Shorts expert explains all

Your weekly YouTube education in five minutes

Author

Johnathon Eva
December 09, 2024

What to Watch:

The Secret Strategy Creators Use-
Creator - Modern Millie

Do you make shorts? Or short from content? This is a must watch. Millie breaks down what she calls “Hook Layering.”
Modern Millie focuses more on SEO, Instagram growth, branding for businesses, courses and the like.
However she always produces quality content and this is no exception.

Thumbnail Breakdown

Japan with Nao is a travel vlog style channel. His niche is specifically different oddities about Japan. He has 12k subscribers, yet this video only has 929 views.
Why? Well for starters - I can’t tell that this video is about his main niche. Japan. I could easily confuse this for a food channel. Second, the text blends in with his white t-shirt, and there’s a principle of title balancing that he’s breaking.
Imagine a scale that holds up the following: 11 WEIRD JAPANESE FOODS
and You Might End up Eating.

Creator - Japan with Nao

Try THIS

Creator - Japan with Nao

84k views, what did he do differently?
Well look at how much more the text can be read here. If you do text, that’s fine, but it’s got to be legible.
Now let’s do the scale test for his title:
Why I keep saying
Travel to JAPAN ASAP. It’s a little heavy on one side, but not as bad as the other.
I can tell that this video is about travelling to Japan - y’know the thing that his post is about.
Finally, the biggest reason this video succeeded is the curiosity gap AND a sense of urgency. Why do I need to go now? What’s changing?

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Creator’s we love

Semipro cycling:
This channel has figured out something very important: His core audience. He’s not trying to appeal to people that aren’t into competitive biking. Remember that even with trend jacking you need to keep the core audience in mind.

SemiPro Cycling 11.6k subs - 76 videos

84k views - 12x outlier

98k views - 14x outlier

47k views - 6.7x outlier

I could write a few-pages long essay on the quality of those thumbnails. Just because you have a core audience doesn’t mean they won’t enjoy quality thumbnails and concepts. This is what people mean by the way, when they say “Steal like an artist” - the thumbnail concept on the left is ripped from Alex Hormozi - a creator in the business space. His titles tell you exactly what the video is about, and if you look at the length of each video there is a distinct value proposition = I will tell you how to achieve x in y amount of time. This formula is worth experimenting with if you have any educational content.

Creator News

YouTube creator Ms. Rachel is DOMINATING the creator economy this holiday season

Source - The New York Times

Key Takeaway:

Amazon and Target report that the toy has been flying off their virtual and physical shelves, and Walmart says it is the most successful presale for any toy line in company history.

The takeaway is simple: Keep creating. 2024 wasn’t too late. 2025 is not too late. User generated content is moving past companies reaching out to creators, and is shifting toward creators being THE voice of consumer markets.

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