Scripting
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February 19, 2025
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8 min
If you’ve ever searched for advice on making video content, you’ve probably heard the same things over and over again:
But what if I told you that nothing of this matters? What’s actually the most important part is the idea for your video.
If your idea is boring, then everything else that you do after is a waste of resources. Recording with the most expensive camera, making engaging animations, putting in amazing sound effects and music simply cannot compensate for a bad idea.
So, what makes a video idea great? And how can you tell the difference between a good one and a bad one? Let’s dive right in.
Idea doesn’t have to be correlated with the topic in your video. In fact, we need to make a clear distinction between them.
The topic of your video is what you’re teaching, explaining, or showcasing. For example, if you're a marketing consultant helping people create better offers, then a possible topic could be: "How to Price Your Offer."
But the idea of your video is the unique way you present that topic to make it engaging, relatable, and memorable. It’s the story or structure that makes people want to watch.
For example, you could frame the concept of pricing an offer as a cooking recipe — where each element (value, scarcity, bonuses, etc.) represents an ingredient, and the final offer is the finished dish. If your audience consists of restaurant owners, this analogy makes perfect sense.
However, if your audience is mainly website developers, a better approach might be using tables, graphs, or even a coding analogy to explain pricing in a way that’s familiar to them.
When coming up with content ideas, think about your target audience — their desires, challenges, and what resonates with them.
You see, the idea for the video doesn’t have anything to do with the topic that is discussed in the video. And this is just one parameter of the good idea. Let’s go a little bit deeper and see what else we have got here.
The next thing you want to ask yourself is: If I use this idea for my video, will it reveal my points right away? This is important because if the viewer understands everything in the first 30-60 seconds of your video, there’s no reason for them to watch the rest.
Now, you might say: “But the recipe idea doesn’t pass this test.” Well, not quite. You can still show your recipe with the ingredients written out, but keep the points blurred or reveal them one by one as you explain. This is where the editing of the video becomes crucial. By doing this, you don’t give everything away immediately; you keep your viewer on their toes for a little while.
Also, you should structure the video so that the last point is the main reveal. This way, you build tension and anticipation until that moment. In the recipe example, this could be a secret, super-rare ingredient. Your viewer will be waiting for it, but they won’t feel constant tension because you’ll have smaller reveals in between. This makes the experience less intense for the viewer while still keeping them engaged.
With good video editing and sound design, you can enhance the viewing experience. This way, your points will have a much greater impact, and your video will have a longer watch time. Since you're likely recording educational content as a coach or consultant, your audience will appreciate not only learning from you but also being entertained while doing so.
Coming up with a hook will be easy if your idea is interesting and relatable to your target audience. The hook is also a very important part, because if you can't make the viewer watch the first 3 seconds of your short-form video (LinkedIn videos, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts) or the first 30 seconds of your YouTube video, there’s no point in making the rest, because no one will watch it anyway.
The hook should be a promise you make at the very beginning of your video, and then throughout the video, you deliver on that promise. Besides making a big promise, you need to know what your audience is interested in.
Let’s go back to the example where you're a marketing consultant helping people with their offers. If you know that your audience struggles to create an irresistible offer for their web design services, then you’ll want to tap into that pain point and mention it in the hook, promising to provide a solution. Something like:
“Here’s the exact blueprint how you can build an irresistible offer for your web design agency.”
The hook can become more complex when you want to spice it up with some mystery, controversy, or a myth you’ll debunk, but that’s a topic for another blog.
The key when judging your idea is to check if you can come up with a hook right away, and if it sounds enticing.
The next part that determines if your idea is good or bad is whether you can make a good thumbnail out of it. The thumbnail is your visual hook — it must draw attention, but it also has to clearly communicate what the video is about and what value will viewers get if they watch the video.
This might sound too complex to know right away when you come up with an idea, but as you go through the previous steps, you’ll have some kind of concept in mind for how the thumbnail will look.
So, let’s see what kind of thumbnails you can use for a video where you talk about offers and pricing. We’ve had ideas like recipes, graphs, tables, blueprints — depending on your target audience, you’ll want to use elements that are familiar to them.
Let’s take the graph, for example. You could construct your thumbnail so that it has two parts: On one side, the graph is red and shows a declining trend, and on the other half, you can place a green graph with a positive trend.
These two elements are good, but the viewer doesn’t know exactly what improved. To clarify this, you can put a title above these visual elements, such as "Web-Design Offers."
Now, you might think: “This is too simple, no one will be intrigued by this thumbnail.” But if you add too many elements, it can get confusing, and that’s not good either. Especially since people only glance at the thumbnail for a couple seconds. The viewer doesn’t have time or energy to analyze every detail of the thumbnail while scrolling. In this case, less is more.
Creating a great video starts with the right idea — one that speaks directly to your audience's needs and interests. Your idea is the foundation that sets everything else in motion, from crafting a hook to designing an eye-catching thumbnail.
A compelling video idea is about presenting content in a way that grabs attention, sparks curiosity, and adds value, whether through analogy, personal story, metaphor, or something else.
And remember, if you get the idea right, the rest will fall into place… and that’s how you create videos that truly stand out.
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