How to create engaging content for YouTube

Hi, YouTubers! If you're reading this, you want to increase your video ranking on YouTube, create unique content and make sure it will be popular! Let's try to find out what your audience needs, how algorithms are working and how you can use them. We'll go through picking correct topics, video names and content ideas, choosing your audience, getting the perfect setup, professionally editing your videos, making suitable thumbnails, intros and many more. Let's create engaging content for YouTube!

Find your area

This is the most important decision, so we'll start here - your niche. What your videos will be about? Will you create tutorials to share your knowledge, entertaining content, or share with viewers your daily life? The better your niche will reflect you, the more natural your channel will look.

Pay attention to topics and problems that draw more attention from your competitors' viewers. Each time you're going to create a new topic, you can use YouTube searches, comments sections, and communities. In such places, you'll easily find content ideas for your particular audience.

Find your audience

Make sure you've found your viewers and give them exactly what they came for. Who are the people watching your videos? What are their interests and why do they need to pick your video among others? What are their hobbies? What trigger words will capture their attention? What benefits are they in search of? You got to have the answers to successfully grow your channel.Search among your potential competitions. They are already creating content for your audience, so you can see who they are more clearly. This is also a great way to promote your channel in the future - you can collaborate with these influencers to reach their viewers. Another way, especially in the beginning is to browse thematical blogs and social media sites to learn more about your potential audience, spread the word about your channel, and suggest people watch the videos you create.You've probably noticed, that sometimes the video you found is not what you were looking for. It may be the topic wrongly specified in the name of the video, the content, or even the creator's voice - audience retention statistics say it takes 10 to 15 seconds to decide whether you want to watch the video or not.

Make sure your viewers know exactly why they should keep watching from the first seconds. Tell them, and show them the benefits they'll get from watching your video.

Use right name

Just like we said, it's very important to name and describe your video correctly. If you want new viewers to discover your video, you should describe exactly how they will search it. Use the name, description and tags that fully represent what's your channel about.

For example - if people are looking for “drone 4K”, they probably expect to see a 4K video by drone, beautifully filmed from above. Add chapters to your video - this will help the search algorithms to give your video to those parts of the audience who needs it. 

Use Google's keyword tool to help determine if your word selection is popular. Look for at least 10,000 global monthly searches with 'low competition”.

Use cool thumbnail

While on your Youtube intro depends whether a person will or won't continue to watch your video, the thumbnail decides if he will even click on it. 

According to Google recommendations, the best thumbnail should be at 1280x720 pixels and 640 pixels (1280 × 720 resolution) as its minimum width. Additionally, a 16.9 aspect ratio is better in youtube players and previews.Keep in mind that nowadays up to 70% of viewers prefer to watch videos on a mobile phone. Make sure your thumbnail is readable on the small screen.

Make your own investigation on your competitors - how many clicks their videos are getting, where it may depend on the thumbnail, where it can depend on the name or topic.

Good equipment

What equipment do you need to create a professional setup for filming YouTube videos? Mike and the camera are surely the most important parts of your setup. It sounds expensive and it could be, though you can find cheaper analogs and get almost similar quality results. You can do your research to pick the best equipment, and we from our side will give you a couple of pieces of advice.

Starting with a microphone, you have a great choice of high-quality options with a great range of prices. Keep in mind that types of microphones can be chosen depending on the content you will create(podcast, voice-over, music video, stream or any other).  Known quality/price leaders are Blue Yeti and Rode Procaster; they both provide great sound without background noise and suit the best for podcasting and game streaming. 

Your camera also plays a huge role in setup. In choosing yours, you can consider recording capabilities, image quality, budget, portability, battery life, and so on. Picking a camera can be harder than picking a mike, but we've paid our attention to Sony ZV-E10, Sony ZV-1, Panasonic Lumix GH5 II, and Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III. These models can shoot beautiful 4K videos, have vari-angle screens, affordable prices and are portable. Also, they can provide live streams and have amazing readout speeds.

Depending on your channel, you may also need a lighting setup, tripods, softboxes and so on.

Just like mike and camera, an essentially important part of your creation is your editing software.

Use editing software

We don't know a single youtuber who isn't using editing software. You have amazing choice of well-build After Effects, Premiere Pro, Final Cut and Davinci Resolve tools and you can be sure, we use them every day.

Some will be preferred by Mac users, and some will be preferred by Windows users but these tools will do great for all stages of your creation, from composing to color grading. You can pair After Effects and Premiere Pro to create amazing visual effects and animation; Final Cut Pro and Premiere Pro will be easy and intuitive for beginners; Davinci Resolve and After Effects will provide great editing, color correction, audio engineering, text and graphics, and media sourcing. The choice will be yours, but all these programs are proven to be the best on the market.

Another great decision will be using templates. With pre-made animated templates, you'll be able to create Intros and Outros, add styled links and subsribes, use different tools like Calendars, Timers, Infobars, Sound FX and so on. It will give you more choices to design your video quickly and professionally. 

Nowadays video templates are very popular and highly used by all key YouTubers. Some can hire a designer to create all these content holders for them, but it will be much more expensive than finding a pack with templates that will suit your channel by design. We have some great ones in mind!

Plan your YouTube content ahead and be consistent

To keep your audience engaged, you have to not only choose suitable topics but also be consistent and post your videos regularly, plan your videos and organize content. You may notice, that most influencers and popular channels have a strict time schedule for their videos - twice a week, once a week, every Saturday, and so on.The result of their success doesn't happen by accident. They all use planning:

Shot lists in Notion or Figjam (Topic research, shots, keyword research etc)Task creators like Asana and SlackStory boards Prop lists per sceneB-rolls with additional footage they can use lately

These are very helpful tools to make your content organized and ready. Without a proper plan, your videos can be chaotic, lack important elements(that you would notice during planning) and not this interesting for your audience. You'll find the process of creation much easier by following these tips and scheduling it right.

Wrap up

We wish you luck on your way to succeeding on YouTube and believe you can do it! If you will listen to your audience and create useful content(that is professionally edited) you can be sure - you'll do it very quickly!