Social Media Production Tips From MrBeast

My background is in traditional broadcast media production. But, today, the energy has all shifted to social media. Both forms use video, but they use it very, very differently.

You have probably heard of – if not watched – Mr. Beast. Hosted by Jimmy Donaldson, his YouTube videos are known their “fast-paced and high-production…, where he often hosts elaborate challenges and donates large amounts of money. With over 360 million subscribers, he has the most subscribers on any YouTube channel and is the third-most-followed creator on TikTok, with over 114.5 million followers.” (Wikipedia)

Recently, he published a PDF entitled “How to Succeed in MrBeast Production.” This 36-page guide is essential reading for anyone looking to improve their social media video results. I found his thinking so insightful that I want to share some his key points here.

In my productions, I was always striving for the highest-quality and largest audience, however that was defined. But social media uses different metrics.

MrBeast: “Our goal here is to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible. That’s the number one goal of this production company. It’s not to make the best produced videos. Not to make the funniest videos. Not to make the best looking videos. Not the highest quality videos.. It’s to make the best YOUTUBE videos possible.”

“…we are not Hollywood. 99% of movies or TV shows would flop on Youtube. On top of that they’d be wildly unprofitable, have no flexibility, and long lead times that can’t adapt to trends. We aren’t here to make a small movie once or twice a year, I want to make one a week LOL.”

In broadcast, a show’s success was measured in ratings. In social, “the three metrics you guys need to care about is Click Thru Rate (CTR), Average View Duration (AVD), and Average View Percentage (AVP).”

“CTR is basically how many people see our thumbnail in their feeds divided by how many that click it.” Titles and thumbnails are essential, he explains, on generating click-throughs. In other words, you can have the greatest content in the world, but if someone is not hooked by the title and thumbnail enough to click it, no one will ever see it.

He stresses that the title and thumbnail are SO important that you can’t create a video until you know them. He mentions the difference in clicks between ““I Spent 50 Hours In My Front Yard” and ““I Spent 50 Hours In Ketchup”. The first generates no interest, the second lots.

AVD (Average Video Duration) is how long, on average, people watch a video. There is always attrition, the key is to minimize that attrition as long as possible. As is true with virtually every YouTube video the most loss occurs in the first minute.

Which means that you need to do everything possible to make that first minute the most compelling you can. “After the first minute of content you will have what we call minutes 1 thru 3. This is where you have to transition from hype to execution (generally). Stop telling people what they will be watching and start showing them… We also want to do something around the 3 minute mark called a 3 minute re-engagement. A re-engagement can be described as content that is highly interested that fits the story and makes people genuinely impressed.”

In other words, every minute of every video has a purpose and that purpose evolves over the course of the video.

Regarding AVP (Average Viewing Percentage) “for your videos to do well you must get their AVD and AVP as high as possible. The longer people watch, the better a video will do. This is why I’m such a stickler about every single second of29 content. Hook people at the start of the video, transition them to an amazing story that they are invested in, have no dull moments, and then have a satisfying payoff at the end of the video with an abrupt ending.”

His production guide includes sections on how to create content, the importance of videoing everything – even mistakes, communications within the production team, scheduling your time, handling mistakes and the importance of planning.

“We are a creative first production company. Because when creative leads the vision of the shoot, the product is always better. So I think it’s important you all understand creative. It is what drives everything we do and is the heart of our content. Being creative and understanding what makes good content is like cheat codes when in production, camera, and obviously editing.

“The goal of our content is to excite me. That may sound weird to some of you, especially if you’re new but to me it’s what’s most important. If I’m not excited to get in front of that camera and film the video, it’s just simply not going to happen. I’m not fake and I will be authentic, that’s partly why the channel does so well.”

LARRY’S THOUGHTS

This is a fascinating read and I learned a lot. Not about production, but how to tailor production to maximize its impact on social media.

Now, training videos are not the same as entertainment. My goal is to teach, not simply titillate And not all of us have the resources, staff or reach of MrBeast. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from his approach.

The key insight, for me, was his extreme focus on title and thumbnail, combined with editing to recapture the viewer’s attention each minute.

You can read his entire document here.

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