---
title: 'This Video Will Change How You View Social Media'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=_60qFNsymcs'
video_id: '_60qFNsymcs'
date: 2026-08-05
duration_sec: 1783
---

# This Video Will Change How You View Social Media

> Source: [This Video Will Change How You View Social Media](https://youtube.com/watch?v=_60qFNsymcs)

## Summary

The video presents a framework of nine content attributes that the creator claims are responsible for the success of top-performing videos on social media. It breaks these attributes into two categories: those that drive initial attention (shares) and those that hold attention (watch time), providing a checklist for content creation.

### Key Points

- **Nine Content Attributes** [00:15] — The creator claims to have identified nine content attributes that are responsible for all top-performing videos, which can unlock massive social media growth for any business.
- **Two Buckets of Attention** [01:08] — Content success depends on two aspects: getting attention (initial reach) and holding attention (retention). Four attributes drive shares, five drive watch time.
- **Algorithm Incentives** [02:24] — Social media algorithms are feed-based and aim to maximize ad revenue by increasing user minutes. User minutes = number of users × minutes per session.
- **Shares and Watch Time** [04:12] — Shares increase the number of users, while average viewer duration (AVD) increases minutes per session. Both are key metrics for algorithm push.
- **TAM Resonance** [06:21] — Total Addressable Market (TAM) resonance: the size of the audience that would find the content interesting. Larger TAM leads to more shares and algorithm push.
- **Idea Explosivity** [10:02] — Idea explosivity measures how shocking or unusual the idea is. Higher shock score (1-100) increases likelihood of sharing.
- **Emotional Magnitude** [13:27] — Emotional magnitude gauges the intensity of emotional response. Negative emotions like fear and shock are most shareworthy.
- **Novelty** [15:46] — Novelty comes from being first or having a unique take. Being late reduces shareability; adding a novel frame can remix content.
- **Speed to Value** [19:46] — Speed to value: how quickly the video teases the incoming value. Value clarity is key; every second loses 5-10% of viewers.
- **Curiosity Amplitude** [21:19] — Curiosity amplitude: how curious the viewer is on a scale of 1-100. Open loops in the viewer's mind keep them watching.
- **Absorption Rate** [22:55] — Absorption rate: percentage of words per second understood. Use simple words, phrasing, and visuals to increase comprehension.
- **Rehook Rate** [23:49] — Rehook rate: reopening curiosity loops throughout the video. In short-form, rehook at 20-25 seconds; in long-form, every 3-4 minutes.
- **Stickiness** [25:26] — Stickiness: how deeply the topic matters to the viewer. Address the viewer's biggest pain points to increase stickiness.
- **Idea Mining Process** [26:45] — Use a nine-step checklist to analyze outlier videos in your niche, identify gaps, and remix winning ideas for your own content.

### Conclusion

The video provides a comprehensive framework for content creation, emphasizing that selecting and developing the right ideas is crucial. By optimizing for shares and watch time, creators can unlock algorithmic growth and build a sustainable content engine.

## Transcript

there are new content strategies that are outperforming everything else. Because the truth is, we've entered a brand new era for social media. Now, I know this because I spend all day on the cutting edge of content and marketing. I
have a million followers. I've done billions of views. Now, I've studied thousands of the top outlier videos across every niche. And here's what I found that was super surprising. It turns out there are nine content
attributes responsible for all the top performing videos. These are the only getting more views and converting more customers. And once you know to look for these nine things, it will completely change the way you approach the social
media game. So, in this video, I'm going to break all nine of them down. These are the nine most important aspects of content that if you focus on will unlock massive social media growth for any business in any niche. Okay. Okay. Now,
give you a nine item checklist that you can use to gauge if your content ideas before I break down the nine content attributes, let me just explain the two different buckets they fall into. There's really only two aspects that
matter when it comes to generating attention. There's getting it, and then content, the first step is actually getting your videos in front of the right people initially. But that's only half the battle because then in order to
have those videos resonate and get the person to take some action, you got to lock them in and hold that attention for as long as you can. So when you're really two questions you should focus on. First, how do I get my content in
front of more people initially? And then second, once I get it in front of them, how do I hold them on it and get them to watch it for longer? And answering both of these questions is the key to winning on social media. Okay, so why do these
buckets matter? While I mentioned those nine magical content attributes, four of them are responsible for getting the initial attention and the other five are responsible for holding that attention. Now, for the rest of this video, I'm
attributes, give you tactical tips and examples for what they all mean, and then at the end, I'm going to go through my exact process for using this nine-step content checklist to come up with winning content ideas every single
first bucket, getting more attention initially. And what I mean by this is literally how do we get more people to come across our video in the first place? To get more people to see our content initially, all we have to do is
convince the algorithm to push us more on the feed. And I know that sounds stupidly simple because it is. Social media is now completely feed. It's for you all the way down. And that means the only thing that determines if we get in
front of someone is if the algorithm puts us there. Now, this is a blessing and a curse. The curse is that we have to make content the algorithm likes or blessing is that I know exactly how to make the algorithm like us and I'm going
to tell you right now. So to figure out how to get the algorithm to like us and know what type of content to make, we have to understand what the incentives are of the algorithm. Now algorithms only want one thing, more ad revenue.
for their parent platform. That's why they were built. Now, to get more ad revenue, all the algorithm needs is more user minutes. And that's the key metric that users spend scrolling on the platform, the more ads the algorithm can
slot in, the more money the platforms make. So, user minutes is all the are calculated from just two things. It's very simple. A, the number of users on the platform at a given times B, the number of minutes per session that each
user spends on the platform. So, if you have 20,000 users spending 5 minutes per day, that's a 100,000 user minutes per day. And if algorithms are only allowed to slot one ad per 100 user minutes, well, that means they can run a,000 ads
per day. Now, you can see why the algorithm wants that 100,000 user minutes to go up as high as possible cuz the higher that goes, the more ads they can run. So, if we want the algorithm to push our stuff more, all we have to
figure out is how to make our content so that it helps the algorithm get more user minutes. Make sense? Okay. So if user minutes is just those two variables, users and minutes, what type of content increases each of those?
Let's start with number of users. Now, how might our videos help increase the number of users on a platform? Well, the number of users goes up when our content is shared externally and brings a new user onto the platform to create a new
million people on Instagram at a given moment, how does that number go up to a million and one? Well, the main way is that one of those million share a piece of content either through DM or text with somebody not on the platform. They
see a notification, they click it, and then they join. So shares are the biggest reason why number of users goes up. Remember that. Now, the other variable that matters to the algorithm is user minutes per session. Again, this
is basically how many minutes does every user spend on average every time they open the app. Now, these sessions get longer when users are liking and enjoying the things they're watching, obviously. So the metric responsible for
driving longer session times is called watch time or average viewer duration. And this is basically for every video, how long is the average viewer watching it? What is the length in terms of number of seconds or minutes? The longer
metrics the algorithm cares about are shares to bring more people in and average watch time to keep more people in. Those multiplied together equals user minutes. Now, here's where things get tactical and where the nine content
attributes come into play. The algorithms are measuring both shares and user minutes on every single video individually. And when it detects a video that has a ton of shares and a long AVD, it realizes that that means
more user minutes. And so it pushes that video more to more people. Interesting. So that means if we want the algorithm to push us more to get more initial attention, all we need to do is make content that gets more shares. And if we
want to hold that attention for longer, all we need to do is make content with longer AVD. Now, I'll talk about AVD in a second when we break down the five attention. For now, for this first part, we are laser focused on getting more
shares because more shares equals more initial push. So, the question really is this. How do we make sure our content drives maximum shares so that the algorithm pushes it more? And this is where we get to the first four content
attributes. Each of these variables is super important for maximizing the Now, the first content attribute that drives more shares is called TAM resonance. And TAM resonance answers this question. How big is the audience
that would find this video interesting and resonate with the concept? TAM is just a fancy abbreviation for total addressable market. What is the total addressable number of views that this topic might be able to get? Now, the
reason TAM matters is because the algorithm is only going to push videos to profiles that it thinks will like it. even if the shares in AVD are super high. A technical science video is never going to get pushed to someone who likes
watching makeup tutorials because they know it won't resonate. Now, to understand TAM, let's go through a very simple example. Let's say I make sports or hobby content. If I could make a video about fly fishing or a video about
basketball, which one would have the bigger TAM? The answer is basketball. In total, there are about 8 million people that like fly fishing and 30 million people that like basketball. So, basketball has a tam that is 3.75 times
bigger than fly fishing. What that means is that if you were to make a similarly effective video on both, the basketball one would have a 3.7 times bigger TAM and a higher likelihood of getting more shares. Now, this matters because people
only share things they like and are interested in. So, TAM has a huge factor might be able to generate. If you want to get more shares and unlock more free algo push, you want to pick ideas that have large tams. Now, if you're a
set of products and services you sell, you don't want to make videos about unrelated topics just because they have a huge tam. This obviously makes no sense and your core customers will not resonate with that content at all. So,
the sweet spot is to find ways to talk about topics inside your niche while maximizing the highest possible TAM. And here are two of the best tactics for doing that. The first one is to go for a broader and more simplified premise of
your idea because TAM resonance is directly correlated to the percent of saying. So for example, if you make chemistry content, which of these ideas has a simpler premise? A, what would happen if we added a new element to the
periodic table? Or B, let's explore the chemical bonding properties of veence electrons. Which of those has a simpler premise? Even with a chemistry audience, unless they're insanely advanced, it's just easier for more people to wrap
their head around the experiment of adding a new element than veence and have no idea what a veence electron is, that's exactly my point. So, the first way to expand your TAM resonance is to pick topics and premises that are
simpler and broader. So, the surface area of understanding goes up. Now, the staying in the niche is called cult hopping. Call hopping is using a famous celebrity brand or movement to increase
the surface of resonance in what you're talking about. Maybe you do choose to talk about veence electrons. Good luck. But you do it comparing the electrons to music. While fewer people will understand the electrons part, a bigger
percentage may resonate with the DJ and be able to connect the dots on the metaphor. Cold hopping is an extremely effective tool to expand the TAM, but it's also extremely disadvantageous if you do it the wrong way. For example,
forcing a Trump or Elon reference that has nothing to do with the topic doesn't people know those names. So, you don't want to force a cult hop reference to be extremely helpful for broadening the TAM. If you want to increase shares, you
should look for content ideas that by default have a large TAM and therefore will resonate with a lot of people. Bigger TAM equals more shares, which equals more algo push. Okay. The second content attribute that matters for
driving more shares is idea explosivity. And idea explosivity refers to how shocking or unusual the idea or frame is. I like to measure all ideas with a shock score from 1 to 100. The higher the score, the more explosively the
video will be shared. Now, why does shock factor matter so much when it measures the amount of people that could share, idea explicity measures the likelihood that people will share. The truth is, people share when they feel an
emotional pull to do so. And I'll explain more about that in a minute. But emotion is shock. So if you can make someone feel heavy shock, they're likely to share. Now shock is just the difference between current belief and
some new reality that you introduce in the content. Because whenever people are watching something, they come into the session with some baseline expectation on a topic. The bigger the delta between their base expectation and the thing you
shock. And the greater the shock, the higher the likelihood that they share. Now, most people only share one to three pieces of content per day max. Sometimes they only share like one per week. And the things they choose to share are the
things that drive the most emotion. Shock being the strongest. So, your goal is to pick content ideas and frames where you can engineer the most shock shock comes from some non-obvious take or premise that you're able to
introduce. The topic might be ordinary, but the take or lens you apply on top of example, recently I considered making a video about tech enabled smart contacts how I thought about engineering the shock for that video. First, I try to
figure out what the baseline common understanding would be about the topic. In this case, contacts for the eye. And that baseline is very simple. It's contacts help you see better when you put them on. Very simple baseline. So,
if I made a video about clear contacts that had some tech innovation that and a little bit stronger, that would probably have a shock score of somewhere around 10 to 15 out of 100. And even if you're listening to me say that right
want to watch that or share it. It's cuz the explosivity of the idea is just too small group of people in San Francisco all wearing red contacts as part of some score of the idea is starting to go up. Maybe it's at 30 to 40 out of 100. More
shareworthy, but still not maxed out enough to make. But if I made the video about contacts that give people night vision and allow them to still see when their eyes are closed, all of a sudden that shock score goes up to 85 or 90
because that is so far from the base premise of just clear contacts that people see. And it's shocking because the difference is so large. Now, I made context and it got two million views in three days. So, that's an example of how
to take a base idea and engineer more shock through the contrast idea the more explosively the video will be And guys, before I dive into this third one, if you're a business owner and you
down these concepts, you're going to want to join Wavy World. It is a completely free community that I built specifically for entrepreneurs trying to get better with content. We have over 60 free tutorials, guides, trainings, and
there's 30,000 entrepreneurs in there, all helping each other, giving feedback, their content. Like I said, it's completely free. I've got an invite link All right, the third content attribute responsible for driving more shares is
called emotional magnitude. And this is gauging how large of an emotional response on a scale from 1 to 100 does this video idea create. Just like idea explosivity, emotional magnitude is the other factor in gauging how strong a
And the reason this works is super simple. Emotional magnitude measures the intensity of the emotion felt when the viewer watches. And here's why this felt, the higher the likelihood someone
this? People share because they want to get social or professional credit from something funny with a group chat, deep down you're doing it because you want to laughing with you, but also you want the subconscious social credit of being
known as someone who is funny. This is the core driver for why people share. They see something that is cute, funny, shocking, or sad, and they want the others. Emotionally driven content is the easiest way to drive shares because
it triggers a feeling that is easy to communicate. Now, the most shareworthy emotions are shock, fear, anxiety, and sadness. It's all the negative ones. The fear-based and negative emotions typically get a more visceral reaction.
it works in psychology. Now, tactically, the way you drive a bigger emotional response in your content is by the following. A. Showing visuals where the subject in the visuals is showing the emotion you want the viewer to feel. B
using music and sound effects to vibe match the desired emotion. C. Delivering your words in a tone and pacing that match the desired emotion. And D using trigger words, specific words that match the desired emotion. So, for example, if
I wanted to make a piece of content that drove a fear-based emotion, I might do the following. Use tense, fast-paced music with minor chords. Say things future of X. Everyone needs to look for it." Or show visual clips where the
subject, maybe me, maybe someone else, looks visually scared and anxious. When I evaluate content ideas, I am assessing the potential emotional magnitude on a scale of 1 to 100. Specifically, how many people out of 100 can I get to feel
that emotion at a high intensity? I can't guarantee they share, but if I get emotion, a high percentage of them will. Now, the best most shareworthy ideas are typically 80 to 90 out of 100 on this emotional magnitude spectrum. To assess
this, you watch the content and you just feel how strongly you feel the desired content attribute that drives shares is novelty. And this one makes a lot of second. To build on my previous point about sharing to get credit, if you're
the fifth one to share the same funny meme, chances are the recipient is not and they won't give you that subconscious funny guy credit. Because of that, you know this and won't share the meme the fifth time. This means as
the creator trying to get you to share the meme, there is a massive premium on being the first one to make content about a topic. Now, novelty comes from being first or different when covering a story. So, when you're assessing which
to figure out, will I be one of the first to cover this, or do I have a different take or premise that'll make it feel like I'm the first? If you're news-based stuff and you're 5 days late on the news, chances are you're not
many people have already seen that story before. In these cases, if you really want to make that content idea, you want to add a novel frame or premise to make it feel remixed, like you are the first one to cover it in this new way. All
attributes that matter the most for driving shares. And if you drive more shares, the algorithm is just going to push your stuff in front of more viewers for free. In other words, unlocking more of that initial attention. Now, like we
said, this is only half the equation because the other half is actually being it. So, now we're going to walk through the other five content attributes that better. But before we do that, as I was walking through those first four pieces,
you heard me mention the same phrase over and over again. When you're picking your content ideas, you need to look for X. And this should tip you off. The secret to building a content system and an engine that crushes every time is
picking and developing the right ideas to make. All the sauce is an idea selection and development. This is why Mr. Beast on YouTube says ideas are everything. I'm saying ideas for social media are everything. Ideas are the most
important thing. Now, the absolute best way to pick and develop ideas is using This is the AI content tool I've been years to completely automate the social
allows you to track all of the top creators in your niche and then analyze have all their videos in one place, you can sort by outlier score to find the winners. For each of those winners, chances are they were highly optimized
across these nine content variables that I'm talking about. By using sand castles, it makes it way faster to find the winning ideas, get them in one place so that you can analyze and figure out how they won. From there, you can remix
and then script your own version either manually with chat or you could use tried the initial version of Sandcastles, we were just focused on script writing initially, but we just launched the V2 and it covers both ideas
and scripts. We're building the full end-to-end AI content workflow for short form video. And now it is officially the best tool in the space for ideas and scripts. If you want to try it out and see a full breakdown of how to set this
up, go to sandcastle.ai. All right, so far we covered the first four content attributes for triggering shares and getting the algorithm to push you more. initially. Now, we're on the other side of the equation, holding that attention.
impressions. We need the viewer to watch and engage long enough so that we can implant our message so they take some action. And like I said earlier, the best content metric for measuring how well we're holding attention is average
viewer duration. In other words, how long are viewers actually watching our social platform, they actually give you the watch graph. You can see where people are falling off and they show this to you because it's an extremely
you're holding attention. Okay. And there are five more content attributes that we can make sure are in our content to increase that average viewer optimizes for these five things, you will have a lot more success on social
content variable for holding attention is speed to value. And this one is super simple. How fast can you tease the value that is incoming over the rest of the video? If you were to take a stopwatch and start it just as the video begins,
how many seconds does it take for the viewer to understand what the incoming value might be? The more compressed you can make that timeline, the longer the rest of the video. And the reason for this is because value clarity is the
number one reason why viewers hang on and keep watching. If you promise to wait to hear it. Now, every additional second that goes by in a video, you're losing 5 to 10% of your viewers. So, the difference in value clarity coming in
the third versus the 8th second is like 30 to 40% of the viewers. Now, the way you improve speed to value is being extremely deliberate with your hooks. Absolutely zero fluff. The first sentence needs to have context clarity
on what the video is actually about. Ideally, this sentence is as short as possible and can set up the incoming value from there. At the very worst, the second sentence should be the one that teases the value. Now, here's a quick
scripts to make sure you're doing speed to value well. Read your scripts line by line and ask yourself this question after every single line. Is it clear what the value is going to be for the rest of this video? If it's clear after
just one sentence, awesome. You win. If it's clear after two sentences, that'll work as well. Anything longer than two sentences is too long. Cut the fluff and second content variable responsible for holding a viewer longer is curiosity
curious can you make the viewer on a scale of 1 to 100. Curiosity is the what's actually happening in the viewer subconscious is that they're getting fixated on some question in their brain. That open question is like a loop in
their head that they need to close. Now, typically they will stay on the video as open loop and they don't get distracted by something else. Now, this open question in their brain can either be stated directly by you or it can be
implied by some facts that you share. Either way, it will create the opening Now, the amplitude, the size of that curiosity comes from how badly they want the answer to that question. The closer the question is to a pain point they're
to be willing to wait for the answer. pop in a viewer's head, but it's kind of trivial or surface level, well, then fragile. Any small distraction might be able to pull them away. But on the other
related to the pain point they're experiencing most, they're going to sit going to be able to hold that attention. So, I found the easiest way to ratchet up that curiosity amplitude is to figure out what pain points your ideal viewer
avatar has and then intentionally place a rhetorical question directly into in a lot of my videos, I say this, if you're trying to grow on social media, should be on your mind. And then I'll say the question. I'm doing this
specifically because I'm trying to implant that question in your mind will hold you for the longest. All right, the third content variable which helps increase average viewer duration is absorption rate. And specifically,
this maps to the percentage of words per second that are being understood by the viewer. The truth is, you cannot implant an idea or question in someone's mind you're saying. The more they understand you, the better chance you have of
getting that idea to hold. Absorption and curiosity go hand in hand. It's hard only comprehending half the words you're saying. Here are a couple quick tactics for how to increase absorption rate. First, use the simplest words possible.
Second, use the simplest phrasing possible with the fewest possible words. This puts less load on the brain when they're listening to a sentence. Third, pair your words with visuals to give the viewer two chances to understand what
thousand words. You got to give them some. All right. The fourth content variable that maps to AVD is called rehook rate. A rehook is a second curiosity loop being reopened in the viewer's brain at some point throughout
the video. In short form videos, this happens anywhere around the 20 to 25 second mark. In YouTube videos, this typically happens every 3 or 4 minutes. Remember when I said that curiosity loops are vital to get the viewer to
stay locked in? Well, it turns out unless you absolutely nail that most important question in the viewer's mind, there's a half-life on their attention. get distracted and bounce. If you open a curiosity loop but then take 55 seconds
unless you nailed that question, they're not going to be paying attention by the attention is to create many open and close loops throughout the same video. curiosity loop in the hook and then around 20 to 25 seconds, I'll either
close that loop or I'll jump to a new loop and restart the process. If you're able to do this successfully, you basically buy yourself another 25 continue doing this over and over and over in the video, it's kind of like
hitting the booster in the video game before your car runs out of gas. Now, to analyze the idea holistically and figure out what the best open loop questions might be. Use the best one first as the initial hook for the video and then use
the second best one 20 to 25 seconds in. Typically, contrasting words like but or however are great ways to transition and hop from one to the other. So you might do something to close that first loop and then say some transitional sentence
problem is actually this. You're hopping from one to the other. Okay. The last content variable that matters for retention is called stickiness. And this one goes handinhand with curiosity magnitude. Stickiness is a measure for
how deeply the topic or premise actually matters for this particular viewer. relevance. If you've nailed their biggest pain point in that curiosity going to hold and watch the entire video. But if they aren't really facing
chances are the video is not going to be very sticky and they're going to bounce. Again, this bucket of five variables was all about figuring out how to hold way to increase stickiness, and honestly, most of these things, is to
identify the most important pain points for the viewer and stick to those when you make content topics. Those topics will have embedded stickiness and allow you to just hold them longer by default. Okay, so those were the five most
important content attributes for holding viewer attention once you get it initially. And as a recap, they were speed to value, curiosity amplitude, absorption rate, rehook rate, and stickiness. Now remember, these matter a
ton because if we can make content that gets our viewer to watch for longer, that will increase the AVD, which increases user minutes, which makes the the algorithm pushes our stuff more, it gives us more chances to get more shares
and more AVD. Everything is connected together in this viral loop. Again, I The way you actually solve for these nine things and figure out how to incorporate them into your content is identifying the winning outlier videos
in your space and how they are incorporating these nine things in their content. So, this is exactly what I do with my team. We open up Sandcastles. We create the channel list with all the top creators in our niche and we study their
outlier videos. We open the videos tab. We look at the best performing videos from the last 1 or 3 months and then we run through this nine-step checklist to gut check how good or bad each execution was. So, we open an idea and we say,
"Okay, for this idea, why did it win? Did it have a massive TAM? Did it have a high degree of idea explosivity? Did it have high emotional resonance? Was it novel given the take or timing? And then we look at the execution. Was the value
teased quick enough? How curiosityinducing was the initial hook? How well were we absorbing the words and concepts? Did they rehook us well and when? And did this idea feel sticky to us as the core viewer? We're running
that n-step checklist every time as a filter that we run every idea through. part. We're identifying white space and potential gaps in the execution. So amazing job at driving shock and it was novel as the first one covering it, but
the execution around the curiosity and the absorption rate were just really low. Now we know the video still did well, but what if we take what they did well, improve on the gaps, and remake it for oursel? Will that work better? The
answer is almost always yes. This process is called idea mining and development. And if you're not doing it, you're leaving a ton of potential growth on the table. This is what all the top creators and media brands are doing.
and how I approach that ninestep checklist, everything's starting to make sense for how you should run that as a filter for your content ideas. And remember, the only way to do that is to get all the best performers from other
people in your space in one place. And Sand Castles is the only way to do that today. All right, guys. That is all I've got for this video. As a recap, we the nine most important content attributes for making sure we're getting
and holding attention. Now, as a recap of the nine, on the getting attention side, we covered TAM, idea, explosivity, emotional resonance, and novelty. And on the holding side, we covered speed to value, curiosity, magnitude, absorption
rate, rehook rate, and stickiness. Now, again, these matter because these are the most important attributes at driving shares, and longer AVD. And those are drivers for the algorithm to push videos. As always guys, I'm trying my
best to make these absolute banger videos to just give you the non-obvious covering. If you like this stuff, the absolute best way you can support me is like I mentioned earlier, I created a completely free community for business
owners called Wavy World. There's 30,000 entrepreneurs in there, 60 free guides and trainings. It's completely free. I've got an invite link below. There's about getting better with content. All right, guys. That's it for this one.
right, guys. That's it for this one. We'll see you on the next video. Peace.