tl;dr
- An “outlier” video isn’t a viral hit. It’s a video that dramatically outperforms other videos in a specific channel.
- Spotting outliers on your own channel is easy after the fact. The magic happens when you can spot them happening for other channels in your space that are close to your size and before you’ve tried the format/topic yourself.
- TubeBuddy’s new Content Outliers tool surfaces real outlier videos sized to your own channel, explains why each one worked, gives you a ready-to-film video concept, and even lets you be the first creator in your niche to create a video from a winning concept.
Wishing for videos to go viral is not a YouTube success strategy. Looking for outlier YouTube videos on your channel and across your space so you can learn what’s working and ride the wave of interest, is.
What is a YouTube outlier video? Simply put, it’s one that takes off, outperforming other videos. It’s not a viral video. But you might say it’s “gone viral” relative to the channel’s usual numbers. So if you regularly pull in X views and a video does 4-5X, that’s an outlier… and it’s a signal. Views surged because of something about the video — the topic, the keyword, the format… something. Figuring out what that “something” is so you can replicate it in future videos is a smart way to grow on YouTube.
Outliers are easy to spot in your own channel. They’re much harder to see across other channels in your niche.
Or at least, they were much harder to spot in other channels in your niche.
Content Outliers is a new TubeBuddy feature that does the outlier research for your channel and other channels that share your content space. It doesn’t stop at handing you videos to watch and reverse-engineer. It tells you why the break-out videos worked and gives you a starting concept so you can tap into the same strategy for success.
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What is a YouTube outlier video?
As we said in the intro, an outlier is a video that significantly outperforms the baseline average for the channel. Take two numbers: what a channel’s videos usually do (average views) compared with the view numbers for a specific video. If there’s a big difference, it’s an outlier.
For example, if a channel averages 300,000 views and one video pulls in 1.4 million, that video is an outlier and there’s valuable intel that can help your next video to perform as well or even better.
What the outlier video numbers tell you
It’s not hard to see when a video is pulling big numbers. What’s harder to see is why a given video was a runaway success and how that lesson can be applied to future videos.
There is valuable information to be pulled from your own outlier videos but when you zoom out to see outlier videos from other creators in your space too, you can strike gold. Patterns begin to emerge that can inform not just your next video topic but your entire content calendar. Maybe even your whole channel strategy.
Introducing Content Outliers
Content Outliers is a new TubeBuddy Labs tool for surfacing exactly this: outlier videos all across YouTube or just within your niche, filtered to be relevant to your channel, audience, and approach. It doesn’t just find outlier videos. It gives you video intelligence to replicate their success along with fully baked content ideas that adapt the outlier video’s secret sauce to be relevant to your niche and to your content specifically.
The “All Related Videos” wall
In the “All YouTube” view in Content Outliers you can see real videos currently outperforming their own channels’ baselines. This list is scaled to your channel size and holds valuable information, but it hasn’t been filtered to be directly relevant to your content. It’s a good starting point. By viewing outlier videos from channels of a similar size, you might discover new hooks you can adapt, new pacing and edit ideas, or just get a sense of broad trends that the most successful videos from other creators share.
Narrowing to your space
Set up a niche group in TubeBuddy by adding other channels you admire (maybe even envy?) in your content space. Doing this opens up two powerful views on video outliers. First, you’ll see the breakout videos happening in your content space specifically. By choosing the “only untried” view, you can filter for trends and successful tactics that the most successful videos (outliers) across across all of YouTube reveal and be the first creator to bring those tactics in your niche. In other words, your channel can ride a successful strategy before other creators in your niche even know what’s happening.
And consistently outperforming other channels is how you become the leading channel in your niche.
A ready-to-film concept for a successful YouTube video
Content Outliers turns all this intel into real video ideas you can run with right away. We’ll even give you a ready to script video title and description that’s ready for you to turn it into your next outlier video.
Save the best YouTube content ideas for later
On YouTube, it pays to move fast. But you can’t do everything all at once. Save video ideas surfaced in Content Outliers where they’ll join ideas from other TubeBuddy tools like Next Video Ideas to create a full content calendar and you’ll never be stuck trying to figure out what your next video should be about.
How to use Content Outliers
- Open the “All Related Videos” tab in TubeBuddy. This is the fastest way to see the feature working and get a feel for what an outlier actually looks like once.
- Set up a niche group: if you haven’t already added other channels to your niche, do it now to narrow down and make content recommendations specific to your niche. This also allows you to filter for outlier tactics that other creators in your niche are sleeping on with “only untried” and other views.
- Open a video that catches your attention: click to watch any of the outlier videos and see how the concept or tactic can be applied to your next video.
- Save anything worth coming back to: Click to save ideas that feel like a fit for your content strategy. Saved ideas sit alongside ideas you’ve saved from other TubeBuddy tools and can become a complete content calendar, perfectly customized for your channel.
Who is Content Outliers for?
Content Outliers is built for creators who want to grow their channel but feel like they can’t break out. Maybe they’re tapped out of new format ideas and are looking for a little inspiration. Maybe they feel like they’re running on a hamster wheel; working hard, moving fast, but not getting where they want to be.
If you’ve ever struggled to come up with video ideas, or if you’ve got ideas but you struggle to validate them as good ideas that your audience will respond to, Content Outliers is for you.
Try Content Outliers for yourself
What Content Outliers really does is give you content ideas that are specific to your channel and your niche based on the most successful videos from across YouTube and within your content space.
Get an unfair advantage on YouTube
Give your YouTube channel the upper hand and easily optimize for more views, more subs, and more of every metric that matters.
Get Started
FAQ: Outlier YouTube videos and the lessons they teach
A video that performs dramatically above its own channel’s normal baseline, expressed as a multiplier (a video running at several times a channel’s usual views, for example). It’s relative to that specific channel, not a fixed view count that applies to everyone.
No. It surfaces real, already-proven videos with the reasoning behind their performance, but nothing about applying that reasoning to your own channel is guaranteed. Treat it as research, not a promise.
No, but you should. The “All Related Videos” wall works immediately with no setup. Setting up a niche group unlocks the narrower, space-specific views on top of that.
Every video Content Outliers surfaces is a real, named video that’s already outperforming, with a stated reason it worked, not a generated suggestion with no source behind it.
They land in TubeBuddy’s Saved Ideas tab, alongside ideas saved from other TubeBuddy tools like Next Video Ideas, so everything you’re considering lives in one place.