I’ve been saying it for years. If you want to succeed on YouTube, you need to master the art of storytelling. YouTube thrives on captivating stories. This is what sucks you into a video and prevents you from being able to look away.

Have you heard of the phrase “open loops?” It’s a psychological phenomenon that you can use in your videos to keep your audience hooked until the end. Today, I’ll explain how.

Open Story Loops

Open story loops is a storytelling devices that create a sense of suspense or curiosity. It creates narrative cliffhangers that forces your audience to stick around to find out what happens next.

This technique is used in tv shows all the time. Think of the TV series Lost or 24. Every episode ended with such a dramatic twist that you felt like you HAD to watch the next one just to find out what would happen next. The loop from the last episode had closed, but they simultaneously opened another and ended with such a suspenseful moment that there was no way you could quit watching.

Open loops is based on the Zeigarnik Effect. This is a psychological phenomenon that explains our brain’s tendency to remember unfinished tasks better than finished ones. We naturally want closure, and that’s why open loops work so well.

Open Loops for Boosting Retention

One way to start using this in your videos is by setting up a question or a situation early in your video and promising to reveal the answer or resolution later. Maybe you have a goal that you want to accomplish, but first you have this major thing that you need to take care of first before getting to that. It’s a story within a story. Little loops get closed and open along the way before the overarching story is closed.

Your initial loop is in the title and thumbnail. Then, it continues at the start of your video to hook your viewers. Open a loop in the middle to maintain interest, and even at the end to lead viewers to your next video.

Practical Pizza

Here’s an example. Let’s say I am doing a video of baking the worlds largest pizza. I’m the character. I want to bake the world largest pizza. The obstacles are that I don’t have an oven big enough to cook it. Also, I don’t know how to make a pizza and practically I’m going to need some help. The sakes are that I need to feed my wife and 7 kids dinner and they are hungry. Plus, I’m competitive, so I’m not settling for less than the biggest. So I grab some friends and we try.

The story is set. So how do I use loops? First, is in the tile and thumbnail. I loop them in by visually telling the story. Then, I use the hook to set the stage by sharing what I want and stakes. Then, each of those obstacles can be another loop. Where can we buy that much flour? How are we going to cook it? Who can I get to help me? Each time you solve one of these problems, you can open the next loop. Great! My buddy Sam is free and he is going to come help me, but now we need to figure out where to buy all these ingredients. As the one obstacle is overcome, the next journey is already under way.

Then, use the ending of your video to close the major loop by showing the transformation. Then, quickly open a loop pitching them the next video that you want to point them to. “We have all kinds of experience making giant food. But what would it look like to make the world’s smallest meal. Check out our next video to see how we did it.”

Techniques to Create Successful Open Loops

There are many techniques you can use to create these open loops.

  • The ‘Teaser’ Technique: Giving a brief glimpse of what’s coming later in the video. If there’s a high tension moment later (maybe I burn my hand at some point and have to rush to the hospital), you can tease that moment in your hook to really spark your viewers interest and make your audience want to get there.
  • The ‘Question’ Technique: Posing a thought-provoking question and promising the answer later. “Can we make the world’s largest pizza?? Well, first we need to figure out how big that pizza is. And how do you get entered into the Guinness book of world records?
  • The ‘Incomplete Story’ Technique: Starting a compelling story and resolving it at the end. Maybe we met someone at the shop who was selling us flour and they wanted to try this pizza. We invite them over later, but first we have to complete these other tasks. So their reaction is another loop that won’t be completed until we finish some other loops first.
  • The ‘Cliffhanger’ Technique: Ending the video on a suspenseful note, leading viewers to the next video with your call to action. Leaving on a cliff hanger is the typical tv technique. We all have a love-hate reaction with this, but it’s popular because it works! End on suspense and draw them to the next video to see what happens next.

Common Mistakes with Open Loops

We have worked with so many creators and there are some common open loop failures we see over and over. One of the most common mistakes we see is closing loops that you never set up properly. We see the close, but it doesn’t have the impact on the audience because it was never set up well to the audience as an obstacle to begin with. If we set up this story with the pizza, but we end by saying, “Look! We found this bowl that was big enough the stir all the dough ingredients,” the audience is going to be confused more than relieved because that was never shown as an obstacle that we had to overcome to begin with.

Another mistake is to cut out all the obstacles and have no open loops at all because the desire is to make it super short and punchy. This is a very common mistake with how-to channels. Cooking channels are so worried about having the perfect shot, that they take all the obstacles and stakes out of the video. If you don’t share any loops, maybe viewers got to the end because they really wanted to learn that skill or make that dish, but they’re probably not intrigued enough to watch more or subscribe. You may never make encounter obstacles while cooking, but the people watching your video probably do. And seeing what to do when a mistake happens makes your content relatable and more intriguing. A great way to do this can be to say, “I’ve been cooking for 30 years and that crust was the hardest part. I have burnt so many of them. So to prevent that….”

Another mistake is opening too many loops at once. If you make your viewer jump through too many hoops and leave them with too many unanswered questions or incomplete scenarios, the viewer is going to leave. You must have a balance otherwise you’ll confuse and frustrate your viewer. Make sure you’re always tying back to the main story. Reintroducing the stakes you’ve already set is a good way to not overdo this. “There are 4 hrs left. There are 2 hrs left.” Or you can have a countdown clock going to just keep the stakes in front of the viewer and keep them intrigued.

Also when doing a video series, you need to realize that not everyone is going to watch it all the way through – start to finish. So don’t neglecting open loops in your video series. Use an open loop across the series as a whole to keep the entire storyline tied together. But also use the call to action to hook to the next video in the series as an open loop. But, also make sure to close some open loops and give satisfaction to the viewer in the current video at the same time so the viewer maintains trust with you.

By using open loops in your storytelling, you can enhance viewer engagement and improve your audience retention rates. Remember to incorporate open loops not just within your video content but also in your titles and thumbnails to attract viewers in the first place. It’s all about sparking curiosity and providing closure at the right time. So try it out! See how it affects your retention graphs.

Power Tip

We now have the ability to search from the comment section. People often drop links in the comment section which will lead you off platform. But since YouTube wants to keep you on the platform, the comments are now hyperlinked. So if you search for that keyword, it will direct you to the link, while keeping the video playing in the mini player. So now you can interact and search all while watching YouTube. What a crazy world we live in.

Keep Changing Lives!

Tim Schmoyer

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