How to Find Your Next Video Idea in Your YouTube Comments (A Repeatable Process)

October 10, 2026 · 6 min read

Every creator has run out of ideas at some point. The surprising part is that the answer is usually sitting in the comments, repeated by several different viewers, and still gets missed.

The reason is simple: we remember the vivid comments, not the frequent ones. Here is a process that reverses that.

Step 1: Collect comments from more than one video

One video's comments reflect one topic and one audience slice. Pull comments from your last five to ten uploads, and include older ones that still get views. Requests that show up across several videos are far more reliable than a single burst.

Step 2: Group them by what they're about, not by how they sound

Read quickly and sort comments into themes. Typical groups:

  • Requests: "can you do a video on ___?"
  • Questions: "how do you ___?" (every question is a possible video)
  • Complaints or friction: audio, pacing, a confusing step
  • Praise: what people specifically liked
  • Everything else: jokes, spam, off-topic

Doing this by hand works for a few dozen comments. Past that, a comment-analysis tool will do the grouping and show counts. Comment Pulse does this and has a free plan to try it on one video.

Step 3: Count, don't remember

For each theme write down how many comments fall into it, and what share of the total that is. A request raised by 12 out of 100 comments is a very different signal from one raised twice. This is the step that turns a hunch into a ranked list.

Step 4: Rank by frequency and intensity

Frequency is how many people asked. Intensity is how strongly: "would love this" versus "I've been waiting for this for a year". Sort your themes by both. A smaller group with strong intensity can beat a bigger group that is casually curious.

Step 5: Validate before you film

Treat comment themes as a shortlist, not a verdict:

  1. Search YouTube for the topic and look at autocomplete. Is there demand beyond your own audience?
  2. Check how many good videos already exist, and what they miss. Your comments often tell you exactly what they miss.
  3. Look at whether similar videos from your own channel performed well.

Step 6: Turn the theme into a title in your viewers' words

The best titles use the phrasing your audience already uses. If viewers keep asking "how do I fix X without Y", that sentence is half your title.

Traps to avoid

  • The vocal minority. A handful of people can write many comments. Count unique viewers where you can, and be wary of one very active commenter skewing a theme.
  • Sarcasm and in-jokes. Both read as sentiment to software and to skimmers alike. Check the raw comments behind any surprising theme.
  • Mixed languages. If your audience writes in several languages, themes can split and look smaller than they are.
  • Old comments. A theme that dominated last year may be irrelevant now. Weight recent uploads more.
  • Chasing every request. Some requests don't fit your channel. The goal is a shortlist that matches what you want to make.

Make it a habit

Do this after every upload, or monthly if you post often. The value compounds: after a few rounds you can see which topics keep returning and which were one-off spikes. For more on reading the results, see how to analyze YouTube comments and using audience feedback to grow your channel.