WhyItsTrending.com is a video series I created in 2018 with my production partner Oscar Estrada. We’d been making videos for about 3 years together, and we noticed that a lot of popular videos on YouTube followed a lot of the same storytelling conventions.

This channel breaks down the hidden strategies used by top YouTube creators. Regular people, just like you and me, constantly upload videos that get over 1 million views. But what makes their content more engaging than their competitors? Strategy.

How binging with babish exploded

This is Andrew Rea. In 2015 he began uploading his unique style of cooking videos to YouTube. But underneath all of the lighting, editing, and camera work, he incorporated a ton of strategy into the format of his show. This led him to having one of the most popular shows on YouTube, with over 3.5 million subscribers.

SMOSH’s Comedy Formulas

SMOSH is the most popular sketch comedy channels on YouTube. They constantly get tens of millions of views on their sketch comedy videos. Here’s a breakdown of all of the strategies they use to do that.

Food Storytelling

Tons of magazine publications have had to figure out how to exist in the competitive online video landscape. Bon Appétit is a shining example of this. They’ve figured out a way to take cooking to a storytelling art. Here, we breakdown exactly how they do that.