Get Weblog Publish Concepts From YouTube
About two thirds of companies find it difficult to create engaging content. If you are one of them, there is a good chance your problems stem from the brainstorming phase. In other words, you're struggling to come up with enough engaging blog post ideas.
If you visit my blog regularly, you will know that I write a lot of content (thanks for reading too!). I've been doing this for a long time. But sometimes I still struggle to come up with new blog post ideas.
So what do I do when writer's block strikes?
Well, I rely on the best practices I've developed over the years to come up with new content titles.
Of these methods, the most consistent is to search YouTube for blog post ideas. In this article, I'm going to tell you exactly how to do it.
Why should you use YouTube for inspiration?
It might seem counterintuitive to use a streaming video site to come up with blog post ideas. Wouldn't it make more sense to just look at other blogs?
Sure, this can also be a very effective tactic, but you can't learn everything from reading your competitors' blogs. If you rely on the same ancient sources over and over for content inspiration, you will inevitably produce the same content over and over again.
If you want to keep pushing the envelope and creating amazing content that makes a real impact, you need to expand the web. Here are a few reasons YouTube can help you with this.
It's easier to differentiate yourself
When you use other blogs to inspire your blog post ideas, you may be asking yourself, "How can I do better?"
Sometimes you are lucky. You will stumble upon a very engaging title, but the actual article will be of poor quality. It may be several years old and the information has not been updated. Or maybe it just scratches the surface of the topic instead of going in depth.
In other cases, there is no obvious way to improve the original. But because you're so convinced it's a great blog post idea, you're effectively rewriting your competitor's article and adding a ton of extra information that doesn't add any real value. Congratulations, you wrote a worse post than your rival!
This is far less of a problem if you are using YouTube to come up with new ideas. Why? Because a lot of videos just won't have a decent written version. There may be a transcript of the video, but nothing that was created for readability.
That makes it a lot easier for you to create something better.
There is so much content to be inspired by
An astonishing 500 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute, and that number is growing every year:
To put this into context, the six major film studios released 87 images in 2019, with an average length of just over 96 minutes. That means it takes YouTubers about 16 seconds to upload a full year worth of Hollywood content!
With such an abundance of content available, even super-niche businesses are guaranteed to find something relevant to inspire them. And you don't even have to navigate multiple platforms to find them.
People interact with videos and blogs in completely different ways
This is a subtle point, but an interesting one. For example, let's say you find a YouTube title that sounds like a perfect blog post idea, but didn't generate a lot of views or engagements. It's not necessarily a problem.
Why? Because people interact with different types of content in different ways.
As this HubSpot graphic shows, users prefer to consume videos thoroughly instead of searching through them to find the information they are looking for. That makes sense; Videos can be viewed from start to finish. There is often no easy way to jump to a specific section.
Blogs are different. Only 29 percent of people read them top down, 43 percent prefer to skip them. That's because blogs are fantastic to skim through. Sub-headings, bullets, numbered lists, tables, and various visual elements make it easy to find the most relevant information.
What does that tell us?
Some of the content can perform poorly on YouTube as it's just not a good subject for a video. Still, it could make a fantastic blog post. So, you don't necessarily have to worry about how many views a video got. You can only focus on finding good titles.
4 ways to find blog post ideas from YouTube
YouTube is a goldmine of potential blog post ideas! Here are four ways to find them.
1. Track your competition
If your competitors are on YouTube, they've done a lot of hard work for you. Your content may also be highly relevant to your audience. Give it a try, choose the best titles and turn them into high quality blog posts.
First, make a list of your competitors. Not sure who you are? Try the following:
- Talk to your sales team: They are the people selling your product so they know which companies they come across regularly during the sales process.
- Ask your customers: Chances are, they've considered a few different products before purchasing. So find out what other options they evaluated.
- Listen socially: Your audience may use forums and social platforms to get advice about your product and compare it to that of your competitors. So look for these conversations! Not sure how? Read this article on my four favorite social listening tools.
You now have your list of competitors. Just visit the YouTube channels and search the existing content. On the Videos tab, you can use the Sort By drop-down menu to segment their content by:
So let's imagine that I am one of your competitors. Checking out my most popular videos seems like a good place to start.
You will immediately see a number of titles that you know have resonated with my audience. Most, if not all of these titles could also be blogged, such as:
- SEO for Beginners: 3 Powerful SEO Tips to Get # 1 on Google in 2020
- How to Promote Your YouTube Video When You Have ZERO subscribers
- How to Create a Digital Product That Generates $ 100,000 (minimum) per month
- How to write a blog post from start to finish
- 1 easy hack to get 1,000 likes on Facebook
You don't even have to watch the videos (although you should, they're great). Take the titles, swap them, do research on the topic, and turn them into new blogs.
2. Read the comments
YouTube comments get a bad rap, but can be a surprisingly rich source of content inspiration. Commenters are rarely lacking advice on how to improve or expand videos, and these suggestions can help you come up with new ideas for blog posts.
Let's use my YouTube channel as an example again. Right now this is my most watched video:
Not only has it had over 1.7 million views, but it has received thousands of comments. A lot of these comments are essentially just people telling me they like the video. It's always nice to hear, but not particularly helpful for finding new blog titles. Some of them give me (and my competitors if they're careful) useful guidance for future content ideas. Here is a good example:
Wendy wants to know how I use keyword information from the Google Search Console to optimize my content.
As you can see, I already left a short answer. But I could go further and create an entire blog post that explains how you can use Google Search Console to improve your existing content and create new articles.
Here is another useful comment on the same video:
Manav asks me if I have any content on Google AdWords Certifications. While this is not something I'm talking about, it could be a great blog post idea for some of my competitors.
3. Use predictive search
You probably think of YouTube as a video platform, but it's also a search engine. In fact, it is the second largest search engine in the world.
With more than two billion registered users visiting YouTube every month and viewing more than a billion hours of content per day, the platform generates a lot of search activity. Thanks to the built-in predictive search function, you can use all of these activities to find potential blog post ideas.
This is a really simple process. Just enter a subject in the search box and you'll see a number of predicted searches:
Now the task is to examine the options that sound most relevant. "Marketing Degree UK" probably isn't right for me, but I like the sound of "Small Business Marketing Strategies" so I'll take a closer look.
Just looking at this tiny fraction of the results, it seems that “how-to” content resonates with people looking for small business marketing strategies. Lists too. In other words, we don't just get insight into blog post ideas. We also learn how our blogs should be structured.
But there is more. Scroll down the page and you will find a related searches section:
Each of these titles could potentially give me a bunch of additional titles and reveal even more related searches. The deeper you go down the rabbit hole, the more blog post ideas you'll find!
4. See trends
It's important to remember that there is a whole world of content outside of your specific niche. What is going on out there naturally affects you and your audience. Hence, it might make sense to write about it.
But what if you don't know what everyone is looking for?
Fortunately, YouTube can help here too. Just visit the Trending tab on the left home menu to find the content YouTube deems most relevant and up-to-date:
Sure, not everything is going to be relevant to your audience or brand. Chances are, most of it won't be. However, I check the Trends section at least once a day to make sure I don't miss an opportunity to get into viral topics.
Conclusion
Once you start looking at YouTube as a search engine rather than a video platform, its role in finding new blog post ideas makes a lot more sense.
Just like Google, it's a huge directory of content on every topic you can think of. However, unlike Google, the vast majority of this content is there to appeal to the audience. The search results are not full of product descriptions and category pages. That's why it's a treasure trove for marketers looking for the inspiration they need to create great content.
What tactics do you use to come up with new ideas for blog posts?