5 Ways to Get Viral Video Ideas — Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:01] YouTube videos if you are not obsessing religiously over this one thing. That one thing is video ideas because if your video ideas are bad, literally nothing else that we are going to cover today matters at all. If your ideas are bad, I

[00:13] turd. Doesn't matter what your thumbnail is, your title is going to be bad. No cuz they're not going to click on your video. Your editing, no one's going to kind of camera you have if no one's even watching your video, right? It's the

[00:26] difference between, I'll give a broad example, I went on a date with three girls versus I went on a date with 10,000 women, right? Obviously, one is going to fuel the rest of the production process extremely heavily. The good

[00:38] I'm going to soften the blow a little bit. Banger video ideas that will make you go viral in your niche and attract your target demographic and ICP are actually just sitting so obviously right in front of you, and my goal today is to

[00:52] make sure that you guys all can figure out how to get them. Now, before we get myself, give you some background so that you guys know I'm actually giving you Nate. I've been on YouTube for the last 6 going on 7 years. I've generated over

[01:06] 100 million views in pretty much every single niche, worked with all of these biggest streamer in the world, Clavicular. I've blown up my own channels as well. I started actually, again, around like 6 or 7 years ago. I

[01:20] started making game dev videos. I grew a channel in a pretty small niche to 30,000 subscribers. Really taught me how to grow on YouTube, which led to me editing for the biggest creators and consulting in my small niche. This

[01:33] YouTube channel with everything I had learned, and I was able to blow it up. See that video with the very first video and get it monetized almost instantly with everything I had learned. These four videos here are four of the first

[01:46] channel, and I was able to grow it to around 60,000 subs in an incredibly saturated and small niche in just a year. This led me to start an agency. videos that we've worked on. That video for Alicia is in an incredibly small

[02:00] her most viewed video to this day. Eventually, I took on a position at a flagship YouTube agency called Dragonfruit. They managed some of the platform. I'm sure there's some familiar

[02:13] Mark Manson. The biggest channel I worked on there was Neil Patel owning his strategy. I then took on a role at a large YouTube SaaS and strategy agency of you. You guys actually use One of Ten. I'm going to use One of Ten in this

[02:28] presentation. And now I run Views, a flagship YouTube agency. I also do things like Instagram, TikTok, X. Basically, I've used everything that YouTube to get people like you results very, very quickly. Translate that to

[02:42] other social media platforms as well, working with the top brands, businesses, into things, I want to give you guys a very, very helpful reframe. So, there's you're a business owner, you need to go niche. I'm actually going to reframe

[02:55] this and tell you that niche does not win. A lot of people think, I'm a real estate developer. I'm a SEO coach, right? It doesn't really matter. So, I'm going to go for only my target demographic with my YouTube content. I'm

[03:07] get all these random people, these like 18-year-olds that are broke, these people in other countries, right? I want like 35-year-old American real estate right? Very, very niche. The reason this

[03:19] guys some insight into how the YouTube algorithm works. YouTube is incentivized to push out content that generates lots of watch time, which then leads to lots of viewers watching ads, which makes YouTube money. So, if you post a video

[03:33] that has 100 view potential because it's very, very niche, YouTube is not going your ICP. They're going to recommend it cuz you're a small channel. They have no the dark. They're going to show it to a small group of people, and no matter how

[03:48] people are just not going to click on it, right? Again, nothing matters if your idea is not fully optimized. So, it's going to get shown to all these is, they're not going to click on your video. So, you might get like two people

[04:00] in your ICP. Versus the reframe here, if you go for maximum virality, become the top 1% brand in your niche. This is the philosophy that I give to every single channel that I work with. If you go for the largest total addressable market

[04:14] these random people, but look at this, you actually get everybody in your ICP. estate developers out there, 10,000 people interested in digital marketing, 10,000 people interested in AI automations, if you go for maximum

[04:28] virality within your niche, within that target demographic, you will get everybody. And not only this, having a viral-first strategy unlocks everything whole ICP, but if you are the number one brand in your niche, Brian brought up

[04:41] Russell Brunson, Alex Hormozi, Simon Sinek, you get more than just the people eyeballs. If you're the number one brand in your niche, clients will chase you. You no longer have to look for these clients, they will come to you. Anytime

[04:53] someone says real estate, anytime someone says telephone pole, boring doesn't matter, your name, can you imagine, is going to be the first name wants a referral, anytime someone brings up your industry, you are going to be

[05:07] that guy. I literally had a call with a guy two days ago who said he watched one of my videos, my full 1-hour course, three times through. I was so ready to pitch myself, and this guy was like pitch pitching himself to me, chasing

[05:20] going mega niche, where your channel is very small, having a big channel scale. You no longer have to pitch yourself, clients will pitch themselves to you. And inevitably, you will make more money than anybody else with a

[05:34] to go over the only five methods that you need to come up with viral video ideas, starting with the first one here, the burner account method. Now, this is a bit of a a gate-kept method in the YouTube strategy space, so I almost

[05:47] you're going to do is you're going to make a brand new YouTube channel with no Research. On this account, you're going to search things related to your niche. So again, if it's real estate, look up real estate. If it's SEO, look up SEO,

[06:00] doesn't really matter, right? You're going to find around 10 of the most popping channels in your niche that are currently posting videos and getting if they have hundreds of thousands, millions of subscribers. You're going to

[06:13] do this, you're going to find around seven of their top videos from the last in a new tab and you're going to let those play for like 30 or 60 seconds on as many times as you want. And what you are doing now, you are actually tricking

[06:28] the YouTube algorithm into turning you into your first viewer. See, the way the subscribers, very little for YouTube to go off of, they are actually going to recommend your videos to people that have watched what they think are lots of

[06:41] similar videos to your content. So, when I did this for the make money niche, right? There's no video in here that is optimized for 1,000 views. I think pretty much seven of these eight videos have over 100,000 views. Some of these

[06:54] even have multiple millions of views. So, with this in mind, if you are a initially and you're thinking I want to go niche, your first viewer does not see the niche video. This is why it is of the utmost importance that we optimize

[07:07] for a viral first strategy. Now, so why is this useful to us? Well, I'll tell going to do, you're going to download this free extension here. Again, not sponsored, but a great extension, the oneof10.com browser extension. And what

[07:19] this does is it allows us to see what we call outliers. So, an outlier is simply a video that has over performed on a channel by a certain multiple. It's extremely foundational to coming up with viral video ideas. So, this channel here

[07:32] averages around 600 views per video. This video got 30,000 views. That is a 50x outlier. The reason we study outliers, and the oneof10 extension will give us this, show us the outlier multiple on our homepage. The reason we

[07:44] study these is because outliers are a signal that a video idea is a breakout replicate. But one outlier doesn't really tell us enough. What you're going burner account, you're going to download that extension, and you're just going to

[07:57] scroll through and constantly refresh, and just screenshot any type of video that is an outlier that you could plausibly make. Think extremely loosely that you could plausibly make this video. So for example, this video here,

[08:09] I use Claude daily basis. I would not consider myself an AI expert, but I'm video. I'm going to tell you why. At the forefront of this strategy, we always go concept first, execution second. Usually a crazy reframe, especially for business

[08:23] want to make videos that I feel very strongly about. I want to make videos just like Brian said, it doesn't work. If you want to make videos you like, results, and you want to go viral, and you want to make money, you need to do

[08:37] this. Concept first, execution second. Right? We're not thinking I can't make this video. I'm looking at that video and saying this went viral, could I make Claude on a daily basis. I've used ChatGPT, I've used Descript. So if I can

[08:51] right? Cuz the reality is good content does not go viral. That is an insane statement. Good content does not go viral. Viral formats go viral. Concept is, figure out how to execute on it later. You guys are all smart enough,

[09:07] you can execute on the vast majority of concepts. The only exception is if something is a genuine brand risk. Like for example, if you are like so anti-AI, on how to use AI. Otherwise, good content does not go viral, concept

[09:22] first, execution second. >> Does it make sense to make content about You're just giving them free clout, cuz the goal is to be viral. So you're talking about your competitors, you're just giving them free eyeballs.

[09:37] >> So, when you're looking at outliers, do you look within a year, or 6 months, 3 starting your channel? >> I'm about to show you that. This is a tool called One of 10. It's an an outlet of the extension. It's basically going

[09:49] to allow us to do deeper research on outliers to really validate a viral outlier, it really doesn't mean anything. Like it could honestly just be viral, or there could be another reason, or they could have a big Instagram

[10:04] audience. Like we need to basically eliminate all doubt that an outlier that we are using for this strategy is going to be a fluke. So, the way we do this is recognition is huge when you are doing viral video ideation. So, when I did

[10:17] video, one of the fastest growing entrepreneur channels on the whole platform, Greg Life, "How I Built a Billion-Dollar Brand in My 20s." Right? The way I would validate this concept is I would find at least four other outlier

[10:30] I would find at least four other outlier videos on a very similar subject within outlier. But notice how all of these videos share the exact same format. So, that's how I built a billion-dollar brand in my 20s, basically how I made x

[10:43] amount of money at x age. How I made a billion dollars at 30. How I made a million dollars at 22. How I made 10 million dollars 22. So, the way we're three different filters in One of 10, at least a 2x outlier. The reason it's 2x

[10:57] is because if it's 1.1x, 1.2x, we're going to do minimum 50,000 views. Again, we're optimizing for a viral first strategy. It can depend of course. Like I would probably set this to like 200k because the niche gets more views. But

[11:12] for anyone in this room. And then you also want to look at only the last 6 months. The reason is the video was an outlier last year, or 2 years ago, or 3 years ago, YouTube moves so fast. I

[11:25] algorithm changes. New creators are emerging every single day. We need to look at the last 6 months so that we know that we are not just getting data, but we're getting relevant data that actually tells a story that we can rely

[11:37] make. So, here's an example. I did this cuz this was the initial outlier that I literally searched the exact title and I found all these other videos on the same subject with one of 10, right? The goal is to find at least four other outlier

[11:52] videos that are at least a 2x outlier within the last 6 months that follow the same format, all right? Get creative. These videos are the same video. They you think about it, how I made X money at X age, how I made X money from sales

[12:06] at X age. You can look up how I made a dollar sign, right? That'll give you a like you're searching the web, whatever. Be very, very broad. Try and find those four outliers. Once you do that, you have yourself a viral video idea that

[12:19] make it very specific to you at the end of this presentation, but for now we're going to move on to method two. This method is steal viral formats from niches that are not yours. This is one of the best ways to innovate. I'm going

[12:31] a channel called Jubilee. One progressive versus 20 far-right conservatives. Same format as like 20 criminals debate one cop, 20 atheists debate one priest, right? It's basically 20 people debate one guy that's really

[12:45] smart or very educated that disagrees with them. This format is mega viral. This has been blowing up for Jubilee for years now. You can see 16 million views. my niche. This guy, Brett Scales, he is an entrepreneur. He is in my niche. What

[12:58] he did is he saw this format pop off in another niche time and time again for more than just Jubilee and he brought it over to his niche. We're not looking at the title, we're looking at the format. The format here is 20 people that

[13:11] disagree with one person who's educated. Brett did the same thing. 20 9-to-5 workers, people that disagree with one dude that's very educated and can back well, this is actually his most viewed video on his entire channel. That is

[13:24] crazy. His most viewed video, 1.6 million people, now see this guy, now see that he's really smart. He's framing himself in a position of authority, and his other videos, and his channel was already like decently big, explodes

[13:38] after this. On top of this, once this format did good for him, everyone then, all these other guys, did method one, and actually just copied the format for proof that you do not need new concepts. If you're trying to, just, you know, get

[13:51] wasting your time. You're taking a shot in the dark. Why would you take a shot in front of you, whether they're in your niche or, like this method, they're format's going crazy. Now, there's three ways that you can figure out other

[14:05] niches. The first is actually just more burner accounts. Now, this is a lot of take a lot of work. YouTube is a competitive landscape. If you want to, got to do this stuff. Burner accounts in other niches. So, for me, I have burner

[14:19] of. I have clients in a lot of different niches, too. So, oftentimes, I'll be did in method one, make one for the business niche, make one for the finance entertainment, challenge, you name it. There's a question, Becca.

[14:34] account, you're not actually subscribing to videos, are you? Or are you just >> You can subscribe. Uh so, the whole point of the burner account is to just inspiration, essentially. And the best way to do that is just to

[14:49] imagine if you like or comment or subscribe, it's going to help, but I it. Just watch a bunch of videos in that niche, and it will start to feed you all accounts in a bunch of different niches. Honestly, get super creative and like

[15:02] where this next idea could come from. I I can't imagine Brian Scales, this 20-year-old entrepreneur with like eight supercars, and like low-key doesn't like Jubilee video in his free time, right? But, look, he he did it. He did it. He

[15:16] it's created this wave in the entrepreneurial niche. So, you need to question. >> Yeah, how many outliers are you usually >> Four is usually a good sweet spot. The more that you can find, the more

[15:29] this is going to suck cuz you guys are all busy business owners. I know you I I could say the same sometimes, but I doomscroll sometimes and it's actually the reason I get some of my most viral ideas. It is a requirement for everyone

[15:43] and all my junior strategists to doomscroll, to consume content because this is the only way that you may stumble upon a video in another niche you're just going in the traditional like I'm going to look at outliers. I'm

[15:56] Daily consumption is huge. Even if it's doomscrolling before bed, this is extremely beneficial. I'm telling you some of my most viral video ideas have Instagram, Twitter. Twitter is huge. News will actually come to TikTok and

[16:10] if something's popping off on, again, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, content. You need to know your niche. But you also need to know other niches. to know what's popping. You need to know what formats are going doing well for

[16:24] broad. The last thing is to talk to other creators. So, you guys are in a room with 50 business owners right now and the speakers. Talk to everybody, if they're making travel content. Talk to as many creators as you can, online,

[16:38] in person, it doesn't matter cuz again, you never know where your next source of inspiration for this method could come from. Some of the most viral video ideas for business owners like you and their teams have come from these seemingly

[16:50] basically try and calculate this and and make it as predictable as possible. Quick example here. This video, 30 years of singing advice in X minutes. Say I for 30 years of business advice, 30 years of sales advice. This guy got this

[17:04] Simon Sinek made that video and got 20 million views. If this guy was not so reason cuz he's a singing coach, he would have never gotten this viral concept. Again, it's the format, not the title. X years of advice in X minutes.

[17:18] Another one here, I'm this years old, if you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, watch this. Again, different niche, throw it in the business niche. Next method is to bring trendy things in other niches into your niche. These methods get

[17:31] and five. Those are some of the easiest ways to get viral ideas that I've ever experienced. For this niche, you need to be tapped in. I talk to so many business content and with what's popping on all social medias and it is actually to

[17:45] business, but they are not approaching their content with actually a content first strategy. Three things I would make videos about today. So, Claude, if LinkedIn, TikTok, you need to be tapped in everywhere. All I see is Claude.

[17:57] consuming content, tapped in, I'm talking to other creators, Claude is Claude, you will probably go viral in your niche. I I had not posted on my about Claude and it's going viral. Insane how crazy that works. Next one is

[18:11] AI avatars. Again, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, you will see AI avatars anytime there's like somebody very influential. So, during an election, it's this guy, Claude. Again, tailor it to your niche. Anytime you make a video

[18:26] about something that is mega, mega trendy in pop culture and education, you format as well, just like we talked about before, right? I search Claude, I get the validation. Search AI avatars, I get the validation. With one of 10 as

[18:38] video, you can actually see similar titles to that video. So, this helps you, again, dig a little bit deeper for outliers. All right, next one, short form to long form. Anytime a short form video pops off on your YouTube Shorts

[18:52] TikTok, that is one of the easiest opportunities to get a viral long form video. So, this video here was on Shervin's channel. Basically talked like 20 interviews at Goldman Sachs. Like, it's insane. Take this 60-second

[19:05] video, turn it into a 17-minute video about all the lessons he learned from Goldman Sachs. The short form video is one lesson. the long-form video is like videos. It doesn't have to just be your

[19:17] people's videos. So, this Dan Martell short here got 10 million views, one of his most viewed YouTube shorts. He took this, turned it into this. Method one, this guy either took inspiration from the short, that works, or took

[19:29] like the same packaging, too. Same with this. This guy saw that short, made this video. It works. The The audiences on YouTube, it's not like there's a shorts audience and a long-form audience. It's the same people, right? The same way

[19:42] they'll watch YouTube long-form. So, the audiences are very similar. This is a great way to innovate in your niche and kind of look outside the normal sphere of outlier research. Last one, anytime you have a video that goes viral, you

[19:54] should remake it 6 to 12 months later. This is so free. When I talk about an is right in front of you. Everyone just ignores it cuz they think, "I don't want videos. You can do the same concept again. The same concepts go viral on

[20:08] YouTube time and time again. As we've just proven, so why obsess over new ideas when you can just remake a video, right? This can be I have a video, I'll show you some examples like AI tools in 2025. You can make that video 6 months

[20:20] later with new AI tools, with new dollar amounts in the thumbnail, with obviously videos, but you can remake the same different. And then anytime you make how to go viral in 2025, how to go viral in

[20:32] 2026, make it in 2027. How to get rich in 2024, make it in 2026. So, so free if you have a video that pops off. To use an example, Iman made this video here, "Laziest Ways to Make Money Online in 2026." He remade that video 4 months

[20:45] later and put AI in the title. Like, it's the same It's the same thing. Isn't with all your top performers and get views. 2.5 mil, 1.3 mil. It's less views like, "I've kind of seen this before." But 99% of viewers are going to be new

[20:59] they're not going to care at all, right? Here's another one. Hormozi has made "How to Grow an Audience." Same thing, just a new title, "How to grow an right? It performs every time. Lowest views that concept ever got was 300k. I

[21:12] happy with 300k, even if it's not. Those are the five methods to get viral video be using all of these absolutely religiously. Very quickly, I I want to you. There's four ways that you can take this outlier research and not just

[21:26] make these videos actually better than all your competitors somehow and then to you. The first way is to make it longer. So, Brian talked about how YouTube is incredibly TV dominant in 2026. If you make a video that's 4 hours

[21:40] if the video is good and you have a lot of value and you're giving good information than a video that is 10 minutes long. So again, I show the of people have made videos that are like 10 minutes long, 15 minutes long. I made

[21:53] stretching your content to an arbitrary length. So, 17 minutes for example. It's hitting 10, not about hitting 20. It's about what's the most amount of value I can give. If I have 15 tips in a video, can I make it 30 and all 30 tips are

[22:07] will talk more about this, but if it's how I built a billion dollar brand in my 20s, I might be like, I can't make that. What I could do is like how I made a right? Add a time constraint, add a bigger number, add an age to it, make it

[22:20] addressable market. Again, Jeremy will talk more about this with packaging, but can you remove any jargon or make the video applicable to a wider audience last thing is unique twist. We saw this with the first video that I showed.

[22:35] at 20, how I made a million dollars in sales at 20. How I made a hundred world with no electricity. Add some kind of unique twist. The outlier is the format, now make it yours. Add a time constraint, add an age, add a bigger

[22:48] number, add a smaller number and then add a twist to it, right? Make it yours. get out of this, insane reframe for most people. I hope you guys have wrapped presentation. I think I've given you enough proof that the goal and the way

[23:01] more money is to stop trying to be original and start being the first to original and start being the first to remix.