Shifting my YouTube focus from Philosophy to Psychotherapy
(Current stats: 157 subs, 199 public watch hours.)
I started my YouTube journey this year because I enjoy creating content and felt like I could fill a niche I personally wanted to see more of (new ideas or relatively new takes on ideas - as opposed to describing different pre-existing ideas).
That said, I haven’t been too strategic (or strategic enough) with my video topics or 'branding.' It felt a bit premature to think about that seriously, since I was still relatively new to content creation (I still am). So, this year has mainly been about getting comfortable with the workflow and figuring out my identity as a creator.
While I did experiment with some random videos, most of my content has been centered around philosophy and mental health topics, which is where my interests naturally gravitate.
As for my niche, and what I looked forward to work on, it's indeed changed a bit. At first, as I said, I wanted to make content that introduces new ideas or reintroduces them in a different way (on psychology/philosophy topics), but lately I've been meaning to make a shift towards something that I've become passionate about and that I will later do professionally - psychotherapy.
I’ve been especially inspired by Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT), which has totally blown my mind (hey, future video idea). There are various creators who are clinical psychologists and who make videos approximating what I have in mind (Patrick Teahan and Dr Julie come to mind), with the exception that the former's content revolves around trauma therapy, and the latter's revolves around self-improvement and clinical psychology. What I want to do now is introduce Emotion-Focused therapy to the public and (psychoeducation-wise) reintroduce what therapy can and cannot do/ what the therapy process looks like/ the complex role and function of emotions in all this, etc...
Here’s where I’m stuck, though: About six months ago, when I was putting less effort into my editing, I was seeing (relatively) better engagement, in the sense that I’d spend a few days on a sub-5-minute video, and every extra dozen views made it feel worthwhile. Then, in August, I dedicated the whole month to improving my content—learning some Davinci Fusion, refining my audio a bit, working on better thumbnails and titles (which I thought I had figured out but clearly didn’t). I posted a longer video (for my channel’s standards), which flopped hard. I’m not sure anymore what’s best for my channel, but here’s where I’m leaning:
- Keep posting regularly and trust that the algorithm will eventually find my audience, especially now that I have a clearer content vision (and likely I'm just psyching myself out).
- Consider finally filming myself instead of sticking with an avatar, which I’ve been using mainly due to budget constraints.
- Possibly return to the more niche, idea-introducing, philosophy-leaning content that I initially started with, and consider making a separate channel for EFT.
- Start anew with content targeting a Romanian audience (my home country, where videos on this topic are even more niche)
What do you think? Any thoughts or advice would be super appreciated!