How This Video Got 2.6 Million Views by Asking Stupid-Simple Questions

The art to creating viral videos isn’t easy,

Creating videos that reaches the 1-Million mark is already a mind-blowing feat on it’s own. Then there’s that problem ceiling where for some unknown reason YouTube doesn’t let you get to 1M views! There are videos that get stuck at 900K views then *spluck* it won’t budge.

What’s stopping it to get to a million then?

It goes down to simplicity of the idea. If your video is about programming then only people who have a background to it will watch. But if it is something more simple like your college life living in the campus, then more people would be hooked.

In this story, we break down how a 1 single video gained more than 2.6 Million views by asking no-brainer questions, let’s get into it!

The simple viral-idea you are looking for:

Here’s the gist of it: Your asking normal questions to strangers.

Inserting below this paragraph is a video where one person asks 3 simple questions in order to guess what the student is studying. As simple as the idea sounds, stretching it out to a 15 minute video requires countless rejections, sparking fun moments & not let the interviewee feel like you wasted their time (the challenging part)

So how do you apply this idea to your own content?

After watching hours “guessing videos” from other YouTubers, there’s a rule that every interviewer try to follow:

1. You can’t ask more than 3 things

No follow-ups. No going out of the topic. No side-tangents.

The question that you should be asking should be universal & easy to understand A good rule-of-thumb is to place yourself in the other person’s shoes. Take a seat and flashback in time with the question, “When I was a 1st-year freshmen, is that question simple enough to understand?”

Once you wrote those down it’s time to make the questions more thrilling.

2. Ask a Spicy Question

The next thing to worry about is how your questions would come more alive.

Don’t just ask for questions like, “how much do you study each day?” instead bring up the hot topics such as, “what’s the common stereotype about your major?”

The goal here is to ask questions that makes people smile or think. (especially if they are giving one-word answers & don’t elaborate enough) Doing this prevents us from watching the video and think it is scripted.

3. How To Make Them Never Regret the Interview

You don’t want to leave the other person hanging, never have them say after the interview the words — “wait, that’s it?”

Think about it, we are stopping them out-of-the-blue and the last thing you want is not preparing ahead of time with the right questions.

Once it all wrapped up, thank them for their time. (I can’t emphasize this enough) You can do this by giving out something for free like chocolates or just expressively sharing your gratitude. They don’t want to regret this interview with you as much as you so make them feel like it.

How long will this trend last?

This type of “Asking simple questions” video wouldn't die anytime soon. In fact, they are launching unknown youtubers to fame at this very moment.

If you think this is a good idea to start, grab a friend and use your Iphone’s microphone to start. You don’t need to overcomplicated it right from the get go.

And maybe who knows, I might just see your video popping out in my YouTube homescreen :)

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-Ryan Winterlake