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MR BEAST: EXPOSING HIS VIRAL CONTENT SECRETS
10 lessons on creating viral content from Mr Beasts leaked internal handbook...
Niall Ratcliffe
September 22, 2024
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Morning!
I’m in West Virginia at yet another wedding. Sometimes I wonder if people think I’m making it up, but seriously, I spend half my life at weddings nowadays.
But I came prepared with one of the most interesting documents I’ve ever seen leaked on the internet…
Yep, an internal onboarding document from Mr Beast’s (the biggest YouTuber on the planet) team got leaked.
It includes:
All of his methods for going viral.
His content creation process.
The metrics he focuses on.
This thing isn’t just an onboarding document, it’s the bible for viral content.
And I spent the morning tearing through it and identifying the key lessons.
Here are 10 you need to know to level up your content marketing:
Listen to the audio version HERE
LISTEN TO THE AUDIO VERSION
BREAKING DOWN THE STRATEGY
On a podcast in 2021, someone asked Mr Beast about some of the crazy things that have happened since he became one of the most famous people on the planet.
“I once got offered $500,000 to turn up at a billionaire kid’s birthday party,” he replied, “That was pretty crazy.”
The interviewer laughed and asked him, “So how was it? What did you do when you got there?”
“Oh, I declined it.” Mr Beast replied. “All I focus on is our YouTube videos, you’d have to pay me billions to take a day from me like that.”
I couldn’t believe this when I first heard it.
But as I was reading through this document I couldn’t help but remember this moment because I knew that the price tag on the information in this leaked document is probably worth millions.
Yet there I was, reading it for free.
Oh and if you don’t know Mr Beast:
316,000,000 subscribers on his main channel.
417,000,000 across all of his other channels.
59 billion views in total on his videos.
For context, the population of the U.S.A. is 333.3 million and yes, Mr Beast has 100 million more than that across his channels.
It’s safe to say no one knows content better than Mr Beast and this guide contains all of his best lessons.
Here are 10 key fundamentals inside his viral content bible:
IMPORTANT NOTE: After devouring this document there were way too many lessons to go into depth with each. I’ve narrowed it to 10. I will keep them short & sharp and try my best to give you the key takeaways you need.
Lesson 1: People Prefer Doritos To Money
One of the things Mr Beast has become renowned for is giving away tonnes of money in his videos.
In just his recent videos he’s given away well over $1 million.
But while these big sums of money clearly attract attention, Mr Beast says his biggest focus is finding a unique angle for each video.
He says,
“I Spent 50 Hours In My Front Yard” is lame and you wouldn’t click it. But you would hypothetically click “I Spent 50 Hours In Ketchup.”
Both are relatively similar in time/effort but the ketchup one is easily 100x more viral.
An image of someone sitting in ketchup in a bathtub is exponentially more interesting than someone sitting in their front yard.
And he says the same goes for money too.
Which sounds cooler to you as a prize for a gaming video. $20,000 or a year’s supply of doritos?
To me doritos is so much funnier and I think our audience would find it fucken hilarious.
You can clearly see this with the “Nuclear bunker” example on the top right.
Yes, the money factor clearly played a part and upped the stakes, but the reason this was such a viral video is due to the unique angle - the fact it was in a nuclear bunker.
Takeaway: Great content isn’t about having the most extravagant thing happen - it’s about finding the most unique angle.
Lesson 2: The 3 Formats
If you scroll through Mr Beast’s past videos you might think the concepts seem pretty repetitive - and they are.
That’s because Mr Beast has 3 formats that he knows work every time:
Format 1: Jenga Storytelling
This is essentially when you tell people what’s going to happen at the end of the video (the “Payoff”) but they still have to watch to see it happen.
Example: This video where he tells you he’s going to build houses and give them away.
Format 2: Stair Stepping
Mr Beast explains this format like this:
A good example of this is “I Bought The World’s Largest Firework” this video opens with us showing all the fireworks and then lighting a $1 firework, then a $10, then $50, then $375, then $1,000, then $10,000, then we did some content, then $40,000, $100,000, and then the world record.
As you get deeper in the video the stakes get higher. I fucken love stair stepping.
Format 3: The Chase
This is where there’s an open ending and the intensity is building.
For Mr Beast these are videos when he gets chased by the FBI, a bounty hunter, or anything where someone is trying to catch him.
Takeaway: I want to use this takeaway to give some examples of how you can apply them all from a marketing perspective. So here are some content ideas if you ran a PR agency.
Jenga: We just got our client on the front page of Forbes.
Stair Stepping: How we get links in every news outlet. From local to → Good Morning America.
Chase: We want to get our name on the front page of Glamour in under 7 days. Will we do it?
Lesson 3: Content At Scale Must Be Simple
I always thought My Beast’s videos were quite complicated.
He drops houses from cranes.
Saws them in half.
Builds crazy landscapes.
It’s all a little crazy, but a huge point he talks about in the handbook is the importance of keeping content simple at the concept level.
He says,
Our audience is massive and because of that you have to be simple, for 50 million people to understand something it must be simple.
And he’s right… at the concept level his videos are very simple.
Take his most recent video for example:
I can summarise the concept in just a few words.
Team of men & team of women compete for who can survive in the wilderness for the longest.
A 4-year-old child can even understand that, and that’s why 100s of millions are able to watch and enjoy it.
This made me think about my most viral LinkedIn content. It’s never the in-depth piece, it’s always the simple concept that goes viral.
Takeaway: If you want more people to see your content, you need to simplify it.
Lesson 4: Viral Content Formula
Hook → Story → Payoff
Mr Beast claims that every single one of his videos embody this simple 3 step formula.
The hook: Is a clickbaity, high-stakes summary of the video to “hook” people in.
The story: Is to get people emotionally attached to the characters and what’s going on so they watch until the end.
The payoff: Is the carrot on the stick that they’re chasing and it gives them a rewarding feeling if they make it to the end of the video.
Takeaway: Just steal this and implement it across all of your marketing.
Lesson 5: Boring Things Can Make Great Content
I had to include this for everyone who reads this and works in a “boring business”. Because Mr Beast has an entire section of this handbook that explains why anything can make good content.
He says,
Literally anything can make good content. Let’s take a baby doll for example. You can see who can throw it the farthest with their left hand out of a group of 5 people.
Watching them throw a baby doll with their bad hand and funny sound effects is fucken hilarious.
You can also go the opposite route and have 1,000 baby dolls and see how many it takes for someone to throw it in a crib 200 feet away. Or you can see how many baby dolls it would take to break a two by four in half.
The point I'm trying to convey here is that even something as simple as a baby doll has an infinite amount of ways you can turn it into amazing, original, and funny content.
Takeaway: Granted, you won’t be throwing your product anywhere. But there’s no reason that you can’t find a way to wrap it up in an interesting story.
Lesson 6: Film Everything, It’s All Content
When it comes to marketing, I feel like we have a tendency to overproduce all of our content.
We want perfection, not great content.
But Mr Beast is a huge advocate of trying to make any simple day-to-day activity in content.
In fact, he has two key rules he outlines for this:
Rule 1: If you’re about to spend over $10,000, always do it on camera.
Rule 2: If a disaster occurs, ask yourself “Can this be made into content”.
He says,
A tree fall over on your car and breaks the 100 vases we needed to give away? THAT’S FUCKEN HILARIOUS AND WE SHOULD MENTION IT IN THE VIDEO LOL
Takeaway: Don’t just think “We don’t make videos so this doesn’t apply.” This does apply. What’s a disaster you can laugh about? Share it.
Lesson 7: Do What Only You Can Do
The one line that appears most throughout this doc is: “Something only Mr Beast can do.”
He must say it 100s of times throughout.
At first, I felt like this was a little bit… almost big-headed. Yet the more I read the more I understood how important this was to any content.
What’s the thing only YOU can say?
What’s the thing only YOU can do?
Takeaway: It probably isn’t giving away $500,000 but there there will be something - find it, use it in your content.
Quick fire: 3 More Lessons
Lesson 8: One Word Stakes
“I spent” doesn’t get the attention “I survived” would.
Find a way to replace one word of your hook with something that ups the stakes dramatically.
Lesson 9: Make The Start Perfect
Mr Beast says the first minute of his videos are perfect. Not just in the way they are full of action and have a great hook, but they even track the lighting in the first minute (and stats show it has a huge effect on video performance.)
If the start isn’t perfect, the content isn’t good enough.
Lesson 10: Start With The Hook
The first step of Mr Beast’s content process is coming up with a title and thumbnail because this sets up the “promise” of the video.
I feel like most people save this until last (including me), but clearly Mr Beast is on to something here. That’s how they deliver on every hook they’ve ever put out - because the work back from it.
🌱 THE GREENHOUSE
Things I’ve saved this week that are worth seeing:
TL;DR
1/ People prefer Doritos to money
2/ The 3 formats
3/ Content at scale must be simple
4/ His viral content formula
5/ Boring things make great content
6/ Film everything, it’s all content
7/ Do what only you can do
8/ Use one word stakes
9/ Make the start perfect
10/ Start with the hook
Wow. This turned into a 2000+ word essay.
It’s safe to say that this handbook is one of the most interesting pieces of content I’ve read in years. It’s inspired me to make one for noticed.
If you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend you check it out.
While I broke down the content side of things in this, there are also so many gems about teamwork and operations in there too.
It really is priceless.
Hopefully you found this as valuable as I did, if you enjoyed it - why not forward this to a friend?
Until next Sunday.
— Niall
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