this. But wait till the next one. The next one's just going to blow your mind, right? And so that's an open loop where you just keep inserting open loops. And so when you create a script now, even if you're using ChatGPT to help you with scripts, ask it to put in open loops for each section. But continue.
Yeah. The next thing that you really need to think about when you're creating this content is how can you actually keep people engaged through the visuals? So one thing that we've been testing to see if it helps with retention is when we're editing, in a lot of our videos like Eric and I produce, we're naturally educating so There's multiple tips like tip 1, 2, 3. But at the beginning of the video, we may not label it 10 ways to do X, Y, and Z or 3 ways to do X, Y, and Z. But on the screen when you're giving tips, even if it's just for a specific section, like you're talking about SEO and you could be like, A, you need to do this and there's a B and a C. On the screen, show A, B, and C and D and whatever it may be, but blur out B, C, and D.
What is it?
Until you get to it. And what we've seen You know, we're still testing it, but we're seeing slight improvement rates on video retention. So we're trying to do a lot of things with just editing to just keep people around longer. So then that way, it increases our overall views.
Yeah. So I think if we were to simplify it at a high level, one, we're more focused on it. And 2, because we're more focused on it, we're spending more time optimizing it. And so really, it just comes down to focus at the end of the day. Because if you look at both of our YouTube channels, back in the day, a couple years ago, whatever, you can like fart and a video gets 500,000 views, right? Same thing with me too. Like, I'm like, man, some of my career, my marketing career, is at 400,000 views. This one over here, 200,000 views or so.
Yeah.
It was, it was also easier back then.
Very much easier.
Yeah. All right. So I wanted to take a second to tell you about my ad agency, Single Grain. We're a performance digital marketing agency and we focus primarily on working with B2B companies and e-commerce. So performance marketing, that's SEO, that's paid media, that's CRO, that's ad creative. And there are a whole host of other things that we're doing with AI that's really cool. You can go to Singlegrain.com to learn more. Again, that's singlegrain.com to learn more, and we'll see you on the other side.
Also with YouTube, you need focus. If you're like, we're in marketing, we tend to try to create content around what we're known for. You won't see me go create content around, I don't know, Girl Scout cookies. It comes to top of mind because you hooked me up with some.
I was going to bring some today.
I appreciate it. Did you see the latest report? I think it was like on Fox or something like that. Someone sent it to me.
What?
On all the cancerous ingredients in Girl Scout cookies?
Oh no, I didn't. I guess I won't be giving them to you.
No, but Eric, when he gave them to me, was very thoughtful and kind for my kids. He didn't give them to me with a bad intention.
That's it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe. It helps us grow. And goodbye.
