A Step By Step Guide On How To Use Trend Watchers To Get Your First Viral Video
This guide is broken up into two sections.
Section 1: Shows you how to get your first viral video on YouTube
Section 2: Shows you how tot get your first short-form video to go viral on TikTok, Instagram Reels, and YouTube Shorts.
Section 1 - Getting A Viral Video On YouTube
Note: There are two ways to grow on YouTube. The first way is to take the SEO route by chasing low competition keywords with decent monthly search volume. The second way is to satisfy the YouTube algorithm to have it push out your content to the masses. The first-way works but the second way is the key to exponential growth.
Part 1 - Understanding That YouTube is a Numbers Game
Before I started YouTube I always thought there was a lot of strategy and tactics that needed to be applied to get a viral video. Fast forward a few years and I’m getting 2-3 million views a month.
Did my perception on that statement change? No not really, but when you really break it down it’s really just a numbers game when it comes to YouTube.
Every time I would start a new channel, I knew I NEEDED to at least get 25-30 videos up. With this number of videos up, I KNOW about 1-3 videos will go viral within 6 – 12 months.
And no, viral isn’t necessarily 1 million views. In my books, viral is 10x the average amount of views your channel gets per video (excluding any outliers).
Why Do We Want Atleast 1 Video To Go Viral?
When one video goes viral on YouTube, YouTube LOVES to bring the rest of your channel up aswell.
So let’s say you get a video that randomly gets 500 views, now all of a sudden all of your other videos will start to build some traction aswell around the same time.
Some of you reading this may have already experienced this
Why do I need to post 25-30 videos? 25-30 videos is very important for two reasons.
1) Since you have more videos up, the chances of a video going viral by our definition is ALOT higher. (Within a 6-12 month period)
2) If a video goes viral, YouTube has more videos to lift up on your channel which will improve the odds of you maintaining your momentum.
Yes, I know that creating 25 – 30 high-quality videos is very time-consuming and exhausting so I’m going to show you our method on how to systemize your content (which leveraging trends).
Part 2 - Creating Your Video Series
There are two ways to post to YouTube. I refer to these two ways as traditional posting & using video series.
What is traditional posting?
Traditional posting is the normal process people go through when creating content.
Tons of energy & time go into traditional posting. I’ll break it down step by step.
1) Brainstorming: The brainstorming stage varies for different people & niches. It may take some people minutes to come up with ideas. For others, t may take a few days or weeks to come up with a quality idea.
2) Preparing: After you’ve come up with your video idea, you next need to prepare for the video. Once again, depending on your video style, this could take a few minutes, hours or days to organize props, people & logistics.
3) Shooting: One of my favorite parts about content creation is creating the actual video. My second favorite part of creating the video is improvising as you go. Most of the time, videos do not go as planned so it may take you a couple of tries of recording/getting extra footage to make a quality video.
4) Editing: Once again, this one is different for everyone. It could take between 10 minutes – a few days to edit a high-quality video.
Posting to YouTube with our traditional posting method works but gets exhausting when you try to scale operations. This is why creators burn out.
This is also why creators say you can only focus on quality or quantity when making content on YouTube. You can’t have both without burning out
What is a video series?
A video series is where you use the same/similar video setup for each video. Once you have a video series brainstormed, you just have to rotate out the subject.
Creating & running your first video series will give you the same problems as posting traditionally but after 3-5 videos, things will start to get easier.
Having systems for creating content on YouTube is life-changing. Systems allow you to post high-quality video in mass without sacrificing quality.
When applying our video series model on YouTube, it is highly recommended that you plan around 3 – 5 series. If you only run 1 video series, people will get bored and will check out another channel.
Get a piece of paper and write down 3 – 5 video series ideas you can create for your YouTube channel. Here go a few examples from Jubilee.
Here go more examples
Part 3 - Testing Trends
When it comes to applying trending topics to your YouTube channel people often take the hard approach.
The hard approach is asking yourself “how can I make a video out of this topic?”
This is a good and productive question but there are over 1 million ways you can create a video about a particular subject. Having all these options will paralyze you mentally and make it hard to figure out which idea to pursue.
The best way to apply trends to your YouTube channel is to create your video series 1st then use different sources to plug in trending topics to test on your channel.
One great source you can use is Trend Watchers. We post trends daily for content creators every day across 50+ different categories (across different countries too!).
IF we do not cover your niche (yet) you can also use the following sources to plug in trending ideas into your video series.
– Your competition
– Forums
– The news site for your niche
You can use this worksheet to write out your video series ideas. Also here is a complimentary video on how to fill out this worksheet.
Section 2 - Getting A Viral Video On TikTok, IG Reels & YT Shorts
You’ve probably seen a bunch of AMAZING trends in our feed but now you’re wondering. How do I actually use these trends to go viral? That is exactly what this guide is going to cover.
We’ll be covering the following topics
- The logistics of viral videos
- Performing research and using sounds
- The importance of being relevant
- Different video styles
- Volume guarantees luck
We have a lot of stuff to break through so let’s get started!
The Logistics of Viral Videos
The first platform I went viral on was YouTube. Before my first video popped off, I always thought that creating a video around 1 trend would kick off my career.
I would post 2-3 videos around a topic, see it didn’t pop off, and would quit posting.
It wasn’t until the summer of 2016 that I decided to post 1 video a day every day for 100 days. With great discipline, I was able to get 100 videos up but none of them took off.
I was about to give up until a friend told me to hop on this specific video trend. I decided to give it a shot and started posting 1 video a day leveraging these trends.
Literally, 7 days later, I remember coming back from lunch (on the first day of school) and checking my YouTube studio app. Instantly my jaw dropped. I had gotten over 250,000 views in one day.
Why did I share this story?
This story along with a few other experiences (across other platforms) taught me one valuable lesson.
Social media is just a numbers game. You just use trends to improve the odds of going viral.
A lot of people use trends with the mindset that they will instantly pop off. Only to be disappointed 2-3 videos later and quit.
You have a better chance of going viral by focusing on posting consistently without using trends, rather than only posting 2-3 trendy videos and quitting.
I could keep going on about this all day but will get back to this topic towards the end. Let’s now shift the focus towards planning your videos & applying trends.
Performing Research & Using Sounds
To find trending sounds, log into your account on Trend Watchers. Once you log in, you’ll see a list of the trending sounds for the country you have selected.
When using sound trends, it’s important to use the original sound. Using the original sound improves the odds of your video being featured on the discover tab (the way how to reach millions with no following).
You can use our research tools function to quickly view original sounds. All you have to do is click “Tik-Tok Search ” and you’ll be able to view the original sound instantly.
Using similar spinoff sounds created from the original sound too but I like focusing on the original sound.
The Importance of Being Relevant
When testing out different sounds to go viral, it is important to use a sound that is relevant to what you are posting.
On top of that, it is HIGHLY recommended that you focus on video styles that are:
Easy to record in mass Easy to come up with ideas for Easy to edit Easy to put trending sounds over (important)
Here are a few video styles that you can copy from. These video styles fulfill the checklist above.
Volume Guaruntees Luck
As mentioned towards the beginning of this guide, social media is just a numbers game. Trends just help put the odds in your favor.
This statement is true for ALL social platforms. One statement that really helped me push through every day is “volume guarantees luck”. This statement is true in all other areas of life and most especially works when trying to go viral online too.
Our recommended short-form posting rate is 2-3 videos a day. (All platforms) Posting at this rate will make it easier to get a few viral videos each week.
Remember, all you need is 1 video to go viral (in the millions). This one video can really accelerate your social media growth
Conclusion
As a way to make it easier for our users to get content up, I created The Content Creation Mastermind. I would’ve made a video course like everyone else but I refused to because they:
❌ Are too long
❌ I always procrastinated going through it
❌ They lacked the support/accountability
As a solution, I created a group where we meet once a week over Zoom to discuss
✅ Ways to systemize our content creation so it’s easier to get stuff up
✅ Holds everyone accountable for posting constantly
✅ Discover new ways to monetize your audience
When it comes to going viral, the most important thing you can focus on is learning how to post consistently.
Remember, social media is just a numbers game. We ONLY use trends to better put the odds in our favor.
If you are ready to take your social media game to the next level, click the button below.
