8 Content Ideas to Grow on YouTube in 2024

Growing a YouTube channel is often a challenging task and the answer for how to do it is not always obvious. Getting a new upgrade to your setup like a fancy microphone or an additional light might help make your content crispier, it won’t always lead to channel growth. And let’s be fair, we’ve all seen at least one low effort poor quality video that went viral. In reality, I’ve always said creating great content to gain more subscribers comes down to 3 pillars: Quality, Consistency and Innovation.

In this article, we’re looking at the last element of the 3: Innovation and content ideas. How to come up with new ideas, what is high performing content on YouTube, and what others have done to succeed.

#1 Ultimate Guides.

Ultimate Guides are self explanatory. These are usually very long format and a few viewers will keep coming back to them. Ultimate guides work best every 6 months or for a few different reasons:

• Ultimate guides are usually long and will generally lead to higher watch time which YouTube rewards with more views. However this is an artificial increase as you won’t be making long videos every day.
• Good ones take take a long time & effort to make and if they don’t they’re not worth doing.
• They pack a lot of information and it needs to feel fresh. The game also needs to change significantly for the guide to make sense.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oAObDw9EjGU&t=276s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjpcrRGgLGQ

💡 Pay attention to the increase in views compared to the regular video before/after guide.

#2 50 Tips

The 50 tips format is interesting because even if people might know a lot of these, they want to see just how many they know and maybe even learn something new. The crazier the tips the better. Remember: It’s one of the success metrics in: What Makes a Great Video

#3 Learning with / from Others.

Dantes - is one of the biggest league of legends streamers at the moment and doubled his numbers on Twitch and Youtube by challenging himself to become the best and started learning from every possible coach & streamer out there to improve.

Combining it with his entertaining personality, Dantes was able to go from 100k to 300k subs in 2023.

#4 - Coaching Other Pros / Streamers

It’s not a one way street. Just because the other person is making content from them being coached by you doesn’t mean you can’t do the same from the coaching PoV.

Grubby is a pro Warcraft 3 Player that got into Dota 2 for the first time towards the end of 2022 and started catching the attention of other pro players and coaches

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#5 Educational Smurf

Educational Smurf is a pretty simple concept to understand. Some communities really frown upon smurfing but it can forgiven when done in order to educate people. Start a fresh account and play in lower ranks to really explain everything you do and how you use fundamentals to dominate games.

2 out 3 of BSJ’s most popular videos are educational smurf. BSJ is the most popular Dota 2 coach.

This episode is more about showing the thought process and how simple basics can win you games without having to rely on crazy mechanics or in depth knowledge.

#6 Coaching VoDs as Content

If you have a good personality or interesting clients, you can build an entire brand on being a great video game Coach. If we take a look at Niece his entire archive is him coaching other students on various champions and topics. This is more similar to your gameplay streamers who just cut down one game and make it entertaining. This route can be viable.

If you don’t wanna try that, doing it every now and then when something out of the ordinary happens is still worth the effort.

The above video is a classic example of the delusional student who thinks he is better than he actually is and has been used to farm views on Youtube & Shorts.

#7 Find Your Niche

This is obviously something that can be challenging to figure out, but if you’re a coach, a pro player or top player and you have access to information most people don’t, then you can create videos on those topics. Again, if you can give people those aha moments where they realise there’s more to the game than they know, you’ve hit the jackpot.

Take a look at Spirit of the Law, a youtube channel dedicated to AoE2. If you know something most of your peers don’t, maybe you can find a nice and entertaining way to talk about it.

Another great example of somebody who dominates a niche is MrLlamaSC. He is a Diablo 2 Speedrunner and while he plays a lot of other games, he is known as THE Diablo 2 guy.

You might be thinking that this only works for these guys because their games are not as popular. You’re right to some extent, that does help them, because their competition is not as high as if you were a coach in League of Legends or Valorant. The secret here is to find new things to talk about that haven’t been done before. If you can’t find a new topic, think of a new perspective you can bring or a unique spin on something.

#8 Story Based Content.

While ideas are infinite the last one I want to leave you with today is content based around a story. Creating engaging narratives within your videos will be more interesting for your viewers especially if you plan on doing something over a long period of time. If you are grinding league valorant or any game really and you’re trying to get rank 1. Make a story out of it. Gather some footage over a few weeks and make a video documenting your journey.

If we step outside of gaming, this format has worked really well for in the sports & fitness era. Take a look at Browney who likes to do 30 to 90 challenges involving himself, his friends or his family and hitting millions of views.

There’s a story in each video. A challenge, a progression and a resolution. A recipe for any story regardless of shame, length or form (or platform platform).

Channels like Summoning Salt or Karl Jobst use story driven videos to talk about gaming achievements and speed runs, which could be a content category of its own.