Find formats that already work
1
Save outliers in your niche
Scroll your niche for about 15 minutes a day and save videos that did far better than the account’s other posts. A small account with one video at 1 million views tells you more than a big creator, because the format did the work, not the following.
2
Look for repeats
A format that went viral on several different accounts is safer than a one-off hit. Note the hook, the length, the structure and what’s on screen.
3
Remake it, don't copy it
Keep the structure and change 10 to 20%: your topic, your product, your face or voice. Founders who copied videos exactly, down to outfits and backgrounds, reported that the copies didn’t take off (example).
- Puff Count logged its niche’s most viral TikToks, remade a 20M-view “what’s inside a vape” video with a 2-second mention of the app, and got 8.3M views (source).
- Runify copied another app’s viral Reels format before building its own app. One video reached about 2M views (source).
Test it
- Post at least once a day. Formats are found by volume. Founders reported 40 to 300 posts before a format clicked.
- Put most of the work into the first 3 seconds. Hooks that open a question, take a side or name one exact situation hold viewers. One founder tested two hooks on the same video as Instagram Trial Reels: the question hook got about 50,000 views, the answer hook about 500 (source).
- Change one thing at a time: the hook, the length or the visual. Otherwise you can’t tell what made the difference.
- Show it, don’t describe it. If you sell something, show it being used in the video instead of only talking about the topic.
Judge it against your median
Compare each video with your own typical video, not with viral accounts.- Open Analytics. The video table gives each video a score against your median video, where 1.0x is typical (Analytics).
- Sort by score. Make more videos like the ones well above 1.0x.
- Give a format 1 to 3 weeks. If none of its videos beat your median by then, drop it and try the next one.
Use trends
Trends give quick spikes. Formats built on a lasting need, such as lists, tutorials or before-and-afters, keep working for months. One job-board founder has posted the same “companies hiring remote” list format for two years instead of chasing trends (source). Use trends on top of a format that already works.- Trending sounds can’t be added through TikTok’s or Instagram’s posting APIs. On TikTok, use Send as draft and add the sound in the app (TikTok).
- Licensed music doesn’t move with the video. A sound licensed on TikTok can get the copy muted or blocked on YouTube. Use original audio, or a sound licensed on every platform you post to (Copyrighted music on YouTube).
- Remove the other platform’s hashtags. Rewrite caption with AI drops tags like #fyp or #reels for each destination (Captions).
Turn views into customers
Get viewers to sign up or buy once a format works.
Scale to more platforms
Post every winner everywhere, on more accounts.