Do you want to keep your viewers watching until the end of your video? Gideon Shalwick shared a very simple technique that will keep people engaged and paying attention.
That technique is called the Open Loop.
The open loop is a common psychological tool used in marketing. You may not notice it, but it’s everywhere – YouTube, television, movies and books.
This concept is based on the Zeigarnik Effect. Zeigarnik, a Russian psychologist, recognized how waiters are able to retain the details of an order no matter how many times they’re interrupted, until they no longer have to remember it.
The human brain is wired to seek closure. Once a task is started, it creates a tension that it wants to be solved and the only way to release that tension is to finish the task. We even get a little boost of endorphins when we get closure!
Below I’ve created a simple outline on how to leverage the Zeigarnik Effect.
How to create an open loop
1. Introduce an idea without giving a lot of information right away – just enough to make them curious so they’ll stick to the very end.
2. Promise to give the rest of the information later, which they’ll find towards the end of the video.
Here’s a bonus tip: Create a new loop at the end of your video with the promise to close it in a different one of your videos.
See? It’s very easy! Now go and create your open loops and incorporate that into the YouTube Magic Formula.