How to ALWAYS Go Viral

Terrific afternoon Treasurers!

Happy… tax day. Let’s not talk about that. Instead, let’s talk about how to ALWAYS go viral on TikTok. That’s a bit more fun! Right?

You’d think so. Let’s welcome Captain Oulashin and his luscious hair to kick this week’s log off.

I figured out TikTok way faster than any of these dingbat gurus who think they know what they’re talking about. And I’ll tell you exactly what it is:

Watch time. Yep, that’s really it.

I figured this out after creating the series Testing Your Attention (the show that tests and improves your attention span - for the better). It came from an authentic place; truly being frustrated with my own attention span, and realizing that I probably wasn’t alone. So, after challenging the audience with the completely real statistic that “only 1% of people can finish this video” I rambled on for 60 seconds about the rapid decline of human attention span. At the end, I offered a congratulations.

And lo and behold - it worked. By simply telling the audience they couldn’t do something, they did exactly as I wished. They watched until the end of the video, thus telling the almighty algorithm “hey, this video’s good because people watched it all the way though! Better push it to more people.”

But, compared to a well-thought-out story with a beginning, conflict, middle, and resolutory end, this format was low-hanging fruit. Easy, by nature - set up a camera, talk nonstop (or in some cases, don’t do a single thing), and boom: an instant viral hit. Or, as I like to call it, a dinger.

After making just a few of these videos in the series, I began to feel as if I was cornering off my potential as a creator. Yes, these videos were doing insane numbers, and yes my audience was growing, but was I satisfied with the content itself?

To counteract this feeling, I stepped into a new space - iPhone vlogs. Throughout my day, I’d film clips here and there, not really sure of the end product. During editing, I’d think of a way to recount the footage and weave in something I learned. When I exported the first one of these, I noticed something:

I’ve never felt like a more authentic version of myself. But…

In comparison to the attention span videos, these vlogs helped me communicate my true feelings. Despite not being dinger videos, they added texture, character, and personality to my page, and help people’s perception of me get closer to my real-life self.

Nowadays, I intertwine a healthy mix of dingers and personality videos. Makes for a well-rounded page, but Tejas’ll touch on that a little more.

Everyone has the ability to make a dinger video, it just comes from trying over and over again. But, don’t let the ding ring too loud, because the best way to use the internet is to express yourself in its truest form.

There are no two ways about it folks - the Dodford ship is sinking. No shipwreck yet! But the water’s rising. Now what do I mean specifically? Let’s get personal.

This week’s article we’re talking about our “proven formula” videos that almost guarantee virality every time. Mine? Those colour grading videos I made last year. During those days, it felt like I was playing TikTok on easy mode. Most days I could wake up to 5,000-10,000 new faces in my followers tab - growth that’s been painfully vacant since.

In fact, the Dodford TikTok account has been on the decline for the best part of four months. I’m not certain if I’m losing followers (I’m too scared to really check) but I’m sure as hell not gaining any. Now why’s this the case? I have a hypothesis.

I neglected to consider what really made my channel so alluring. I had a catalogue. An entire library of lessons for aspiring filmmakers. If someone stumbled across a video of mine about filmmaking, they’d check my profile - and see a whole wall of similar content. The result was a higher conversion rate of viewers to new followers.

Today, a video of mine might hit the FYP - but any newcomers will take a glance and realise there’s little chance they could expect a similar video again.

This has been a huge learning experience for me - and hold on to your hat here. I was lost, irritated, unhappy with my dehydrated content - but in discovering myself and the art I like to make, it’s easy to leave your viewers in the same position you were before. The real goal is hitting that middle-ground. Making art that fulfills you, at the same time as building cohesion for new faces.

That is, if your dream is to keep growing your platform whatever it takes. I’m still not sure if I’m sold on it.

Tejas is going to discuss it a bit further, but join us on our experiment as we reintroduce these ‘dinger’ videos into our schedule - healthily. Let’s get this boat back afloat.

Oh, that’s interesting. Logan Paul made an NFT project. Let’s make a video about it?

And so I did. 24 hours later - 1.2 million views, 50,000 followers gained.

Oh, holy shit, that did numbers! I guess I’ll make a follow-up video?

And so I did. 24 hours later - 3.5 million views, 100,000 followers gained.

That was me one year ago. I was destroying TikTok! If there is a leaderboard with the most followers gained in 24 hours, I’m confident I’m somewhere on that list for what I did that first week of February.

But lately, things have been tough. Similar to Daniel, my account has been pretty stagnant for the last four months. Reason being – I’m no longer a business news reporter, rather someone who is also trying to be a personality and share my journey as an entrepreneur.

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On Thursday, I got to sit down with Elliot Choy, a YouTuber with a million subscribers but more special than that, he has an extremely dedicated audience.

He’ll post a video that isn’t title, thumbnail, or watch time optimized and still crank in a quarter-million views! His relationship with his audience is truly one of the best I’ve seen.

When we sat down, I asked him why he does what he does and he said to me, “Unlike most other YouTubers who make videos to maximize views, I make videos to maximize impact.

Elliot is a number-driven person and continued by whiteboarding me a chart. “Check this out” he says, “if I make a video where I open up about a struggle I’ve had, there may be only 10 views, but each viewer would walk away with a 10/10 impact. They’ll walk away with a lesson, a deeper connection to me, and feel like they are in a community of 9 others who all shared that same moment.”

“Whereas let’s just say I made a video to maximize views, ‘Giving Harvard Students an iPhone if They Answer THIS Question’, sure I may get FIVE times as many views but each one of their personal impacts will be a 1.”

“For some YouTubers, views are what matter to them, nothing wrong with it! For me, total impact is everything.”

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The reason I went on this tangent is that it blew my mind that content creation does not have to go in one vertical. It doesn’t just have to be a game of views and followers.

Although my TikTok has been stagnant in follower growth, I’ve noticed more and more genuine comments on all my videos and people who say that my journey has been inspiring for them. Gaining 100,000 followers in 24 hours was cool, but for 1 person to say that my journey has been inspiring… that gives me chills.

The right answer is not an either-or, it’s not JUST be a reporter or JUST be a personality, or in Sean’s terms: it’s not JUST make dingers or JUST make personality videos.

The mini-challenge the three of us are going to take is to create a schedule with this mix. For me, my focus is a bit more on growth, I want to make 2 reporter-dingers and have one personality-vlog. My hope is that it jumpstarts my growth (the goal is to hit 1M followers by the end of July!

Sean, your attention videos bang! Keep doing those but also your vlogs have some of the best lessons I see on the platform.

Daniel, I know NOTHING about Premiere Pro effects and those videos teach me an insane amount! But also your videos about growing up and your work-life balance comfort me as another creative trying to make it in this world.

Take this challenge with us to make yourself a value-add creator and a personality. Do you believe this is the right strategy? Let us know in the comments! As always, we will respond to every single one.