Again, I’m just predicting things.
But I've never had a client tell me they regret building a real audience instead of chasing the algorithm.
Because YouTube is built for the subscriber, for the average viewer, not for the recommendations.
The most iconic YouTuber of all time, with over 110 million YouTube subs just uploaded a video, titled: ‘’I Fixed YouTube’’
He basically built an AI tool to block YouTube's own recommendation engine.
He even said, he’s frustrated with seeing too many Shorts on his homepage.
2. Old YouTube Playbook Will No Longer Work
We all know agencies that sell YouTube growth offers with statements like “we’ll hack the algorithm” or “we’ll go viral”
If more people start fixing their YouTube algo, this old playbook will disapear overnight.
My team has ~45 million YouTube views in 19 months.
One way we do this is with concept splicing.
Concept splicing is how we come up with creative thumbnails that work.
We simply take winning thumbnails on YouTube and smash them into one.
But you must follow a few simple rules:
1. Combine at least 3 thumbnails or more.
2. All thumbnails must be considered outliers.
3. All thumbnails must be from separate industries.
This is how we did it for a doctor in the health space.
We modeled thumbnails from three different industries:
1. YouTube education → the primary base concept.
2. Finance documentary → the secondary base concept.
3. Nutrition → the clean background for a health brand.
We smashed it together and came up with something unique in our niche.
That’s it. That’s all we do to make viral thumbnails.
But it’s easier said than done because it forces you to think differently.
Most people just copy 1 thumbnail, and that’s lazy…
They might stretch their brain and copy 2 thumbnails, but standards are getting higher…
The magic is in modeling 3 or more thumbnails without creating a mess.
Geniuses throughout history say this is the essence of creativity.
I believe this is the winning formula for YouTube.
You’ll still flop… a lot.
But your wins will make up for the flops one hundred times over.
Recent win for a doctor’s channel
While writing this video script, I made sure to give it a unique style to make it entertaining
Shoutout to @KyleAM15 and @thesamocean for finding the gap and positioning the video around a Doctor’s angle
And, @theAscende for SICK thumbnail
Here are places YouTubers can look for video ideas beyond YouTube👇
(save this)
- Reddit
- Discord servers
- Google News
- Google Trends
- vidIQ's trending keywords tool
- vidIQ’s AI Coach
- Twitter/X
- TikTok
- Quora
- Facebook Groups
- Industry forums
- Your own comments section
- Competitor comment sections
- Amazon reviews
- Pinterest
- Newsletter communities (Substack, beehiiv, etc.)
There are fresh ideas everywhere, you just need the right place to look
Ask these 3 questions to validate if your idea has the potential to go viral...
1. Does this idea trigger a strong emotional response in one sentence?
2. Does it raise a clear question in the audience’s mind?
3. Does it pass the social currency test?