Whether you’re a new YouTuber or you’re looking to create your own channel, you probably already know that the first thing you need to do to become successful is to start making content. But what kind of content should you make? To figure out what you should focus on first, as yourself three questions:

• WHO are you making your content for?

• WHAT is the focus of your content?

• WHY are you creating videos in the first place?

Considering the Who, What, and Why will help get your creative juices flowing enough to start brainstorming new ideas for content. Keep reading to learn more.

1. Who are you making your content for?

The primary purpose of this question is to find your target audience. Can you describe your ideal viewers? You should be able to identify:

• Their interests,

• Where do they live?

• Are they male or female?

• How old are they?

• What other youtubers do they watch?

If you can describe your ideal viewer, it’ll be easier to focus on things that you know that they’ll want to watch and learn from you.

2. What is the focus of your content?

If you don’t have an idea yet, thinking about what you are passionate about or what you’re good at is probably a good place to start.

• Pick a category. The category you choose will serve as a basic starting point and can be broad. For example, you can choose from hair, beauty, lifestyle, cooking, etc.

• Choose a narrow niche in your category. For example, if you decide to use cooking as your content focus, narrow it down to a specific type of cooking – such as grilling. It can be narrowed down even further, by starting off with grilling on a particular type of grill.

It’ll be a lot easier to grow a channel and stand out on the crowded YouTube space as a new YouTuber if you have a narrower niche. After you’ve gained some traction and amassed a larger number of followers, you can then broaden your content. (I plan on going into more detail on niches in further videos, which can be found here.)

3. Why are you making YouTube videos?

The reason behind why you decided to create your channel has an impact on how fast you’ll need to grow and how much content you’ll need to create.

• If you just want to express creativity: It doesn’t really matter how fast you grow. You might only want to gather a small audience who share your interests and creative talent.

• If you’re trying to grow a business outside of YouTube: While you won’t need millions of subscribers, you will need to attract a small target audience that you can sell your products to.

• If you’re looking to make money from your YouTube channel: You’ll need a much larger viewing audience and more views per video in order to attract affiliates, collaborators, and sponsors. This will require more time, and more frequent video uploads.

You don’t need to have all the perfect answers to the who, what, and why right away, but give it a fair bit of thought so that you have a roadmap for success. You need to have a starting point, and you have to know where you plan on going.

Once you have a plan mapped out and you know your end goal it’ll be a lot easier to create your content. Start by coming up with a list of no less than 100 video ideas. While you can add ideas to your list as they come to you, make sure your list is complete before you start creating videos. If you can’t come up with a list of 100 ideas, you probably picked the wrong topic.

No one’s videos are perfect at the beginning. But, there’s no way to improve until you film, edit, and post a LOT – and your list of 100 ideas will help you get there. Creating a YouTube channel definitely isn’t easy, but I’m here to answer any questions you may have.

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