Thread by @carl_pisano_

These 4 YouTube videos have made me more than $150,000 and that's largely thanks to the topics of these videos.

The topic of a video represents at least 50% of the video's performance.

Here are the 7 strategies I use to find topics for viral videos: https://t.co/PLLdew5yKytwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

1) Take inspiration from your competitors:

Take a look at your competitors' most viewed videos and their recent videos that are doing well.

Take inspiration from the topics of these videos to make similar ones.

Example:

On March 2, 2021, the channel “WATOP” uploaded the video “This Is Why All Whales Are Afraid of Orca” and it made millions of views.

26 days later another channel made a similar video called “This Is Why Orcas Are Called Killer Whales” and it made even more views.

2) Double down on what has worked in the past:

Spend time studying your channel and the videos that work on it.

Do the same thing you do with your competitors and make similar topics to the viral videos, or even redo the videos that have already worked.

Example:

The channel called “Rebound” uploaded a video 3 years ago that made over 5 million views. They redid the same topic 2 years later, modifying only the thumbnail, and the video made over 9 million views.

3) Innovate:

This is the method that can generate the most views, but it's also the most complicated.

You need to know your niche and your audience very well.

These must be new topics never done before on YouTube.

Put yourself in your audience's shoes and ask yourself what you'd like to see in their place, what kind of new content has never been made before that they'd like to watch?

Ryan Trahan is a good example of innovation with his Penny series.

4) Use trends and news:

Follow the latest news and trends using Twitter, Reddit and websites.

Search for pages, subreddits or websites that are in your niche and look at the most viewed/liked posts.

Make topics about those.

5) Search for bad videos on YouTube:

Look for videos with good topics but poor quality content, titles and/or thumbnails:

If all these aspects are combined and the video still got a lot of views, you can be sure that if you make a video about this topic and improve these points, you'll get a lot of views.

6) Listen to your audience:

Read the comments on your videos and look at the ones with the most likes, sometimes this can give you good ideas for topics.

7) Use YouTube analytics:

Look at your channel's analytics to see what your audience is watching.

Go to the "audience" tab on your channel and study the channels in "Channels your audience watches" and the videos in "What your audience watches".

Follow me @carl_pisano_ for more tweets about content creation.