Finding content ideas can at times prove challenging. One of the best places for any business to find subjects for content is in the conversations that your audience is already having. Brands that tune into the conversations relevant to their audience connect with their audience. Finding that conversation requires some simple research, and social media has made that easy.

YouTube is one of the most popular social media channels, with 2 billion monthly users and a 74% market penetration rate in the US, which is ahead of Facebook’s 68%. The site had a massive resurgence in 2020 as lockdowns in many parts of the world drove people online to explore new hobbies, find DIY solutions and even access alternative entertainment.

Trending topics offer valuable content

If a topic is trending on YouTube you can reduce your metric and volume research time because you already know the topic is reaching audiences.

Your research time is also reduced because trending topics tend to be fresh, contemporary and based on current affairs. As an added aside, new topics also tend to rank higher on Google because there is less competition in key search terms, so it places any content searches that align with your content at the top of results. Most marketers spend time looking at historical data and working on existing search terms, so optimizing on new and trending keywords can give your website an advantage over your competitors.

One of the other major advantages of drawing inspiration from YouTube is your ability to provide a more comprehensive written piece that covers the topic from a different angle. It is unlikely that a video will cover every aspect of a topic, so when you are watching trending content, you can listen for gaps, write questions and find the gaps in the content. This then becomes your place for content creation.

When you take the time to understand a trending topic and find the ways in which you can expand upon a topic, you create a valuable addition to the conversation that your audience will engage with. They will also choose to engage with your content if there is a gap in the conversation because your content might be the only answer, or one of a few answers, that audiences are seeking, which means greater engagement with your content from audiences.

How to Find Content Ideas From Trending YouTube Content

There are many ways you can use YouTube to discover trending content that is relevant to your industry. This is a summary of 8 of the best ways to access trending content and make it relevant to your audience.

Use Tools

There are a couple of YouTube-focused tools that make it easy to discover trending topics on the platform. TubeBuddy and vidIQ are two tools that can be very useful.

TubeBuddy is a certified extension packed with features. The Keyword Explore tool helps you find topic ideas, discover trending tags and create long-tail search terms.

vidIQ is a set of YouTube growth tools that gives creators everything they need to build their channels. It also has an awesome keyword research tool that helps you find relevant and trending tags.

Use Google Trends

Google Trends is a great place to find popular YouTube topics. Google Trends doesn’t show search volume for each query, but it does show the relative popularity of search terms.

“Trends adjusts search data to make comparisons between terms easier. Each data point is divided by the total searches of the geography and time range it represents, to compare relative popularity.” According to Google.

Google Trends makes it easy to see what’s trending on YouTube specifically. When you enter the Trends section of Google and search for the top trending queries and topics, you can change the “Web Search” to “YouTube Search” and then narrow the search for your relevant category. Google will then serve up a list of the top trending topics and queries.

Go Niche

When you’re assessing trending content, you could find one little nugget of gold that you can focus your content on, offering a niche perspective on a subject. This type of close investigation of a subject can be very appealing to audiences, especially if you are covering a topic that others have neglected to do a deep dive into. This type of investigative content can also become evergreen content if it is a subject that is not only trending, but that forms part of the foundation of a larger subject.

Hashtags

Hashtags are the clickable words or phrases listed under every video giving audiences a brief of what the video is about. Hashtags also help you find similar content that addresses a topic from a different angle, giving you a broader picture. YouTube sorts videos with the same hashtags and others with related content with the top related content with high-view numbers listed at the top.

These videos are guaranteed to be related to the topic you’re interested in, with the content already curated to deliver you the best first. This means that researching a subject and finding new angles is even easier.

You can also use YouTube hashtag generators to uncover even more hashtags for your research. These include:

• Hashtags for Likes
• Ksparser
• Rapid Tags

Be Inspired By Your Competitors

If your competitors are using YouTube, and their content is popular, then it is likely that if you take notice of what they are doing and make your own content using the same topic, it will also be popular and draw an audience.

You can see the view numbers at the bottom of videos and the number of likes videos are getting. If you examine our competitors’ content you can find subjects that are interesting, perhaps areas that have been missed or brushed over and topics that might need more attention and expansion. Examining your competitors’ content is a great way to tap into an existing audience with content proven to connect. Just be sure to put an original spin on your content and add value to the audience who choose to engage with your content.

YouTube has a Trending Page

Access YouTube’s Trending tab to find the subjects that are getting attention in your industry. This section of YouTube displays a wide range of videos that are trending in your country ranked by popularity. The section is updated every 15 minutes so it really is fresh and you can always find something relevant to your target audience.

YouTube ranks trending videos using a metric that measures videos that:

• are not misleading or sensationalised
• appeal to a broad audience
• showcase diversity and creativity
• capture the zeitgeist
• are surprising or novel

YouTube considers metrics like video view numbers, where those views are coming from, how old the video is, and how the video compares with similar recent content on the platform.

However, this also means that the most popular video on YouTube on a given day does not necessarily rank number one:

“This means that the video with the highest view count on a given day may not be #1 on YouTube Trending, and videos with more views may be shown below videos with fewer views. Even if your video meets all the above criteria, it may not appear on YouTube Trending, as many other videos may also meet those criteria.”

So while trending can be useful, it is important to remember that the Trending tab content isn’t personalized to users and shows the same videos to all users in the same country, making the content topics very broad. It does give you an idea of the subjects that are trending, giving you a direction or lead for the subject matter.

Read the Comments

The comments section of your competitors’ YouTube can be a great place to source ideas for your content. While some comments sections can be difficult to read, many will give you really consistent messaging about what your audience is wanting, what your competitor is missing and what they do very well – which can help you better narrow your USP.

Most audiences will tell you what they want to know more about, and what they want answers to. While your competitor might be ready to answer that question too, you can always start work on unique content that satisfies your audience, fast.

Use Predictive Search

YouTube is the world’s second-biggest search engine. It has a very efficient predictive search feature that makes it easy to find relevant trending topics.

When you enter a seed keyword into the search box, YouTube will suggest a limited number of related topics. These suggestions are based on popularity. If the search returns a relevant topic, it’s because your relevant audience has also searched for that topic in relation to that subject.

Conclusion

YouTube is not only a great way to connect with audiences with your unique content, it is also a wealth of content information and topic suggestions, based on what audiences actually want to engage with. When you invest in content creation, it is important to also invest the time in research to understand what audiences will engage with.