I’ve got some good news and some bad news for you.

Let’s start with the good one first: YouTube users watch 1 billion (!) hours of content daily. Meaning: there’s a vast audience pool you can tap into.

The bad news? 500 hours of new content is uploaded on YouTube every hour. Read: you’ve got a lot of competition.

So, what's the one thing can you do to beat the competition and gain your audience’s attention?

Shake up the types of YouTube videos you create. This way, your viewers can get a variety of content from your channel.

In this post, we’ve put together a list of the 24 most popular types of YouTube videos you should be creating. We've also included examples and templates to get you inspired.

Let’s get on with it.

Also known as how-to videos, tutorial videos are effective formats to educate people — ones that viewers love to consume too.

You can create how-to videos that solve questions or problems your audience has. Tasty’s how-to videos, such as the one below, are good examples of this type of video content:

Or, you can create bite-sized product tutorials that explain how your tool works.

For instance, Notion has tons of tutorials that dig into one feature in one video and another one in another short video to help people use their product.

AMA videos are a fun way to engage your community. They also bring a fresh voice with unique perspectives to the table.

Case in point: Todoist, a to-do list-making tool, invited a productivity expert for an AMA session.

These are pretty popular for their simplicity.

All you have to do is record yourself explaining a concept or your tool — even a product feature.

Of course, for whiteboard videos to be a success, it’s essential you give a confident vibe. So, if you’re new to this video type, you’ll want to record a couple of times before you get the vibe right.

Rand Fishkin’s whiteboard videos are a good inspiration here:

Much like listicle blog posts, list videos like "X best" or "X top" are another popular YouTube video type you can try out for your brand.

Simply put together a strong video script and start recording.

But you don’t need to record yourself — in case you need a break from all the shooting. Instead, you can use a DIY video maker like Visme to create a top list video like this one:

Pairing with influencers for learning their take on your product? Ask them to create a product review for your YouTube channel.

Videos like this bring social proof into the picture — subtly convincing viewers to buy from you since others like them (or influencers they trust) have good things to say about your product.

Here’s an example of a product review video:

These types of YouTube videos help you gain your audience’s trust by providing them free value.

In fact, when it comes to learning about a service or product, 69% of folks prefer watching videos over text.

The takeaway? Educational videos, whether product- or topic-related, are an effective way to win your audience.

The best part? Using Visme, you can easily knock together educational videos in less than an hour. To speed things up, you can pick from video templates, customize them and you’re done.

These videos show your business’s human side — whether you’re an independent contractor or a medium to larger business taking on a challenge.

Here’s Microsoft’s research team taking on the ice bucket challenge, for instance:

YouTube points out unboxing videos attract a lot of watch time. Meaning: you need to start creating these types of YouTube videos if you already haven’t.

Take this as an example unboxing video for your inspiration:

Like challenge videos, BTS videos are other YouTube video ideas that show your brand’s human side.

In fact, these videos not only show your company culture but also help with hiring and onboarding new employees by giving them an inside look at how things work at your end.

Your BTS videos don’t have to be limited to team behind-the-scenes content. Instead, you can dive into product or project BTS content — giving viewers a peep into the work that goes behind your products.

Interestingly, there’s a whole YouTube channel dedicated to going into the movie industry’s BTS. Watch a couple of these videos to get to grips with how you can create a BTS video:

96% of potential buyers have watched explainer videos to learn about a product or service. This number alone is enough to say that you need explainer videos in your video content gallery.

Again, the good news is that you can put together explainer videos easily using templates. Or, create one from scratch using Visme.

Considering people love watching product videos to learn about products, demo videos are another type of YouTube video you need to be creating.

For demo videos to wow viewers and win them over with a solid first impression, it’s essential you add character to your videos.

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One effective way to do this is by leveraging storytelling. How? Use this framework: the PAS or Problem-Agitate-Solution formula. Here’s how it works:

Here's an example of a product demo video from Airtable:

Same as product reviews, video case studies or testimonial videos bring social proof to the table.

Your viewer sees the results others like them are driving and think they can achieve the same results.

Case in point: Slack has an entire category of partner and customer testimonial videos on their YouTube channel.

Here’s just one example:

These videos are fodder for entertaining content.

If you’re a business that plans to leverage these types of YouTube videos, you can drive another benefit from them: showing your human side. And to reiterate, this helps you gain your audience’s trust.

While you can certainly post teasers to get more people to watch your gated webinars, you can also post or host webinars on YouTube.

This way, you can build an educational webinar content library on your channel over time as Clearscope is doing:

These videos are much like educational videos but with a twist. How? You don’t do the teaching. Instead, your users or community members do it for you.

By creating these videos, you pair the educational approach with social proof, therefore, doubling the odds of engaging viewers.

Miro does this best — recording videos under their “Tips and Tutorials from Miro Users” category:

You can also invite experts to your webinar videos and then post them on your YouTube channel. BuzzSumo collaborated with industry-influencer and content marketing expert, Ross Simmonds, for the same:

Remember: you can structure these types of YouTube videos any way you like.

Three ideas to try are:

This kind of video is great for wrapping your quarter or year — showcasing your results to impress your audience, investors and potential employees.

At Visme, for instance, we created such a Year in Review video to walk our viewers through our achievements in 2020:

Keep in mind: this 2020-results-video we created was in addition to our usual educational video content and tutorial videos.

We also share webinars on our channel and create fresh product promotion videos as needed:

This way, we practice what we preach — creating different types of YouTube videos to engage viewers.

Make video production easier than ever with Visme.

These are a type of BTS video. Their objective? To spotlight employees for gaining the audience's trust and onboarding new employees.

Here’s an example:

Again, these types of YouTube videos showcase company culture.

You can always create one Meet The Team video as Wild Frontiers did in the example above.

Or, take Sprout Social’s approach and highlight each employee’s contribution as part of your internal comms videos:

Again, these videos are perfect for telling your audience more about you — giving people reasons to buy from you.

In fact, 83% of millennials want companies to align with their values. It’s only then that they plan to buy from companies. And, it’s how you can grow brand advocates and loyal customers.

Plus, if you’re looking to collaborate with influencers or find investment partners, a company values video can help you make a compelling introduction.

Q&A videos are crucial for engaging your audience and showcasing your authority.

For businesses, these types of YouTube videos are perfect for establishing yourself as a thought leader.

Here’s an example:

For sourcing questions for these videos, you can always collect questions live — people share their struggles and you answer them on the spot. Or, you can gather questions beforehand using social media and email. You can also blend both options together.

These videos are essential for hiring the right talent for your company. There are two creative angles to creating company culture videos.

One, create a graphics-based video that features reasons that make your company culture outstanding as this example video featuring DocuSign’s culture does:

Two, show your team members at work — capturing the work culture in the process. Zendesk does this well:

Want to create such a video? Record clips of your team at work and pair them with visually engaging graphics while adding interesting transitions using Visme.

Vlogs are video-based blog posts talking about anything from productivity to making passive income.

You’ll need to feature yourself for vlogs, though, and edit them by adding text, images and other visual elements — find these easily in your Visme dashboard. In fact, you can add animated characters to your vlog content using our tool.

Wondering how to start vlogging? Explore vloggers like Ali Abdaal and Holly Gabrielle for an idea of what it is to create vlogs consistently. Meanwhile, we’ll leave you with an example video:

Build hype around your new product or anticipated feature launch by creating a product launch YouTube video.

And keep the aim simple: drilling your key feature/message into your viewers’ minds. This example does so incredibly well:

As for a new feature promotion video, here’s a template to help you get started on the right foot:

For online stores, this would translate to launching new collection videos like this:

These types of videos don’t take much work.

All you’ve to do is capture yourself and the guest recording the podcast. And there you go — you get the same content out to both audio lovers and video consumers.

The Joe Rogan Experience podcast repurposes content in this way:

With that, our list of YouTube video types comes to an end.

Keep in mind: not all of these types of YouTube videos are going to be right for your channel. Nonetheless, it helps to freshen up the content you publish to engage viewers by trying different video types.

So what are you waiting for? Start today. And don’t forget to sign up for Visme's online video maker for free to create better videos faster.