PRE TRAINING

Hip circle swings- 10 circles each leg
Lateral leg swing - 15 swings each leg

Ankle circles

Kneeling lunge pulse- 30 secs per side

Wall ankle dorsiflexion- 10 reps each ankle
Cossack squat - 1 rep per side

POST TRAINING

Pigeon pose - 90 sec per side

Frogger - 2 min hold

Butterfly stretch - 90 sec hold

Deep kneeling lunge hold - 60 sec per side

Seated shin stretch - 60 sec hold

Standing figure 4 stretch - 60 sec per side

DAILY MOBILITY (off days)

90/90 hip sit (static) - 60 sec per side

Deep squat hold - 2-3 min cumulative

Couch stretch - 90 sec each side

Side-lying hip opener - 60 sec per side

So i've been testing my shorts and I've been able to do 2 things, with the stayed to watch % being almost the same because my hook works great (80-85% average), and im getting stuck at around 25k views on almost every short

Strategy 1: extremely good subs, comments and likes on shorts but there is a pretty big drop off in viewers at the cta which is at about 80% of the video, the cta is 11 seconds long so that explains the drop off, I shortened it as much as i could to get all the engagement actions (sub, comment, like and share). so my average view duration is about 85-90% and some even higher, with the shorts mostly being around 45 seconds.

Strategy 2 results: very little likes, comments and subs, but very good retention (100%+) retention graph is much flatter with a smaller drop off at the end because the cta is only about 4 seconds long and i put it after the video is finished aka after the payoff. But still, even like that, the videos only get around 25k views.

So, my questions are, which one should i do, what should i prioritize, what will make my shorts go viral, and what does youtube look at and reward mostly. Is it the engagement or the retention?

Here are the analytics screenshots on 1 video with my first strategy (40 second long short):
https://snipboard.io/xo3vkW.jpg
https://snipboard.io/0xYvNm.jpg
https://snipboard.io/40klUR.jpg
https://snipboard.io/xPAjqs.jpg

Strategy 2 (44 second long short):
https://snipboard.io/QFszaJ.jpg
https://snipboard.io/1CrOWi.jpg
https://snipboard.io/NPHGov.jpg
https://snipboard.io/w06FWV.jpg

So i post youtube shorts, my audience is children that watch it over their parents accounts, weird right haha. Anyways, my issue is i consistently have 80-85% swipe rate and retention around 100-102% on 35 sec shorts and still can’t seem to go viral, i get stuck in the 20-30k view jail.

Now i thought it was because of my long cta that was 12 seconds, it did give me an amazing number of likes, comments and subscribers, but it had a big drop off in viewers, so i changed to to a new cta that has a loop on the end. Now they need to comment with their eyes closed and i ask them if they found a secret gift for mom in the video with a like and subscribe in the top left and right corner. And so now i have the great retention like i mentioned before but much much less likes. This was after i posted 1 video with the new cta.

So I’m wondering, what do i do because i’m confused why i’m not going viral, I've attached how the cta looks like without the background clip running, I usually just loop the last few seconds of the video and darken and blur it in the background.

so far youtube only showed this video to my subscribers and basically no new people, and it still has amazing metrics even though i would expect a big drop off because my subscribers are kids like i mentioned and they already did the old cta before

TheCTA:

https://screenapp.io/app/v/6x0KVFS7BF