Hello there, Steemit Community!

Hi there! If you don't know who I am, my name is Riyad (but you may call me as Rags if you wish). I am your average teenager who loves to game, predominantly playing games like League of Legends and Rainbow Six Siege. I joined Steemit in October 2017 and I aim to post at least once a week (my studies often causes inconsistencies D:, but I am doing my best!). I hope you enjoy the post - Upvote if you do and be sure to comment on what I can do to improve!

I mentioned in my previous post that I wasn't happy with the content i was outputting on my blog. I found that it was boring and monotonous when trying to read.

Therefore, I took some (well, a lot) of time to improving and outputting better content. After all, the point of me doing these blogs weren't to gain a living, but rather, to practice and exercise my writing skills and flair.

I wanted to share some of the inspiration I gained over the past few weeks as I think it might be helpful for others.

Disclaimer: I just wanted to preface that these techniques and thought processes were not created by myself - they were made and shared by Jesse from the Simple Pickup channel on Youtube. He made a series of tutorial videos on ways to inspire ideas and produce viral videos.

The link to the videos can be found here: http://jumpcut.com/1/skz6okb/video-1

Step 1: "The channel idea scoreboard"

Okay, that sounds pretty weird, right? But it's really simple!

All you need to is list your hobbies and interests and note them down on a piece of paper or a text Document (it can be as wacky as your favorite food - just make sure you have 10-15 to pick from)

From here, we need to give them 3 different scores. This is the "channel score". This will tell us how successful (very approximately) a topic may be for a channel

The scores are from 1-5 and are based on:

• The popularity of said hobby on the internet (1= not very popular, 5= very popular)
• The passion of the fanbase for the hobby (1= the fanbase aren't too interested, 5= the fanbase is extremely committed to the topic)
• Your passion for the hobby (1= you don't care too much, 5= it's your main passion)

An example of a hobby can be golf - it would get a 3,5,1 from me (its fairly popular, the fanbase are extremely dedicated and I'm not too interested in the sport!)

Add up the 3 scores to get a total score between 3-15. The top 3 scorers in your list of hobbies should be the ones you take forward.

These were the hobbies I listed and the 3 (well, 4) hobbies that scored the highest:

So from here, I took that Medicine, League of Legends, Rainbow six siege and violin learning are the best topics to take forward.

That's cool and all, but what do I do with this idea? This takes us into step two!

Step 2: The "Remix strategy"

In short, this is the step where you take the most trending ideas in the genre and "remix" them by adapting and tinkering with the ideas that are popular

Jesse uses his channel Simple Pickup as an example. He says that for his Drunk Times series, he took the idea of interviewing people on the beach and adapted it so that, instead of doing it at day, Jesse decided too interview at night with drunk people for different results!

"Take a proven concept and change it up to freshen up the idea"

Step 3: Learning and utilising the "Traits of virality"

This step focuses on setting out 3 frameworks of ideas that have proven to be a cause of certain videos becoming viral. Most, if not all, successful channels and videos, according to Jesse, follow one or more of these traits:

1. Changing assumptions - the video should be able to change the perception of your viewers on the topic

2. Show a unique perspective - Show a topic in a way no one has really mentioned or shown before

3. Tell a story - It's on the tin! Just have a good and interesting narrative on the topic

A video doesn't need to necessarily show any of these 3 traits, but these have shown to have the best results when used, so long as the content and the idea produced is fresh and interesting.

Having trouble utilizing these strategies and traits?

It should be hard.

That isn't me being harsh. It can be seriously difficult to apply these techniques to produce a trending and viral idea! But it takes dedication and commitment to find and discover the ideas that will take you far on Steemit.

Jesse believes that only "critical thinkers" will see off these tips, to which I agree.

I am not being noninclusive here - I am not a critical thinker myself - instead, this post is to encourage myself and some readers to think more critically about trending topics and how and why they work - so that it can be applied to our own posts.

Final messages

I have seriously learnt a huge amount about what I can do to help improve my posts and how to better my mentality about producing content for Steemit.

I hope you have taken something from this post, even if it's as small as learning about what the fundamentals are of viral videos. If you have, be sure to upvote and comment on what you have learnt (and maybe something extra I could take from it!)

Thanks for your continued support, I always feel privileged to be part of such an amazing community - Here's to better posts!

Riyad/Rags