Testing Out Different Video Styles: Find Your Perfect Fit
When starting a YouTube channel, it can take a lot of trial and error to find your optimal style and format. What engages your audience may differ from what you personally enjoy making as a creator.
To discover my perfect video groove, I committed to testing a wide variety of formats that took me way outside my comfort zone. After extensive experimentation with different styles over several months, here’s what I learned:
News-Style Commentary Videos
I don’t normally make heavily opinion-led commentary reacting to things in the news. But I challenged myself to start making analytical commentary videos reacting to the latest headlines and trends within my niche.
Result: This format felt very inauthentic to me. While the news-style commentary videos performed decently view-wise, I didn’t enjoy the process of hastily reacting to things in the headlines versus creating more evergreen educational content.
Interview-Style Videos
I stepped out of my comfort zone to try filming interview-style videos, collaborating with fellow creators and experts in my niche to talk one-on-one and provide valuable insider wisdom to share with my audience. But filming interviews felt more stiff and structured than my usual improvised off-the-cuff video style.
Result: The interview videos were beneficial for gaining insights to share, and they still got solid views. However, they felt like more work than fun to film and edit. Interview videos also required relying on others’ availability versus me being able to create videos completely solo on my own schedule.
Relatable Comedy Sketches
This was a major departure for me, but I challenged myself to step way outside my box to write and perform exaggerated comedy sketches poking fun at struggles that my niche audience would find relatable and amusing.
Result: This style of video was WAY out of my comfort zone, but ended up being the most fun to create out of anything I tried! The comedy sketches also performed incredibly well with my audience, getting very high engagement. Turns out I’m not half bad at comedy and humor even though I never would have guessed it.
Fast-Paced Listicle Videos
I experimented with making snappy listicle-style videos where I quickly ran through informative tips, product recommendations, hacks, and other bite-sized information related to my niche – all presented with fun cutting between shots and graphics for each point.
Result: These fast-paced informational list videos matched my teaching style perfectly. Condensing more complex niche topics into simple numbered lists felt like a natural fit for how I like to present information. Definitely a keeper!
Vlog-Style Videos
I gave daily vlog-style videos a try, filming casually about my day-to-day life and behind-the-scenes activities related to my niche. It was a big change of pace from my usual tightly scripted videos.
Result: Vlogging was enjoyable to try, but my audience responded much better to more focused, intentional educational tutorials. While fun to make, the free-flowing casual vlog format didn’t perform nearly as well view-wise for my niche.
Step-By-Step Tutorials
I spent time developing detailed step-by-step tutorial videos where I broke down important processes related to my niche from start to finish. I took my time editing these videos cleanly with graphics, chapters, and voiceover carefully explaining each step.
Result: In-depth, thorough tutorials like this have become the backbone of my channel. My audience consistently responds that they find this teach-by-showing educational format the most helpful for actually learning complex skills related to my niche.
Testing the waters with a wide variety of content styles outside my comfort zone ultimately gave me valuable clarity on which video formats best fit my brand, strengths, and audience’s needs versus just reactively following wider YouTube trends and formats.
I realized that detailed, educational step-by-step tutorials are what I excel at creating and what my audience finds most helpful above anything else. But being adaptable and occasionally branching out has benefits too. Overall, don’t be afraid to experiment with new formats, but stay true to your unique voice – making videos you genuinely enjoy making will in turn delight your audience.
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What video styles have you tested or considered experimenting with on your YouTube channel? Share your key takeaways and format findings in the comments!
