YouTube Video Ideas: Mastering the Power of Outliers for Channel Growth

1. Welcome to YouTube Video Idea Mastery: I, my name is Cal, and I've experienced the ups and downs of YouTube video creation and channel growth. And I understand the challenges that small YouTubers face just like you. And through my journey, I've discovered solutions that have helped me be more successful on YouTube. If you're like I was, you might struggle to come up with your next video idea, or worry that it might not attract viewers. This course is designed to help you overcome those concerns. Number one, video packaging. We'll look at what outliers are and why they matter and how to use outliers to generate great video ideas. Two, optimizing titles, we'll use those outliers and the insights they give us to craft titles that get more clicks, and three inspiring thumbnails. We'll identify the elements of successful thumbnails in those outliers and use them to create your next intriguing thumbnail design. I also have a fantastic class project for you, that is not only fun, but also pragmatic. This course is designed for smaller YouTube creators who need help with content planning and want to increase their viewership through data driven decisions. Whether you're just starting or looking to strengthen your strategy, this course is for you. So if you're ready to elevate your YouTube game, check out the next video. See you there. 2. The Power of Video Packaging: Welcome to this course. You are about to make a change for the better on how to find and decide on future YouTube video ideas. In this course, we'll explore how well thought out packaging, which includes your video idea. Title and thumbnail will significantly impact the success of your future videos. So let's get into it. Packaging is a combination of your video idea, title, and thumbnail. And it's essential for successful YouTube channels. And it can be incredibly frustrating and demotivating to come up with video ideas on a regular basis. I've been there before. I know that it takes a lot of hard work, and the last thing that you want to see is all that work sort of go down the drain because you don't get any views. Guessing you've experienced this before. I certainly have, and this is what we're going to try and prevent in this course. Without solid packaging for your idea and your title and your thumbnail, everything can be more or less a waste of time. Which means your videos might not get the clicks that they probably deserve considering the actual video you've created. So remember this. This is why it is essential that you really put in the extra work to work on your idea, your title, and your thumbnail, before you do anything like scripting or filming. Some people do the opposite, and that's really a mistake because your thumbnail and your title really should be driving the rest of the creation process, at least for most YouTube channels. And to help us with our overall packaging, we're going to be looking at VD IQ. You might have heard of them before, specifically their browser extension. And don't worry, it's free, and it's easy to use. And I'll show you how to get it and to use it shortly after this lesson. This course, the main objective is to equip you with the knowledge and the tools to better put together your packages, which should make it much more probable that the videos you create are going to be in demand, that the titles are catchy and create or peak curiosity. And the thumbnails work together with your titles to get people to more likely click. And that's really the main objective of most YouTube videos is to get that click. In a moment, we're going to dive into how to use VD IQ's extension in order to identify what you call outliers. These outliers are videos that have been performing on any particular channel much higher than the average. And understanding these outliers, whether they're for your channel or for your competitions channel or in the general niche or niche that you're working in. It's important to understand those so you can find out what's working better for those thumbnails and your titles. So, in this course, as we progress from one video to the other, each video is building upon itself. So it's really a good idea to stick throughout the entire course. Don't skip, don't go to one video that you think might be more important than the other. It's not a lot of content, and it's really worth your time to start from the beginning and get to the end. And then really take a look at the class project and just take action, do the class project, because that's why you're here. And if you do that, then the next thing you know, you're going to have your next awesome video idea, title thumbnail. Remember, with the right plan, you can turn your hard work and your video creation into successful videos, and then ultimately a successful I'm sorry, a successful YouTube channel, if you're willing to put in the time and effort. Great. Now you understand a little bit more about the importance of proper packaging. Next, we'll look at a few examples of what outliers are and why they matter so much. See you in the next video. 3. What Are Outliers and Why They Matter: Welcome back. By the end of this video, you should be able to understand what outliers are, why they matter so much and how to easily identify them. First, let's define what outliers are. They're videos that are performing much better than the average video on any particular YouTube channel. You probably, if you've made a few videos already on YouTube, you may have experienced one or more outliers. And for anyone who has been making videos for a while, definitely, they will be able to identify at least one of those outliers. So take a look at your YouTube channel if you already have one and take a look. What outliers do you already have? There should be some interesting clues in your video title and your thumbnail that may help you make better videos similarly in the future. Now, let's talk about the elements that contribute to the success of an outlier video. This is the packaging of your video, and there are three key elements that we just talked about, but let's take a look at them a little bit more in depth. Number one is in demand topics. These are the topics that your audience is actively searching for or interested in. Number two are appealing titles. The title of your video is probably the second thing viewers see. It needs to be compelling and intriguing enough to make them want to click. And number three intriguing thumbnails. Your thumbnail is probably the first thing potential viewers see. Outliers are properly packaged videos that use all three of these key elements well. Let's look at a few examples of these outlier videos to illustrate these points. Gaming is one of the more popular niches on YouTube, so let's type in one of the more popular games, I believe, is Minecraft. As you scroll, what you're going to be able to see with the video or the VID IQ extension are two particular things. They don't always pop up, but let's take a look. As we scroll, we see this right here, says VID IQ VPH views per hour. This video is getting 20.7 thousand views per hour. That is insane. As we scroll further down, we get 9.2 thousand. But we also want to see are these right here, this little blue oval, and this red oval down here. This is really how well a video is performing compared to the average. So this video here, getting 257 views per hour is getting 2.8 times greater the average. What we really want to look for is something like this. We're getting lots of views per hour. But for this channel, it's performing 19 times better, and that's why it's in the red. These are the real outliers that when we look at these, we look at the video idea, the title and the thumbnail, this can really give us some great insight into videos that we might want to create. That are more unique. Now, fitness is also a popular niche on YouTube. Let's go to fitness, and with working out, weightlifting, let's type in exercise biceps. So as we scroll down and look for the same thing, right here is a huge outlier for this channel. 2.2 thousand videos per hour and over 100 times the average. So we want to take a look at the video, the video thumbnail, the video title, and the idea overall. Or scroll down a little bit more. We see some that are not popping, maybe down below. But this one certainly is doing quite well, 100 times as well. Go further down, another 100 times the average, 100 times the average. 18 times, all of these are in red. These are videos that someone in this Niche would want to look at. Some things that aren't working as well. Let's take a look at this one. Very popular channel Athene X, but this particular one is not doing as well, six times as good as its average, 75 views per hour. Good. But not one of those huge outliers. So this would give you an example of what's working well for this particular niche. Let's go on to one more niche. Let's go to food and travel. And I've got Australia, Lobster catch and Cook, something I've always wanted to do. If we click on this, we have some interesting videos. This is the popular channel, but although I think he's got a great thumbnail, It's it's doing the average. It's one time the average, and it's not getting a lot of views per hour. So if we scroll further down. This next video is doing fairly well 2.2 times per hour. And take this into consideration. If there's a channel that has just so many videos out there, the outliers probably won't see one that's 100 times the average because there are so many. You might have one that's something like this, 2.2 or so. So consider the number of videos that are on that particular channel. And we don't have a lot that are in red, but this one pops out. These two pop out quite well. 106 views per hour, 17 times it's average. I know that this channel has lots of videos. So this would be something to look at. It's title. It's thumbnail and the basic idea to the video. Great. By understanding what outliers are, why they matter and how to identify them, you can create content that not only engages your audience, but also boosts the probability that your channel will be more successful. In the next video, we'll find out how to get the VDIQ extension, how to use it, and a little bit more in depth on how to find those outliers. See you in the next video. 4. How to Identify Outliers: Now it's time to get the VID IQ browser extension for yourself, so you can not only identify what the outliers are, but also the views per hour, which is quite helpful. First, it's important to point out that the VID IQ browser extension is only available on Chrome, Firefox, and the edge browser. If you're already on one of these browsers, then you're all set to follow along. If you're not using one of these browsers, I suggest choosing one, downloading it, and getting on. So the first thing you want to do is get on your browser, and I'm going to choose Firefox, for example, because I don't have the extension yet on this particular browser, and we'll go into your browser and go to this website vidq.com Forward Slash Extension. Go there. And for whatever browser you're using, you should see this button, Install Firefox or Chrome or Edge extension. Click on that button. You'll come to this particular page. Click, Add to your browser, whatever it is. You might get a message up here at the top. Okay. Insulation was a success. And then at the top right of your browser, you should see the icon for VID IQ. Congratulations. Okay? Once you've installed that extension, you are ready to start finding your outliers. Let's go through one more example, just to be clear, let's choose another Niche. IPhone phone photography. Let's do iPhone editing tips. That sounds a little interesting. We go here. It might take again a moment for the browser to load that content into each of these videos. And as we scroll through, now, you won't get anything for advertisements like these. But here we go. We're already seeing outliers. This particular one. How to edit your iPhone photos for amazing results. Here, we do have the outlier 21 times, but it's not getting a lot of views per hour, nothing of significance. So it's not showing up. But the next one, Use your iPhone like a professional photographer, full camera guide. We are getting 100 times or more times the video average, 122 videos per hour. This is pretty significant, I would say, for this particular channel of 75,000 subscribers. So the words being used in this title and the content or the ideas, the elements in the thumbnail. These are things that this particular channel or competition would want to take into consideration when creating future content. So that is it for installing and setting up the VID IQ browser extension. In the next video, I'll show you how to optimize titles to increase the probability of getting those clicks. See you in the next video. 5. Using Insights to Optimize Titles: In this lesson, we're going to learn how to use insights to optimize your YouTube video titles. As you know, a compelling title is crucial for attracting viewers and optimizing your videos performance. So follow this simple process. Number one, start by searching for videos in your niche. You can look for general topics related to general content or specific content or even look at your competitions. For example, go to one of your competitors channels, click on their videos and scroll through their titles. Again, the goal is to find videos that are performing exceptionally well. Those are your outliers. As you're going throughout this research, I want you to find five to ten particular outliers. Once you've found those five to ten outliers, take a screenshot of each one of those and be sure to include not only the thumbnail, but also the title together. If you're using a MAC, press Shift plus command plus four, and you'll be able to drag across the screen, and you will only need to highlight that particular content. And if you're a windows user, press Windows plus shift plus S to do the same thing. I suggest being organized. So either on a word document or maybe a Google Docs sheet or document, I would copy and paste all of those screenshots onto one particular document. And this is important not just for these screenshots, but also when we're writing titles or we're coming up with thumbnail ideas. Now, with these screenshots, look for any particular keywords or patterns that pop out in these titles. Look for common keywords and phrases that are used more than once or ones that you think might pop out or pique your own curiosity. Then after that, once you've looked through them, I would highlight, maybe in a different color, for example, red. I would highlight any of the words and phrases that are recurring, there's a pattern or that seem to be words and phrases that pique curiosity or interest. Once you've highlighted those, underneath those five to ten titles, copy and paste those words and phrases. Now you have a list of words and phrases that you can potentially combine to make your own unique titles. The next part is the fun part where you want to try and create, let's say, five or so unique titles that relate to a particular video idea and use some a combination of some of the keywords and phrases that you've identified. Now, you can do that yourself, play with it. It's a great creative exercise, or you can get a little help from AI namingly Chat GPT. Personally, I like using Chat GPT. And if you haven't done so before, I really suggest you try it. It can help you in so many ways, and if you didn't know, it's free to use. So let me show you how to get and use Chat GBT real quickly. You'll be happy that I did. Because on Chat GBT, you can input key words and phrases that you've identified and ask the AI to create or generate unique titles for you. This can save you time and give you creative inspiration for future videos. In your browser, go to apt.com. You can log in or sign up. If you want to sign up, just click on that button and you'll go through out this process. You'll get a free account. If you have an account already, just log in, and you should see a similar screen like you see right now. All you need to do here at the bottom is enter a question or request, and the AI should generate something for you. Now, these are called BOMs. I have created a special prompt for you, and this is available in the Project Resources tab in Skillshare. But I'll show you what that is right here. You can copy and paste or download that later. But let's look on the screen. I've got it right here, and this is how it goes. Hello, I need your help to generate some unique and compelling YouTube video titles. My video topic idea is and put in your video topic idea, whatever that is. Next, it states, I've identified the following keywords and phrases that are commonly used in successful videos in my knee. Now, you already have these ready. Just put them in here. Now, I've put down five. You can put in fewer or you can put in more. Then it says, Please create a list of ten video titles using these keywords and phrases. The titles should be catchy, intriguing and relevant to my niche content. Each title should be 60 characters or less. That's usually important. You don't want really long titles. Then press enter, and you will get fantastic results. Let's see what I got. Again, you can get a copy of this prompt in the Project and Resources tab. Once you've generated this list of titles, review the title suggestions generated by Chat GPT, and choose one that you like most. Make sure that it aligns with your idea, your video content idea, and that it's compelling enough to attract viewers. Remember, a well optimized title can significantly increase your videos click through rate and overall performance. Now that you have a clickable title for your video. The next thing we need to do is Find out how can we generate a clickable thumbnail that works in combination with your title to get more views. We'll do that in the next video. See you there. 6. Using Insights to Inspire Thumbnail Ideas: Now we're going to take another look at the screenshots you took earlier, so we can take a closer look at the elements that were used in the thumbnails of those videos. Those elements should help you be inspired to make your own future thumbnails. So first, let's go back and review those screenshots of outliers that we collected earlier. Mine were on aquariums. Next, identify and pull out specific design elements from these thumbnails. Look for patterns, such as color schemes, text placement, or any other visual cues that make these video thumbnails stick out. What I identified in the thumbnails that I chose with aquariums, I found that the item of interest was centered, for example, the aquariums, that white and yellow text was used with a black outline, that there's a one to four word maximum, which is pretty common and important in thumbnails, and that a lot of them used arrows. After identifying the elements that working with the thumbnails that you've taken screenshots of, go back to your document, whether it was Google Doc or Microsoft Word or whatever you're using and itemize those elements. Make a quick list. This will help serve you in just a moment. Now, take a look at those elements and think. How can you use a combination of those elements in conjunction or coordination with your title to make an interesting and intriguing thumbnail design. So what I've done is using this information, these elements. I've taken those, and I've put them together with the title I chose earlier, and I've made sort of a mock up of what I might use if this was my type of Tube channel. So once you've identified those elements, now it's time for you to put them together, two software packages are quite common that I suggest. Number one is Photoshop. This is more what the pros use, and there's a learning curve to using it. It's a little complicated, but you can make fantastic designs with it. However, it comes at a cost. You need to pay for it, and it's up to you whether you're at that point or not in your YouTube journey. If not, what I used before I started using Photoshop is a free software package online that's called Canva canva.com, so you can get it for free if you like. So if you're looking for something free, I suggest going with Canva. If so, check out the course description. And at the bottom, I've left a link to a previous class that I've taught specifically on how to create YouTube thumbnails using Canva. You may find that class valuable. Don't go there yet. It's still too early. You still need to get at least one killer YouTube title and thumbnail combination before you start designing. And the best way to do that is to take the advice I've given you so far in this course and put it into action. And that's your class project. The next thing you want to do is start your class project. That way, you'll be more certain to have the right title and thumbnail combination to get more clicks on your videos. So go to the next video lesson and let's check out your class project. 7. Class Project: Now, you are ready for your class project. This is where things get exciting. Here, you will apply what you've learned to create the packaging for your next YouTube video. By using the method and tools covered in class, this project should be both easy and fun to do. Here are the instructions. Step number one. Use VID IQ to find video outliers in your niche. Simply do this, open the browser that has the VID IQ extension. Search for videos in your niche and identify five to ten outlier videos that have significantly more views than the average for that channel. Then take screenshots of these videos, capturing both the titles and thumbnails. Step two, write and engaging and optimize video title. Review the titles of your outlier videos, identify common keywords and phrases used in these successful titles. Then use the insights that we've done to craft engaging and optimize titles for your own video. And to make things easier, if you'd like, use chat GPT to generate creative titles based on the identified keywords and phrases you've found. Next, number three, step three, choose design elements for your video thumbnail. Analyze the thumbnails of your outlier videos and note the design elements that make them stand out. For example, color schemes, text, text placement, facial expressions, symbols, and so on. Make a list of those elements you plan to use in your own thumbnail to compliment your video title next. And finally, onto number four, which is submission. The major thing you want to do is submit these three things. Number one, just simply list your video topic idea. Two, submit your title that you've chosen. And three, add a list of design elements that you plan to design for your thumbnail. Then upload these three things simply by clicking on the class project button. Note, you don't need to complete the actual thumbnail design. That's a different class, really. Instead, just provide a detailed description of the design elements that you plan to include in the thumbnail. That's all you need to do. Also, check out my short course in designing YouTube thumbnails in Canva. Link is in the course description. Thank you again. Thank you again for taking this course, and I look forward to seeing your class project submissions soon. Bye bye.