How Do You Find Out What Your Audience Wants?
How Do You Find Out What Your Audience Wants?
Don't guess — ask and listen. Ask directly at the end of your videos and in a written post, read the recurring questions in your comments, and watch which videos people finished. And note an important rule: what people say they want and what they actually watch aren't always the same, and behaviour is more honest than words.
Why guessing is expensive
Every video you make costs you hours. Guessing means spending those hours on a subject that may interest nobody.
Worse, a wrong guess repeats itself: you assume the problem is execution and improve that, when the problem was the subject.
The fix is simpler than it looks: people will tell you what they want if you ask, and their behaviour tells you even when they don't speak.
Method one: ask directly
The simplest approach and the most neglected.
At the end of a video: "What would you like me to cover next?" — one question in the last ten seconds.
In a written post: ask something specific rather than general. "What's the hardest part of filming for you?" beats "What do you want?"
A specific question produces specific answers. A general one produces "anything" and "whatever you think."
Method two: polls
Most platforms offer polls with options. They're useful because they cost the participant no effort, so more people take part.
Use them to choose between defined alternatives: "Which video first: A, B, or C?"
Don't use them for open questions. The options you write limit answers to what you already thought of, and what they want may sit outside your list entirely.
Method three: recurring questions
This is the strongest signal there is, because a repeated question is proven demand rather than an opinion.
Note every question that recurs in your comments or messages. If three people asked, thirty didn't.
How to capture these while replying is covered in How Should You Reply to Comments?
Method four: read behaviour, not words
This is the most important point in the article.
What people say they want isn't always what they watch. They may ask for "deep, detailed" content and then leave in the third minute, while finishing a simple video nobody requested.
That isn't dishonesty. People describe what they wish they wanted, and watch what they actually want.
So look at:
- Which of your videos people finished
- Which ones someone came back to a second time
- Which ones people shared unprompted
These are honest answers requiring no question. How to read them is covered in After Publishing: Reading a Video's Performance and Feeding It Back Into Your Ideas.
The practical rule: when what they said conflicts with what they did, believe what they did.
Method five: talk to one person
Ten minutes with a single subscriber gives you what a hundred-response poll won't.
Pick someone who comments regularly and ask: what made you subscribe? Which video didn't work for you, and why? What are you looking for and not finding?
Open answers surface things you never considered, while a poll only confirms or denies what already occurred to you.
What not to do
Don't act on every request. Some come from one person and concern only them. Act on what recurs, not on what's asked once.
Don't let your audience steer the channel entirely. You know your subject better than they do, and they may ask for something that pulls you away from your identity. Listen, learn, then decide yourself.
Don't ask before you have an audience. Early on, experiment first and ask later. A question in a video three people watch tells you nothing.
Collect the answers in one place
Requests scattered across comments, messages and polls get lost unless gathered.
Log every recurring request in your idea backlog the moment you see it, with how many people asked. After a month you'll have a list ordered by actual demand rather than your guesswork — the best content plan you could obtain.