How Eric got 2.1M YT views from 66k views, Neil and Eric's Content Creation Framework, & more

0:00So we are going to talk about how I got 2.1 million YouTube views from 66 ,000 views. So in January, so far, January's not even over yet. It'll probably go a lot higher because each day, in the last 48 hours, there's a million views. Wait, so in January, you've gotten 2.1 million views so far. And that is to, what's the YouTube channel? YouTube is Leveling Up with Eric Su. Everyone go subscribe and I'll love you forever. Is the channel named Leveling Up? Yeah, Leveling Up with Eric Su. No, the URL. Oh, it's just Leveling Up Official. Leveling Up Official. Man, why do I get to have an official?

0:32Why don't you just have Leveling Up? Because someone took it. okay so all right i'm looking at your channel right now so when i look at your channel oh wow that's crazy dude what was your december traffic the bar just went all the way up all right so 66 000 so you went from 66 000 to 2.2 where was most your views actually i'm just gonna sort by most popular so top careers to choose in marketing no oh you you're rich bffs $25 million secret wealth plan. Here, Vivian is carrying this channel right here. I'll give you some, because it shows me top content, right? I'll tell you what performed. So last 28 days, never stayed at, so she says some things that are headlines, right?

1:12So - Oh dude, it's the shorts. Never stay at a job for more than two years. Yep. But then here, look at the fourth one. The fourth one's actually a long form one. That's 225 ,000 views. That's a really good one. Yeah, that's the one I mentioned. Your next one is, how rich can you get on content creation? the third one is if if you want to stay at home wife if you want to stay at home wife what was the rest i don't know what the rest of the title is if you want to stay at home wife i think it's dot dot dot yeah it is just dot dot dot i'm curious on what that is yeah main thing is she's got a hot take and then the idea tam is very big on a random note before we dive into how you got 2.1 million visits uh what was the short on how rich can you get on content creation what was the answer she told she said how much she made so vivian she's transparent with the numbers she makes like three she just started a business i think so she went from working somewhere she now does three million a year 300k is profit she's reinvesting most of it and wait base was 80 when she worked on wall street then 10k signing bonus and then then she went to go work at buzzfeed she made like 600 grand, I think in her top year.

2:22Oh, wow. Yeah. So now, now she's like, she makes less, but like, she's reinvesting a lot of it. So yeah. Yeah. She went into tech media and sales and that's when she started to really make the big bucks. I'm listening. I'm reading the captions as you are talking and yeah, 600 grand is quite a bit more money, but you know, she says her goal in the podcast episode is 25 million. It's 25 million. And then you mentioned to her that you think she can end up making it i was like i was like i'm pretty sure you're gonna make more than that in like 10 years so yeah i think she'll make more over time but what was the secret because i'm looking at this a lot of the views came from vivian right if you look at your long form video it was vivian yep um i i thought her content was amazing or interesting i commented on one of them she was like you should switch a job every single year and then neil's like this is stupid i don't think i said that in the comment but uh i think he said something like this is not true he say this is stupid yes um and then so her long form video is your most popular and then if you look at the shorts uh it was also the top three are her yeah by far because 855 401k 369 and then the fourth one was 70 000 views but if you look at the type of content that you're getting views from it's generic's the wrong word but it appeals to the masses it's the idea tam is huge the idea Tam is huge.

3:46It appeals to almost anyone who has grown up, but I bet you that content isn't going to get you one customer. It won't. And so that's why in the last episode, you ever should listen to last episode. While that's cool that I'm getting all these views and we'll talk about, you know, how I got the views and then we'll switch to, we'll move on from that. Um, I was just saying in the last episode, you know, I, if I want to get more SAS customers, for example, I should layer in like Jason Freed from base camp. Like he's down to do an interview, right? So, So he's kind of known in that space. So I'll switch back and forth between high-powered CEOs and then people with high idea or big idea terms.

4:19And that's what I would say about Vivian, right? Or people like Vivian. Like, I think it's great, but I want to switch it up to only people that I'm interested in talking to at the end of the day. So that's that. Now, in terms of how I got to the 2.1, right? Like, shorts is a big thing, obviously. But what I would say is, like, we've been very consistent starting from August. And so I guess it's been six months or so, starting with the Hermozis, right? Alex Hermozzi, Layla Hermozzi, like those two did really well. 75 ,000 views, 44 ,000 views. And then like after that, it's just like a lull, right?

4:49Like some videos are 9 ,000 views. Some are like 1 ,200 views or so. But we talked about this concept of like, at least I still believe there's a concept of YouTube jail, right? And I believe because I wasn't consistent that I was in YouTube jail for a while. But now even with Neil bringing up the shorts, all my shorts were getting like maybe like 1 ,000, 2 ,000 views or so. but there's a breakout now because Vivian broke out. When I look at some of the other shorts, 60 ,000 views, 30 ,000 views, 50 ,000 views or whatever. I think I'm out of jail there. And when I'm looking at some of my, the most recent video with Chris Doe, that's starting to grow a lot faster versus the, um, versus how it was like two, three months ago or so.

5:26So my whole thing is like consistency. I'm putting a lot more time and effort into it. So this is not a sexy thing to say. There is no secret here, right? The secret is like good work, hard work so yeah dude look it is good hard work but you have to make sure your content quality does really well and i think where most people get it wrong is the hook if your hook sucks the rest of your content no matter how good it is just won't perform that well so what i love doing is on twitter i will go in and i'll brainstorm hooks and then create the rest of the content based on that and if something doesn't do well in the first like 10 minutes that it's live on twitter i'll go in and edit it because you can edit it for up to 60, no, 60 minutes.

6:09I don't know if that's only for paid accounts. I think it's only for paid accounts. And then what I, what I do is I change up the hook and then if it starts doing better, now I got my hook for when I record my long form and even short form content from that tweet. You know, it's interesting that you say that Neil. So like, um, I, when I rewatched this interview with her, it was like a one hour, maybe 67 minute interview, but, um, the first five to 10 minutes was interesting to me. So it was hooked. Like If you can get them in the first five minutes, you'll probably have them for the rest of the video.

6:38But here's the thing. When I'm looking at the retention chart, only 43 % of viewers stayed at the 30-second mark, right? You actually want that to be like maybe 60 % or higher. So we didn't do the best job with the hook in the beginning, right? So that is a lesson. If you want to keep people longer, like when you look at Colin and Samir, they're averaging 40-minute average view duration on their channel. Who? Colin and Samir. They have like a YouTube channel where they interview creators. Okay. 40-minute average view duration. That helps them a lot. For us, we're like maybe like 10 to 15 minutes average view duration.

7:09Colin and Samir. I found it. Yep. Their view count's not bad. It's actually really good. Yeah. And look at who they get. Tim Ferriss, Emma Chamberlain, Ali Abdaal, our mutual friend. So yeah. They don't actually crank out tons of content. They more so focus on quality. Yeah. And it's like when they do one, it's like a two, three-hour interview with Mr. Beast or something. Yes. Yeah. And I think that's a mistake that most people make with content. They just assume that if you put out a ton of stuff, it'll do well. I think that was the case before and they would just push content hard. But now because there's so many people creating content, if you don't have something special, you're not going to stand out.

7:47You need to really fine tune your hook. And what you need to do, there was a guy named John Murrow and he had this amazing idea. So he lived in a community where people would drink. So he would go down after he writes an article and he would look at the hook, the title, whatever you want to end up calling it. And he would start reading them off to people who are drinking. And some of them were drunk. If he was able to capture their attention, he knew he was onto a winner. And that was his strategy. And it worked really, really well. You know, I'm not saying you need to go to a bar to figure out a hook.

8:20You could actually just go on Facebook, run a few different variations of a hook and spend five bucks. You'll see which one's a winner. use that for your content. Yeah. So I actually spent a lot of time thinking about the hook on these interviews and have to do a lot of research too, right? The final thing I'll say around this is you have to, Neil actually made a really good point. So my unique intersection of my interest is business, marketing, health, and personal growth, like those things, right? So I'm dynamic in those areas. Now, Neil might be interested in like gardening, cooking, sewing, and like, I don't know walking his dog right he doesn't really have a dog but point is he might have a completely different set of questions to ask vivian versus myself and that's how you make your content unique because i know when i listen to his other interviews when i'm doing research i'm like oh i can i can go deeper here i can do better here and i know where i can't do better too yeah but you know what's funny the big thing that i disagree with her interview and i'm not saying i'm right uh or wrong is i believe she could have made 25 million dollars staying on wall street if not more.

9:24Probably. She seems smart. She seems ambitious, hard worker, creative. I think she kind of made a killing on Wall Street. Probably. I don't think she would have been fulfilled. I think she would have achieved, but I don't think she would have been fulfilled. Yeah. And if you're not happy, it doesn't matter how much money you can make. It's not worth doing it, right? Life is short. Yeah. So the next thing that we really want to end up talking about is because we're talking about content and getting traffic is the frameworks that we use for generating traffic on the social web. I'll break down mine and I'll be curious to hear yours as well, Eric.

9:56So my content framework is I use an app called Tweet Hunter and then I browse X, so Twitter, X, whatever you want to call it, and it shows me the most popular articles. I then browse all the people within my industry to see the most popular stuff that they're putting out. I then use that data to figure out what could be potentially popular for me. The key is not to copy it. The key is to use it for ideas because typically if something does well, other things that are like it will also do well. Then what I do is I put out at least two, if not three or four tweets per day on X or post, whatever you want to call them now.

10:32Some days I'm less because I just don't have enough time. And then what I do, and X, by the way, the reason I do this on X is X doesn't penalize you for posting often while some other platforms do, especially when some of them are duds. Because no matter how good you are at marketing, you can't have all hits. And then once I have the hits, ideally I'm hoping at least one a day hits. I take the winners, the ones that have the most views and engagements on X. I read them word for word and I create short form videos. And then I post those short form videos on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok for the places that allow description like LinkedIn or YouTube.

11:07I will take the exact copy from X and literally copy and paste it. I'm not changing anything. And then the next thing I do is I take my most popular short form videos and I take the most popular of the week. I turn it into a blog post and then I look at what's the most popular in the month, typically one or two, and I turn them into webinars. And that's the model. And I promote the blog post through an email blast, but that's all I've been doing. And it's been changing our numbers in a really positive way. It works. It actually takes a lot less time on creating the content. It takes more time brainstorming ideation, but it's worth it.

11:47And overall, I would say we spend more time on content marketing than we used to. But our view count in total is probably up like, if you're counting blogs, podcasts, everything, maybe two and a half to 3x what it was before. What was the before baseline number? I don't know. I just know my team told me it was up more than double, almost triple. So that's what I'm getting. Baseline number is probably like seven figures in views, just so everyone knows. So it's a significant amount. Yeah, it has to be somewhere in the seven figures. I crank out enough content on all the social. And this also sounds a lot easier.

12:17like it's very optimized, right? And it's not like, I think it's easier for you to just have a framework to follow and you don't need to think too much. Like the thinking is really front loaded with your ideation in the beginning, right? So I think that's good. Mine isn't at Streamline. It used to be more streamlined like yours, but now because of the podcast, so it's like we have to find a venue. We have to secure the guests as well. And then I, so let's say I'm interviewing you, right, Neil? Okay. I would spend, probably three to four hours listening to podcasts that you've been on and finding other information out there and then figuring out what I can ask that other people can ask right which is what I said earlier and how thinking about the hook as well how can I make it really interesting yep and you know also knowing that a lot of these aren't like some of them are just going to take off like Vivian's I had no idea is going to take off like that right um so I think it's just continuing like that and figuring out like can I make a really good piece of content so that's for for leveling up right for this podcast it's a little different so Neil and I the way Neil learns is a little different than me.

13:15So Neil is really good at calling people and just getting the information. And he'll watch CNBC and things like that. Right. For me, I read a lot. Right. So I, and Neil reads too, but I read a lot of like articles. I'll read like Twitter, like Neil reads Twitter too. I'll read a lot of stuff and I'll just save whatever I find. You also read a lot more books than I do. Yeah. So I read a lot of books, right? So every night I'm reading. So we have different ways of learning and, but I'll just find the most interesting things and I'll put them in here. And then Neil will take what he's refined on Twitter and you'll put them in here.

13:42That's how we come up with ideas. But the cool thing is we make idea babies on this podcast because we just talk, right? It just becomes a conversation. And it makes it a lot more clippable now because we're in person. That's one. Two, there's going to be moments where we say more interesting things. When we're online doing it and it's just like one topic at a time, not combined like this, it didn't really give us a lot of room to say interesting things. Now we have a lot more serendipity. When I first started my business, the overwhelm was real. I didn't have the tools to help me scale. If only I had Shopify from the start to handle all the behind the scenes work.

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16:38I'm actually for AI. I'm not trying to be negative against AI, but in some areas of marketing, we're actually seeing people lose time using AI. And we're like, you know, if you just did it manually, it would have been done quicker and faster versus if you just use AI. So I was like, huh, I should, I told my team, I'm like, we should go track a lot of people, you know, like with their permission and do a study with them on if they did tasks using a and what happens when they do it manually without ai and then you're seeing which ones are actually saving time which ones aren't so you know where you should use ai more and where you should use ai less have you seen the bcg ai study i know it's okay so the boston consulting group they did this study on ai and basically it was they have boston consulting group i think has 11 000 consultants they ran this on 1 000 consultants and it showed the efficacy of ai basically it showed that people that are enhanced with AI perform 47 % better.

17:30And then people that are top performers, maybe their performance lifted 13 % or so, but the bottom line was AI lifted performance. If you can do a similar study like that, that's for sure going to get a lot of play because that was shared quite a bit. And the people that were sharing it were all really smart and also really rich people. Yeah, no, we're going to end up doing it. I just have to wait for the data to come around and I think it's going to take the team at least 30 days to figure this out so I think that's it for today, I think we went a little over too hope you enjoyed this episode, please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe we're sorry about the ad load but please, 5 stars and hit us on YouTube too goodbye