Welcome back to the Think Media podcast, Sean Cannell here, and I'm fired up because we're in a four-part series about the perfect video recipe.

Now, this recipe has been formulated over 12 plus years that I've been on YouTube.

Over 2,000 videos I've posted over 200 interviews with entrepreneurs and content creators using YouTube.

And over 10,000 students now that have been successfully growing their channels, getting views, and then studying some of the most

viral videos. And we've distilled down this recipe into four ingredients. It's the big idea.

It's the hook. It's the content. And it's the transition. And in each of these Think Media podcast episodes, we're covering one of these ingredients.

Ingredient number one was the big idea.

And for more on that and why it's so important and why these ingredients go in order,

I definitely recommend checking that out.

If you listen to the podcast on audio, you can check that out in the archives or, of course,

on the YouTube channel, the Think Media podcast YouTube channel. But the second ingredient is the hook.

After you're clear and you have a strong channel topic, you have a great thumbnail and a great

title and someone gets into your video, you want to grab the viewer's attention

in the first 30 seconds. And your goal is to do this. Why 30 seconds? Now, ultimately, your goal is to

keep people watching as long as possible. But it doesn't matter about how cool your video is

five minutes into it if they're not watching through the first 30 seconds.

And one of the things you'll notice in your YouTube analytics, in your YouTube studio,

is a new tab underneath.

There's overview, there's reach, and then there's engagement.

And if you click on that in your YouTube analytics, you're actually going to see a section

that says key moments for audience retention and there's

a dedicated area that says still watching at 30 seconds. So we actually know that the YouTube studio

...