47 Best YouTube Video Ideas for 2024 (ULTIMATE List)

Coming up with YouTube video ideas takes a lot of work. Saturated content, audience expectations, and the pressure to go viral stop many (potential) YouTubers dead in their tracks (before they even start).

The solution is to have a list of proven YouTube video ideas to run with.

Based on my experience building a YouTube channel with 175,000+ subscribers, this article will review the best video ideas for your channel.

I’ve also included niche-specific ideas for popular video categories.

What Are The Best YouTube Video Ideas?

Let’s start with general YouTube video ideas. These ideas apply to virtually any industry.

1. Behind-the-Scenes Tour

What happens behind the scenes of your business? How do you make your products and which processes do you follow?

If you can share something “secretive” with your followers, you build trust, credibility, and transparency.

2. Meet the Team

If you have multiple team members in your company, why not show them off to your YouTube audience? While you might be the front-facing person in your business, it’s great to show off the people who make the magic happen daily.

Humanizing your business and building a connection with your viewers is always good.

3. How-To Guides

Teaching people how to do things is excellent for educational content. It also positions you as the expert and shows people you know what you’re speaking about.

The how-to concept applies to all types of businesses. For example:

• restaurants showing how they prepare specific dishes
• freelancers running through their step-by-step process for how they create articles
• producers of music videos showing behind-the-scenes footage of what went into making their hit single.

4. Customer Testimonials

Telling people stories of others who were in the same position (before using your product/service)is a great way to get them to buy.

Testimonials show the before and after situations, making them great content pieces.

They also shift the focus from you (as the face of your brand) to customers. And when making a buying decision, other customers are always more relatable to your target audience.

5. Product Demonstrations

How do your products work? What’s unique about them, and what sets them apart from the competition?

Taking the time to tell people what they will gain from using your products (along with the various benefits they offer) can be a great way to address common questions while driving sales.

And using a video format is one of the best ways to share the ins and outs of your product.

6. Live Q&A Sessions

Want to show you believe in your product? Hosting live questions and answers is one of the ways to do this.

When people can jump on live videos and ask their unfiltered questions, you have to know what you’re speaking about. Being able to offer immediate answers gives you instant credibility.

This credibility is difficult to recreate using other types of videos.

Live Q&As are also great for encouraging real-time engagement and interaction.

7. Event Coverage

If you host events for customers (or if you’re a guest at someone else’s event), why not record a video and show what’s happening?

Trade shows, community events, or even workshops show your audience you’re not just waiting for them to find you. Instead, you’re actively involved in the community where people can see you.

Event coverage is an excellent opportunity to share your values and the things you stand against.

8. Expert Interviews

Thought leadership is a term that people throw around a lot. This refers to those who come up with new ideas and explore different ways of doing things.

Sharing expert interviews (either within your business or even with outside experts) is a great way to promote thought leadership.

9 Case Studies

Case studies go into more detail than testimonials. While they still show the before and after situation, they explore:

• the challenges people faced
• the solutions your product helped create and
• the results you can bring people.

People love case studies as they allow them to relate to others just a few steps ahead of them. This adds credibility to your product and service to help them achieve their desired success.

Creating this type of video also results in evergreen content. You can reuse this content for many months and years to come.

10. Product Launch Announcements

Launching a new product? Creating an exciting video to share all the hot details with your customers goes a long way.

Considering the 5W (+ 1H) questions. Think about the:

• Why
• What
• When
• Where
• who
• How

…of your new product. Help people see why they should become excited about what you’re offering.

11. Tips and Tricks

If you’ve found a new way to use a product or service, why not share it with the world? In any industry, the phrase “tips and tricks’ ‘excites people. These tap into our desire to take shortcuts to get the desired results.

Whether you’re sharing ways to use certain products more efficiently or general advice to make people’s lives better, your video content will be valuable.

12. Industry News Updates

Every industry is a fast-moving one nowadays. Sometimes, it’s a struggle for people to stay on top of all the new updates happening.

Why not create video content that curates the latest and best updates? Then, you present these updates in an easy-to-follow format.

This also makes it natural to add your insights to these updates, making you a thought leader. You can also suggest your products or services to help make people’s lives easier.

Win-win for everyone

13. Day in the Life

These popular videos involve letting your camera roll and capture footage as you go about your day.

If you have different people working at your company, you can create this type of video as they do their various tasks. A day-in-the-life video provides an interesting perspective on any position or role within a company.

From the delivery person to the CEO, viewers can learn something new from everyone.

14. User-Generated Content

People love to be part of the action. Publishing customer content is great for many reasons.

First, it shows your products used in the “real world”. It’s not you saying how great the products are. Instead, someone else is doing it, adding to the social proof.

Also, you don’t have to create content – if someone else is doing it. This frees up time to focus on other things.

Finally, it encourages customer engagement. The incentive to feature someone in your company’s videos is often enough to get people to act.

15. Company Milestones

Is it your company’s anniversary? Did you reach a certain number of subscribers or customers?

Sharing your joyful moments with others (while thanking them for their support) is a great way to humanize your company and let customers know what’s happening in your business.

16. Product Comparison

If you’re up to comparing your products with competitors’, it could be the best way to show authenticity as a business.

Being honest about both the pros and cons of your product isn’t easy. After all, no one likes to mention their weaknesses. However, as people, we have both of these aspects.

Showing that your business is no different helps people connect to your company and understand what you can offer them.

17. Tutorial Series

Sometimes, the best way to show how good a product is is by showing it in action.

A tutorial series (sometimes known as a walkthrough video series) showing different people using your product or service in various situations will get the job done.

Creating tutorial videos is an excellent resource investment to educate customers, get higher satisfaction levels, and decrease product confusion.

18. Customer FAQs

This is similar to a live Q&A, but you can go into more detail using a customer FAQ session. Here, you address the most frequently asked questions. Since you’ll record this session, you won’t have time pressure to get to the next question quickly.

Instead, you can take your time with each question. You can dive in as deeply as needed while speaking about tangents.

It’s also a great resource when people ask questions you’ve addressed in the future. You can refer them to recorded FAQ sessions to get their needed answers.

19. Challenges and Solutions

What are the most common challenges in your industry? How does your business offer solutions people can’t get with other products?

Sharing these challenge videos (and their solution) is a great way to show your expertise. It also shows customers you know what they’re going through.

20. Product Unboxing

Share a first-person view of what it’s like when unboxing your products. Focus on the sound, smell, touch, and overall experience of opening your product package.

If you want to build excitement when people order products (and convince those almost ready to buy), doing a product unboxing is a great video idea.

21. Underdog Success Stories

Everyone loves an underdog story. Seeing the struggles one has gone through to come out on the winning side inspires us to be better.

The same applies to any business brave enough to share its obstacles to audience growth, hitting goals, and becoming successful.

22. Community Engagement

Does your business give back to the community? Do you contribute to social causes, highlighting your company’s values and commitment?

Spending time highlighting these community engagements (and the good they’re doing) can go a long way.

Especially if your business values environmental issues as part of its mission, it becomes much easier to attract the right audience when you “give before you get”. Especially if you take the time to explain how you’re doing it.

23. Customer Journey

In a business, every customer typically goes through several steps.

Depending on the product or service, a customer might go all the way from “unaware” to “problem aware” to “solution aware” to “product aware” to “most aware” (Eugene Schwartz – Breakthrough Advertising).

Put yourself in the customer’s journey and create videos from your customer’s point of view at these different stages. After all, when you show someone you understand what you’re going through, it’s easier for them to arrive at the conclusion you have the answers they seek.

And if you’re selling a product or service, that could be the easiest way to make the sale.

24. Business History

How did you get into the business? What were your first few weeks/months/years like?

Were you ever close to giving up?

These are all questions you can create video content around. It’s also content that will add depth to your brand, helping viewers connect with the people behind the business.

25. Animated Explainers

The point with animated explainers is to use animations to break down and explain complex processes. This provides a different take on the “how-to tutorials” and “series”.

Whether you create products or services (or both), animation makes ideas more accessible to everyone.

If you agree with the phrase, “a confused mind doesn’t buy”, then give an animated video a shot. It’s an easy way to turn leads into clients.

26. Workspace Tour

If you work from a factory, an office, or a manufacturing area, why not show what goes on as you make the product?

Helping people understand a process’s complexities makes them appreciate it more.

27. Collaborations with Other Brands

Finding allies (offering complimentary products and services) and creating videos with them allows you to introduce your content to different audiences.

These collaborations can be worth their weight in gold both in the short and long term. It’s not only about the content you get out of these collaborations. It’s also about the people you meet and network with while creating this content.

You never know where an introduction might lead.

28. Customer Onboarding

“Future pacing” refers to getting someone to imagine a better life after they take a specific action.

How will their life improve if they buy your product or use your service?

While you can try to explain this verbally, what if you showed the typical onboarding process customers go through?

You might have to blur out sensitive information from being visible. However, if you can create an onboarding video that anyone can see, this can be very beneficial for your brand.

29. Holiday Specials

Here are some ideas for this one. You can create a video that:

• wishes people best wishes during the holiday
• mentions a product that’s only available during the festive season
• invite people to take you up on a product discount

There are many reasons for creating holiday-special videos. Your imagination is the only limit here.

30. Time-Lapse Videos

This all-time favorite video effect glues people to the screen and grabs their attention.

You can show your product being made, yourself working on your laptop, etc.

A time-lapse is a great way to condense lots of information in just a few seconds while giving a different perspective to your work life.

Many video editing software can create this type of video at the click of a button.

31. DIY Projects

People love watching do-it-yourself videos.

They help them get unstuck when following a process themselves. DIY videos also help people visualize what a completed project would look like.

DIY videos can be used in various industries and topics. Giving people this over-the-shoulder look is a great way to add familiarity to your business.

32. Product Customization

A bicycle shop near me offers people crazy customizations when buying a new bike. Some of the bicycles they end up building are insane.

The problem is that I didn’t know about this customization until after I bought my bicycle.

If they had advertised this ability to customize the bicycle, I might have spent a couple thousand dollars more and ended up with a fully customized product.

If you offer product customization, ensure customers know about the option. Even better, show people what’s involved in customizing their orders and examples of the customization during product development.

33. Gift Guides

I always need help with buying gifts for others.

If someone offered me videos guiding me through:

• the right decision-making process
• what questions do I need to ask myself to ensure I end up with the right product
• different options available
• etc.

…I’m sure I’d use the help.

The same applies to creating gift guides for your products or services.

Don’t assume people know the ins and outs of what you offer.

Instead, help them with their decision-making (especially during holiday seasons when they’re super busy), and they’ll thank you with their wallets.

34. Virtual Events

Hosting virtual events is easy and makes for great YouTube videos.

The ability for people to join your session with just a click of a button makes virtual events great for a broad audience.

You could even curate expert speakers where you don’t even have to speak yourself. At the same time, you get all the networking benefits of being the host of these events.

Specific Niche Video Ideas

Let’s now explore video ideas in specific niches.

Health and Fitness

• 35. Fitness & Wellness: If you can help people live a healthy lifestyle, you can create virtually unlimited content.
• 36. Fitness challenges: Can you offer a [x] day challenge to help people achieve a fixed goal? People love 21-day challenges (or a 6-week challenge) where the outcome is known beforehand.
• 37. Fitness routines for beginners: People often don’t get started because there’s so much information. If you can make it simple and organize the information in easy-to-follow tidbits, it’s not that hard to come up with educational and fun YouTube video ideas – while building up an audience

Food and Cooking

• 38. Cooking classes: Offering tutorials in a step-by-step format that helps the busy person cook tasty yet healthy meals is great for YouTube. You can build a great audience if you make your content with a particular group of people in mind (for example, think about cooking lessons for busy accountants or C-level executives who don’t have much time to prepare their food.
• 39. Culinary tours: What do people in different cultures eat? What are the pros and cons of each culture? You can create unlimited YouTube content to help people explore various cuisines.
• 40. Cocktail and Drink recipes: Creating lighter educational content that helps people chill after a long day at work can also work. There’s so much content you can create in this type of industry. The key is to understand your audience and what they’re after.

Fashion and Beauty

• 41. Style guides: Can you advise people how to dress on different occasions? Help people improve their style through your expertise and knowledge, and you’ll have a target audience that loves your YouTube video ideas.
• 42. Sewing & design: Sewing techniques aren’t as trendy of a topic as other fashion ideas. However, there are a lot of DIY enthusiasts who would love to get better at this skill.
• 43. Beauty & Makeup: This niche is great for providing step-by-step tutorials (or series) that help make someone look beautiful on the outside and feel gorgeous on the inside.
• 44. Skincare: What’s needed to maintain healthy skin? Should men and women follow the same routines?

Education & Learning

• 45. Book reviews: What’s the latest book you read that really impacted you? Can you share your takeaways with your audience and save them time? People are hungry for new information in the educational space.
• 46. Language learning tips: What’s the best way to learn a new language (and retain it)? Do you have experience teaching a language, or are you an avid student? No matter which side you’re on, there will be people who want to learn languages themselves and can benefit from your knowledge.
• 47. Time management and productivity: We live in a busy world where every moment seems filled with things to do. It pays to share your knowledge if you can help people manage their time better.

Travel & Adventure

• 48. Spending [X] days in a new country: How should people spend their time in a foreign destination if they have only 24 hours there? What if they have 48? Creating travel itineraries based on your experience (while sharing the lesser-known local places) is big in the travel industry.
• 49. Adventures & Exploration: Whether you’re a moto vlogger or a rock climber looking to embark on a new adventure, there’s something valuable to share in any content you create.
• 50. Travel Packing Tips: Some people love to pack their backpacks and fly away. The problem is they feel they need lots of stuff to take with them. Allay their fears and help them pack light with the experience you’ve gained through your travels.

Check out this list of travel video ideas for more content.

Business & Personal Development

• 51. Financial advice: People can’t get enough of budgeting, managing finances, and personal investment. At the same time, there’s a lot of unstructured information to sort through. Can you be the light that guides people to better financial literacy?
• 51. Public speaking tips: Most people want to improve their public speaking skills; however, it’s also the most feared skill (75% of people have this fear). You have an audience if you can build a process that takes someone from being shy to speaking in front of a group.
• 51. Health and safety tips: For most businesses, health and safety is crucial. It’s also something they deal with daily. For others, they know it’s important but aren’t sure how to start tackling it. This provides a gap for you to come in with your YouTube video ideas.

Other ideas for your next YouTube video include creating an:

• Reaction video
• Music video
• a prank video.
• A drone real estate video.

Before And After Your Videos

If you want your videos to succeed, great ideas aren’t enough.

Here are a few other factors you must consider before, during and after you create videos.

“Before The Video” Ideas

Here’s how to ensure your ideas have the best chance of success.

Understand Your Audience

Nothing beats knowing your audience. Having a pulse on what works (and what doesn’t) with your audience saves you lots of trial and error.

The best way to know this is to test things out. You must do the work before developing a gut instinct for what works.

You could also see what your competitors are doing in your niche to see which videos work best.

Consider Different Video Formats

Some industries are great for long-form content. Industries like education, finance, and technology attract people who want to dive deep into their topics of choice.

In more entertainment-based industries, the focus on short, engaging videos is at an all-time high.

This goes along with the point about understanding your audience.

Seeing which videos give the best result is the (only) way to go. You’ll have to test various formats before getting conclusive data.

Brainstorming Ideas

The above list can get you a long way when it comes to video ideas.

However, you should also explore current trends, see what successful YouTube channels are doing, and use your interests to develop ideas.

When you get good at brainstorming ideas, you’ll have unlimited popular YouTube video ideas you can create.

“After The Video” Ideas

Here’s what to consider when you’ve settled on your next video idea.

Your Audience’s Skill Level

Your audience watches your videos because they want to learn something. However, only some people are at a certain level of knowledge.

If you oversimplify your videos too much, you’ll lose out on those with more knowledge. If you make things too complicated, many beginners (who make up most markets) will tune out.

Finding the right balance is essential.

Provide Clear Explanation

The more videos you create, the better you get at explaining things.

If you can:

• simplify a concept in your head so you fully understand it, and then
• share it with others in a way that leaves no room for doubt

…your videos will become hard-hitting successes.

When someone understands they will get value by investing their time watching your videos, you start building a loyal audience of people who look forward to your content.

Provide Next Steps

What do you want your audience to do after they’ve watched your videos? Would you like them to visit your site and opt into your email list? Should they subscribe to your channel on YouTube?

Be direct and consistently seek to provide additional value.

The words “subscribe so you don’t miss the next video” do not hold much weight if your videos aren’t valuable.

Conclusion

The above video ideas can take your YouTube channel a long way. Even if you created a single video on each topic above, you’ll have enough data to analyze what’s working and do more of it.

Listen, I understand that getting started is often the most challenging thing.

However, it’s the only way to improve your skills as a video content creator.

Whether creating your first YouTube video or your 100th, use the above video ideas to help you with your content creation. Then add your own twists and keep doing what works.

Further reading on AdamEnfroy.com: Looking for more video ideas? Here are the funniest YouTube ideas for your channel. You can also read how to use the right YouTube intros to increase viewer retention.