Why one video got 432K views and its direct copy only got 47K

One of the top creators in the social media niche (Ava @personalbrandlaunch) posted a video on “How To Plan A Full Month Of Content In 45 Minutes.”

It did 287,000 views (3.5x her average).

I saw it and remade my own version...it did 432,000 views (20x my average).

Then, another creator (@realskytan) remade my version...and his only did 47,000 views.

That's the same core video idea made three different ways, with a 9x gap between the best and the worst.

Now the point of this breakdown is not to throw shade at anyone (I love both Ava and Sky and they’re awesome creators in this category).

The point is to explain the optimal way to remix a video so that yours outperforms the baseline.

Btw, at the time of posting, Ava had (~700K followers), Sky had (~100K followers) and I only had (~5K followers on my new account).

Most people would call that luck.

But there's actually a very specific reason why each video performed the way it did.

Every short-form video is built from six components (I call them the lego bricks)...topic, angle, substance, format, hook and visual layout.

When you remake an outlier video that’s already worked, the goal is to keep what's working and improve everything else.

Here's exactly what I did with Ava's video...

I kept her format the same (How-To Tutorial) and tried my best to improve the other five lego bricks.

• Topic: nearly the same, but tighter frame (30 days of content in 30 minutes)

• Angle: I added a grid that maps onto a calendar and named it the 6x5 Method

• Substance: 3 parts instead of 5 (going deeper on the first two steps, cutting the fluff that didn’t matter)

• Hook: my text and my spoken line were the same sentence, and the visual showed the calendar (better hook alignment)

• Visual layout: a split screen with animation, easier to understand and faster to lock in comprehension

This worked extremely well and allowed me to rip a 20x outlier on my 6th video.

Now here's what Sky did with my version (and again, no shade, this is just an objective analysis of what didn’t work on his remixed version)

He kept my topic and almost my exact hook, renamed the grid 7x4, and sequenced his substance in a way that was a bit harder to follow.

In essence, he remixed the video without improving it, which is why his version only did 1/10th of the views.

The takeaway: If you remix off a winner without making it better, it’ll underperform almost every time because the initial novelty was taken by the inventor.

You can run this Lego Brick Deconstruction exercise on any video that's winning in your niche...break it into the six components, then decide which ones you'd keep and which ones you'd improve.

This is the exact core system I ran on a fresh account this year to go from 0 to 150,000+ followers in my first 6 months (with 50,000+ emails collected and $250,000+ in directly attributable revenue).

It's also the first thing I teach inside Short Form Launch, the 4-week live content growth cohort I'm opening on Friday, October 16.

Inside, I give you my six remix formulas (ranked from easiest to hardest), how to find the outlier content ideas worth remixing, and my full workflow to go from idea to outlier.

You'll post your next 10 videos with me, with 25 daily lessons and five live calls.

If you want in, reply back with "Launch" and I'll send you the link to secure your spot before doors open.

PS - I might never run SF Launch again, and if I do, it’ll never be at this price