Ali Abdaal's Scriptwriter: 1 Common Retention Mistake

so problem YouTubers have often smaller YouTubers is keeping viewers watching their videos and we can learn a lot currently from retention gratitis is something you do a lot and you've got some grass with us today that you typically see let's look through some of these potential graphs and see what they tell you about the video and how these videos can be improved if that's okay of course yeah there are patterns that you can kind of observe and some of them are easier to pick apart than others um and this one that we're looking at on screen now is is one of the most common ones and one of the ones that you can say with some certainty what the issue is um so again to describe the graph essentially if you're seeing this kind of spiky spikiness that we saw uh with the graph we were looking at just now but particularly when the spikes line up with these dotted gray lines which are essentially the the video chapters okay is it like the spike indicates yes yeah okay um these are all moments that your viewers are skipping ahead to uh and it essentially indicates that they don't feel the need to fully stick around in between each of these points and they're regularly sipping ahead to get more information in more quickly um this could be for a couple of reasons it could be that you're taking too long to deliver the information but uh a lot of the time and this is particularly an issue with listical videos it's that the tendency is to assume you should deliver the information as you would in a conversation where you make the point and then you start explaining the point um the issue with this is that it gives the viewer complete permission to skip ahead particularly when the point is very easily understood in a matter of seconds very quantitative now laboring this point for exactly the same reason uh is that in a sentence if I've understood what the point on the listicle is or whatever the point you just made is you don't need to spend two minutes discussing it so the way that I encourage people to fix this um and it tends to work fairly well and we can talk about it as an example that is below this graph where I kind of implemented that in uh Creator Boost video cool yes yeah um but you just swap the information around uh and so you can do that in a number of ways it could be that you uh kind of hint at what the point is and then spend a little bit of time giving some context and then explaining what you're talking about so that's kind of delaying the payoff essentially or in the style of creative Booth film Booth you can do a kind of a metaphor or something that doesn't make it quite clear what it is that we're about to build up to but it's something that is uh visually engaging or mentally stimulating or something that gets you watching without yet giving you the payoff and again It's tricky because you don't want to you're not trying to play with people in the way that you're uh just saying I'm not going to tell you what this information is right until the very end because people will get bored with that and they will click away but it really can be as simple as where you start by giving what the point is literally just move that sentence to the end of that segment of the video and see if it still flows and if it does still flow that's going to be probably a more efficient way of of doing it yeah so when people typically start a chapter and they know it instantly like they find out instantly what that touches about and the information that's going to be delivered in that chapter they skip ahead because they've got no more reason to to watch that chapter so what you're saying is find a way to not make it immediately obvious what information the chapter is going to provide by rearranging the flow information but also still make it interesting enough to keep people watching and not lose interest in the whole video is that right yeah exactly okay that's that's really interesting I've seen this done a lot with um I follow a YouTube channel called game ranks and they do a lot of listening videos like 10 best games of 2023 so far and but instead of naming their chapters they'll just have they'll call the chapter number one number two number three yeah you can't visually see what the chapter is about and uh and then I've also seen some credits I think Ali does this as well sometimes they use they have kind of like vague ambiguous names for their chapters so like rather than like do this it'll be um the the 3020 rule but we won't know what that all is they have to watch the chapter to understand what it is um yeah so yeah yeah pretty much that's kind of it's that's like yeah that's kind of the the second half of it is making sure once you've done the work on the script you don't and just give it away in the title cards anyway but I was Consulting with or doing doing some Consulting with um Ali's team fairly recently and despite the fact they do often do well at not giving away what it is from the chapter alone they will sometimes still start the segment by saying the 30 20 rule is and then they'll talk about it for a minute and it's like you the mistake is still mistake but you know what I mean it's still there um so it's partly in not giving away in the chapter but also in how you construct the the script um it's like a two-part operation so there's an art form to doing awry and you house Edge from film Booth from creative put this video together and you believe this video is like uh good example of how to do it correctly um so yeah the thing first initially I mean this is maybe a slightly separate point but the very first thing um we're doing with this video is uh we're starting out by asking the audience a direct question um it's not yet clear what we're talking about in relation to the video but it's immediately something that is going to engage the viewer and uh get them actively paying attention actively participating if you like in the video um so yeah I'll just we'll play it and so great yeah let's watch that and see this in action these numbers on screen this is the revenue generated in one month but it's three different YouTubers that I know and these are their subscriber counts which I'm going to put in a random order for you now I want you to guess which channel is making which amount of money and then I'm going to give you two more seconds before I reveal the answer surprised one of the main reasons I started this channel because I wanted it okay um so what did we see there so George what was that an example of yeah so um like I said beforehand initially it's asking the audience a direct question it's getting them involved in the video making them a participant um there are also a lot of kind of editing choices that the guys made on the other end so immediately it's like a sort of little pop sound effect uh as soon as the question happens there was also Ed said a very deliberate choice to leave the uh answer on screen for not very much time uh because that would again make people sort of like pause check it out go back uh almost like you know re-reviewing the information that they've just taken in um but the main point of this intro is that we're creating a puzzle for the viewer which is is not yet clear why we're talking about it at all we haven't given any context to this but it's something that is interesting for YouTubers because it's like oh it's money and it's all sub counts and oh it's probably not going to be obvious it's not going to be the smallest amount of money is made by the smallest sub count but but if not then how is it that's along with maybe very few subscribers is making loads of money in uh so all these questions open so many curiosity gaps uh and then again we show them the answer but we don't explain why that is and still we don't yet have context for what the video is going to be but it's a very kind of engaging uh start the video essentially um so again that's interesting oh sorry Greg gone I was just going to say wow that's so interesting and I'm sure a lot of smaller YouTubers would be surprised that there's creators out there thinking about this stuff in this much detail um so yeah it's great to have you here and give us a little Glimpse behind the curtain all this works but that was yeah I should say that that's kind of almost a separate point but then the as for what we were discussing just before about reversing the order of information I think if you watch this in the next bit up to the first payoff as it were the first kind of reveal um you might see a bit more about what I was talking about with with reversing that information um so if you probably play till about 40 seconds uh you'll as it'll it'll say myth one um whatever it says so yeah cool you you tell me when to start we'll jump in now and just give me the heads up and stop surprised one of the main reasons I started this channel because I wanted to open people's eyes to just how much business savvy YouTube channels are making without having millions of subscribers or millions of views because the reality is most of the YouTubers I talk to make 10 times less than they desire because their beliefs about YouTube monetization are all wrong so in this video I'm going to debunk this buddy so you can start earning what you deserve faster so how are those small channels done it well it's because they don't Focus all their energy on getting more views but instead better marketing and better systems that help generate revenue from the views they do get and that's the first myth you need to forget about on YouTube views does not equal more money I mean sure there are big entertainment channels get okay that was it cool yeah so what essentially we're doing there is once we get past that kind of little game at the start we're then starting to address more directly audience objections audience uh preconceptions if you will so immediately we're saying to back up that little game we did at the start YouTubers that make the most money don't necessarily have the most views oh interesting why would that be um and the reason for that is now we widen the Curiosity out a lot more because the beliefs that a lot of YouTubers have around monetization are all wrong and so immediately I'm thinking right I don't know what these things are whatever my preconceived beliefs are about YouTube monetization I'm in this moment uncertain if they are right or wrong because I'm being told that they could well be wrong um and then I'm shown the exact transformation that I'm going to get by the end of the video it's going to be whatever those preconceived notions I have they're going to be debunked or I'm going to feel enlightened so that I can more effectively monetize my YouTube channel and once we've kind of gone through all of that stuff we then reveal that this myth the first myth that we're talking about is more views does not equal more money and that's nearly a minute in before we've had that first little payoff whereas what I think a lot of people would do would be in this video we're going to debunk five myths about YouTube or YouTube monetization starting with Miss number one more views does not equal more money and then we talk about it for a minute and I've got it I I understand like I don't need I don't need you to tell me for a minute why that is the case I can sort of start to Intuit it um so that's just an example of how simply reversing that order of information can do wonders for retention yeah that second example you gave of the typical YouTuber yeah you're skipping aren't you as soon as that chapter starts yeah you know what the chapters about you on to the next chapter then the next one yeah so the overall watch time for the video is way lower yeah so interesting so it sounds like you're just playing with a delicate balance of building curiosity and it's kind of like establishing payoff but delaying the reveal uh is that funny yeah yeah it is that but and this is it can sound almost a little bit uh yeah like gimmicky or uh almost a bit disingenuous to withhold that information but I think honestly it creates a more enjoyable experience for the viewer um because I was working uh very briefly with um she runs a graphic design Channel I don't actually want me to mention her name so I won't mention her name um but uh she actually taught me something really interesting when I was looking through her kind of scripting template um she had these kind of notes on like what we want to achieve in export the part of the video and what we want to achieve here and what we want to achieve here and the phrase she used was we want the viewer to feel smart and the issue with giving away that information super super fast is that the viewer gets it and they get bored and they move on whereas when we're actively taking time to engage their brain in a way that doesn't give away all the answers it gradually gives people the chance to work out what it is that we're going to be talking about and makes them feel smarter when they start to figure it out as you build towards the reveal rather than giving all that information away and making them think well I got it I'm skipping um so it's a more rewarding experience for you and them I suppose I suppose that makes them more active viewers they're constantly figuring things out for themselves and having a closer engagement with the video throughout it yeah exactly exactly

Channel: Greg Preece

Views: 6,839

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Id: RUfEyi0kbPU

Length: 12min 31sec (751 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 29 2023