Coming up with video ideas for your YouTube content strategy can be challenging. So today we’re going to share 7 tried-and-tested methods that our team uses when creating YouTube content strategies for clients.
These methods we’re about to share won’t just help you generate ideas, but they’ll show you how to choose the right ideas that have the most potential to perform well, while also best serving your audience. Let’s get into it!
1) USE KEYWORD ANALYSIS TOOLS
There are many helpful (and free!) tools that you can leverage to see what people are already actively searching for within your niche on a monthly basis.
By knowing what your audience is searching for, that’ll give you an idea of what you could create within your YouTube content strategy to get in front of that audience. Below are two tools that we use and recommend for this approach.
Google Keyword Planner
The Google Keyword Planner is a free Google Ads tool that allows you to see how many monthly searches there are for a specific keyword, and what the people are bidding to have their ads run in front of them.
This can also be really great for seeing and understanding the data behind some of those keywords related to your audience.
VidIQ Keyword Inspector
VidIQ is a Google Chrome extension that lets you see what topics are really resonating on YouTube.
How many people are searching for a given keyword? What competitors surround it? Where do the best opportunities lie? All good questions to ask, and VidIQ can help you answer them.
Sorting by Overall Score will rank related keywords in order of how they are weighted in terms of monthly search volume vs. competition. This is fantastic for finding a range of keywords that have an opportunity to get your content seen.
The most used feature will help you pick the right wording for your titles, as these are ranked based on how your audience is choosing to phrase their searches. Conveniently, there’s also an option to export results as a CSV file for future reference.
A super helpful feature within VidIQ is the ability to add tags to your videos directly from the Keyword Inspector window. This makes it easy to do quick optimization research when uploading new videos.
2) USE KEYWORD EXPLORATION TOOLS
Once you’ve collected a list of related keywords with opportunities, you can plug them into keyword exploration tools to dive even deeper into those specific content ideas. Here are some help tools to consider for researching this portion of your YouTube content strategy.
Google Search
You can also utilize Google search in the keyword exploration phase to see what blog posts are the most popular around a certain phrase or keyword, and what similar questions are being asked around that topic.
Google collects the top asked questions related to your keyword or phrase, and links to relevant content that answers them.
You want to make sure that your content answers these questions to satisfy the needs of your target audience. Your goal should be to have Google direct to your content because you’re doing such a great job of providing answers.
Vireo Video Topic Generator
The Vireo Video Topic Generator is a tool that we developed that allows you to input your chosen keyword, and then it provides an extensive list of video titles that use that keyword and are designed to capture audience attention.
These title suggestions are an excellent starting point for generating ideas for your YouTube content strategy. Explore the variants of title formats that have proven to be effective, and save your favorites for later in the provided sheet.
3) SEARCH REDDIT TO FIND NICHE IDEAS
Whatever your niche is, there is a community – or “subreddit” – that is engaged and sharing the most relevant links around it.
Reddit has a witty and intelligent audience that can definitely help you find out what people are talking about and sharing with each other.
Easily find what questions the audience has with post-type filters, and then answer them in your videos. Or go and search out information about upcoming events, or important news that you can cover for your channel.
This is a great way to see through the eyes of your audience and understand what is important to them, and what they’re looking for.
4) RESEARCH YOUR COMPETITORS' CONTENT
A great way to see what’s working in your niche is to take a look at what your competitors are already doing.
Check out their YouTube and Facebook channels and look at their most viewed and recent videos, then identify what is working and getting your competitors the most results.
– Is it because their videos are focused on a specific keyword that is connecting with your target customer?
– Are their older videos still popular because they’ve answered a question that a lot of people have?
– Are they covering a topic that isn’t talked about much yet?
See if there are gaps where you can step in and provide more value by making it your own!
5) CREATE VIDEO ANSWERS TO YOUR FAQS
Do you have FAQs on your website? Those frequently asked questions from your audience are a really easy and quick win, as you’ll be able to answer them with videos. This can be a great place to start when thinking through your YouTube content strategy.
Creating these FAQ-based videos has also been shown to help with ranking in search – both YouTube and Google.
Not everyone is going to read each individual answer on your FAQs, but you can elaborate on specific topics to provide more value and satisfy the content needs of those who are searching for more information.
6) IDENTIFY TRENDS IN YOUR NICHE
Identifying trends in your niche is the best way to create relevant content that serves your audience in the current moment. Trendy topics are constantly changing, so you’ve got to keep an eye out for opportunities.
YouTube Trending Section
YouTube has a dedicated “trending” section where you can see what is trending across the platform, overall.
There are about 20 or 30 videos, all in different niches, so it’s not necessarily reflective of your content. However, you’re going to see what people are generally most engaged with at that point in time.
Try to see if there’s any way to link those topics back to your own.
YouTube Search
You can also take some of those keywords that you selected in the research phase, and type them into the YouTube search bar.
The filters in YouTube search can be very useful to find popular content in specific date ranges. For example, if you’d like to see what content is working in your niche recently, you could sort by view count and select this month for upload date.
Consider patterns or related topics among the results to identify what common factors are leading to success.
TubeBuddy
Another great tool to track trending content is TubeBuddy. Not only do they have their own trending feed, but you can also see how keywords are performing in a specific niche.
TubeBuddy’s Keyword Explorer allows you to get a performance overview, as well as lists containing related searches on both YouTube and Google and common tags used on the most popular videos using your targeted keyword.
You can use keywords to find articles and content posts related to them. It also provides you with a list of related content ideas.
Search results and features are limited in the free version, but the paid versions are absolutely worth it. They come with many more valuable tools like A/B Split testing for thumbnails, bulk processing, channel health reports, and element inspectors for getting the most opportunity out of your content!
If you’re curious about testing out a paid account, save 20% off when you sign up with code “VireoBuddy”.
7) LEVERAGE AI TO COME UP WITH VIDEO TOPIC IDEAS
Companies and creators are starting to use artificial intelligence to come up with new video topic ideas (and much more). AI has the ability to find out what is trending in current events, keywords, social media, and even what is popular with your existing audience.
Most of these AI’s are able to take input from the content creator in order to narrow down their ideas too.
These programs can then come up with something that is in line with what the topic is. The main advantage of using AI, in this case, is that it can generate large amounts of content without any human input.
Much of this paragraph was actually created using an AI writing tool… 😉
VidIQ Daily Ideas
Referencing the tool we mentioned earlier in this article, VidIQ’s platform has a feature called Daily Ideas that uses AI to come up with 10 free video ideas every day for its users.
This is a great way for content writers to generate content ideas without having to invest so much time and effort into the process.
The platform’s artificial intelligence analyzes videos uploaded on YouTube and uses its machine learning capabilities to generate video ideas specifically for your channel. It even includes a prediction of how many views it might receive!
You have the ability to dismiss or save these videos for later in a separate list, which will also aid the AI in understanding what you are interested in creating.
CONCLUSION
There are many ways to go about finding ideas for your YouTube content strategy, certainly more than what we’ve shared today.
Remember that the content you are creating for your channel should be a mixture of what the data tells you to make, and what you feel you need to make to satisfy your own enthusiasm about what you’re doing. That’s always going to be an important balance.
Tell your story the way you want to tell it, and use these tools and methods to support your brand through its YouTube journey.
If you would like to learn more about how we help businesses develop their content strategies, increase their views, and drive sales with YouTube marketing and advertising, then check out some of our Case Studies.
