As the 2nd largest search engine that processes over 3 billion searches per month, YouTube is one of the best websites to start an online career. However, before starting a YouTube channel, you’ll want to zero in on your niche.
Finding your best niche is one of the crucial elements of a successful YouTube career. Viewers will browse your content and ask themselves: Is this YouTube channel interesting for me?
For today’s post, we’ll provide some tips on discovering your genre and growing your YouTube channel.
What’s a Niche and Why It’s Important?
A YouTube niche is the topic, subject, or field to focus your video content. There’s a wide range of niches on YouTube, including general topics like:
- Gaming
- Tech
- Fitness
- Food/Cooking
- Travel
- Beauty/Fashion
- Health
- Finance
- Business
- Comedy/Humor
- Music
- Sports
While these are broader topics, you can go even deeper by exploring sub-genres.
Producing YouTube content about a specific field will help attract your ideal audience, which is the lifeblood of any growing channel. For example, instead of making content about cooking in general, you could narrow down your niche by focusing on vegan recipes. This type of clear focus is referred to as “niching down.”
And then there’s YouTube’s recommendation system.
With a focused niche, YouTube’s algorithm can readily serve your content to users with similar interests. Furthermore, when you’re attracting the right audience, the better your engagement metrics are (views, likes, subscriptions, etc.). If your video is receiving engagements either organically or by buying YouTube likes at videosgrow.com for cheap, the more likely it’s to be featured in relevant search results and Recommendation section.
Conversely, if you cover very broad topics, your content will look random and disjointed and receive fewer recommendations. Plus, establishing an audience becomes more difficult since most users will quickly unsubscribe if you put out videos that don’t interest them.
Zeroing in on your niche differentiates your channel from a sea of competitors. With a consistent theme, you’ll have a more coherent catalog for users who have discovered and think, “whoa, I’m all for this type of content and I want to see more.” Finally, you can own your specialized genre and become an expert, increasing your credibility as a content creator.
Tips on How to Find Your YouTube Niche
Resist the urge to publish videos about anything and everything, and hope for the best. Because newcomers like you don’t have a massive following to establish your legitimacy. Therefore, here are some tips for determining your niche and getting your YouTube career off the ground.
1. Begin with a General Category You’re Passionate About
The first step is to identify a niche that you’re passionate about, even if it’s a broad theme. In reality, not every YouTube channel starts in a hyper-focused genre. But you must be passionate about the subject, especially if you’re planning to build a career around it.
Starting and growing a channel means a consistent upload schedule. Without passion, you’ll get bored of shooting and editing videos in no time. In addition, it’s difficult to sincerely discuss a topic you have no interest in.
This step requires you to internalize and think of topics you personally enjoy. Think of topics and pursuits that you can talk about for hours and have spent time improving. Make a list of subjects you’re genuinely fascinated with – this is an important distinction because you don’t want to keep making content for topics you’re only slightly interested in.
Also, contrary to popular belief, you don’t have to be the authority or expert of your chosen niche. Just find something you genuinely enjoy and share it with the world.
2. Analyze the Competition
Establishing a niche isn’t just about pursuing a passion or hobby. Once you’ve chosen a general category, check out what the other creators have done. What if your chosen topic already has hundreds or even thousands of creators, and they have a significant subscriber base? If so, it becomes harder for you as a beginner unless you choose a less competitive niche. Simply copying other content creators will make it more difficult to grow your channel.
Open a browser in private or Incognito mode, and search for your prospective topics on YouTube. Set your search filter to “Channel” to show results from creator channels instead of the usual video results. How prevalent are the top-ranking results? If the initial page shows big channels with millions of subs, you may want to condense your topics further.
Use the Google Keyword Planner tool to research and discover new keywords and related search terms. This tool also indicates how popular and competitive your keywords are.
3. Finalize Your Niche
Once you get a firm grasp of your prospective niche and its competitive landscape, the next point is to narrow your focus.
Begin by identifying what value you’re offering to viewers through your videos – the value proposition. Do you want to educate, entertain, or inspire through your content? Although your channel may feature different content types, consider the main factors that will enable your channel to attract new and returning viewers.
To establish your channel’s value proposition, you should answer these questions:
- What value does my audience receive from watching my videos?
- Why should viewers care about my channel’s content?
- What can I offer to encourage new and returning viewers?
There’s a wide spectrum to specificity, and even the most niche topics have loyal fanbases. For instance, check out The Retro Future, a channel with over 400k subscribers dedicated to Nintendo’s handheld gaming peripheral, the GameBoy. Gaming is one of YouTube’s top spheres, but the creator was able to find success by narrowing down his focus to reviewing and customizing GameBoy devices.
Once you’ve zeroed in on your niche, it’s time to think of concepts for videos.
4. Start Making Videos and Post Them
While planning is crucial, at some point, you’ll have to get your channel going by making and publishing videos. Based on your passion, research, and defined niche, your next steps are developing video ideas, writing the script, and filming the videos.
After you have published several videos, make sure to check out your account’s channel and video analytics that give you insights about what works or not.
Look at the reports and keep an eye on metrics like view count, likes, comment likes, traffic sources, viewer demographics, etc. These data can help you zero in and further narrow down your topical scope.
Finding a YouTube niche isn’t the all-important element, but it does set you up for success.
Speaks from heart, always too passionate and driven by emotions. Spins the words with kindness & sharpness, intriguing your ever-inscrutable minds.
