6 Easy How-To Video Ideas You Can Recreate Today

Here's a fun-scary fact for you:

500 hours of fresh video content is uploaded to YouTube per minute. 🤯

That's a LOT of content. But the internet's appetite for video is only growing. The average internet user watches nearly two and a half hours of video content every single day. That's a lot of attention you could capitalize on by simply launching your first YouTube video.

Whether you want to make training videos, develop YouTube video ideas to create and monetize your own educational channel, or create thought leadership content in your area of expertise, how-to videos are an excellent starting point.

In this blog post, you'll find inspiration with practical ideas for how-to videos. Read on to see why these examples make great ideas for getting started and why they stand out.

Check these 4 places to find topics your audience cares about

When you pick topics your audience is interested in — like things they already search for online — there's a higher chance your audience size will increase. And you can quickly discover those hot topics for how-to videos by doing market research in one of the following places.

1. YouTube

One-third of all internet users are on YouTube, seeking entertainment and education. The number of people who search for beginner-oriented YouTube videos has grown by 50% since 2020. So, looking for beginner YouTube video ideas is an excellent way to find helpful information and inspiration. But you can go there for just about any video research (not just beginner YouTube video ideas). Here's how:

• Search for your topic of interest.
• Filter after the most popular YouTube videos.
• Look for similar videos to what you want to create, with a high-like to low-dislike ratio and comments that express appreciation for the OUTCOME provided by that video, which shows how valuable that content was for the audience.

2. AnswerThePublic

This nifty tool analyzes what people search on search engines like Google and classifies it by the word it starts with: "are," "can," "what," "when," "where," and "how." Using AnswerThePublic to research how-to video ideas will help you find some gold nuggets that can make your videos perform really well:

• Type in a keyword, ideally no more than 2 words, for the best results.
• Select the country and language for which you want to do the research.
• Hit search.
• Change the display mode from Visualisation, a wheel of words, into, Data, the column-based display where you can easily spot the searches starting with "how." 

3. SlideShare

It's a platform where users upload and share presentations, documents, and infographics. It shows lots of visually engaging content on various themes, reflecting what topics and concepts people are interested in learning about. Doing your research on Slidehsare.net can provide you with good ideas to create how-to videos:

• Use the search bar to type in keywords related to your topic.
• Browse through the presentations or slide decks you see in there and identify the most popular and highly rated ones.
• Take note of their structure, visuals, and key points to inspire your video creation process.
• Try to find unique angles or perspectives you can bring to the topic and use those angles for your videos.

4. Amazon

It's the most popular ordering platform in the world, with 67% of online shoppers heading there to start their product search. For reference, Google only gets 34% of that pie. So, researching through the questions these buyers ask on Amazon is like digging into a goldmine of insights from 2.2 billion shoppers and their interests:

• Go to Amazon and do a broad search related to your niche.
• Pick a product in that niche that is selling well.
• Scroll down to the "Customer questions & answers" section on the product page.
• See what people interested in that product are asking and write down ideas for review videos, tutorial videos, or unboxing videos that answer those questions or serve the needs behind those questions.

Idea #1: Quickly teach a specific task

People search the web for specific answers. Focus on creating micro-videos of 1-3 minutes that teach how to perform a small specific task related to a prevalent subject, and you'll:

• Produce your how-to videos fast because you're focusing on a single idea.
• Create videos with a long shelf life, aka evergreen content.
• Score easy wins in terms of traffic because people will keep searching for these topics.

Creating shorter videos with this approach can require as little as using some motion graphics or doing a short narrated screen recording walkthrough like in the example below.

Example video: Attach files from your Google Drive in an email

In just one minute and 15 seconds, this how-to video example teaches you a very specific task. Gmail and Google Drive are standard tools in various work environments, and having a practical super-short tutorial like this one will undoubtedly be useful to many employees.

What makes this video powerful:

• Short, focused narration lasts not a second more than it needs to demonstrate the microtask.
• Incorporates screen recording and zoom-ins to clearly and visually demonstrate how to perform the task.
• Creates familiarity in viewers' minds with a video template in Gmail and Google Drive's theme colors.

✅ Click here to recreate this video.

Idea #2: Share hacks that make people's lives easier

Hacks are insanely popular. If you have an area of expertise you know really well, you could easily cherrypick some of your secret ways to get things done faster, easier, or cheaper, and create how-to videos from them. A couple of hacks/wins examples would include how to:

• Streamline a routine 
• Automate repetitive tasks
• Do tasks in batches
• Use keyboard shortcuts 
• Use voice commands
• Repurpose items
• Save money with DIY activities

Many topics can introduce hacks, from home organization and cleaning to travel, beauty, and fashion videos. Search for YouTube videos using the keywords "hacks for" followed by a particular niche, and you'll find a lot of examples and inspiration for creating videos that will get high engagement.

Example video: How to save money with gardening

This how-to YouTube video example comes from a 3M subscribers channel and demonstrates how to pick video topics of high interest the smart way. Both gardening and saving money are popular subjects, and pairing them in a DIY video doubles the "save money" effect.

Notice how the live demonstration technique and his surprisingly simple tips make this instructional video full of hacks a winning combo? The video's comments section says it all.

What makes this video powerful:

• Presenter's positive, upbeat energy ramps up the audience's engagement. 
• Well-organized information is presented in an alert style with camera stops on the essential parts.
• Audio effects enhance the viewing experience, grab attention, and emphasize the essential action steps.

Idea #3: Break a complex process down step-by-step

A step-by-step how-to video makes you follow a specific structure and forces you to clarify what to say and what to leave out. This approach will streamline your video creation and allow you to create instructional videos your audience will easily follow. If you double up on motivation, helping viewers feel "I've got this💪," you'll create a video that reaches its intended outcome effortlessly.

Example video: How to make access requests for tools in 5 steps

This step-by-step how-to video is more like a company instructional on a common topic. Different organizations are open to streamlining workflow and encourage employees to ask for what they need. And this is precisely what this example video teaches, with a strong emphasis on how important it is to follow these guidelines for the company's security.

What makes this video powerful:

• Starts clearly, with the presenter introducing in a friendly way the topic, herself, and the video's purpose. 
• Delivers the promise with the content broken down into steps and relevant guidance at each step. 
• Emphasizes each scene's main points with appropriate visuals — snippets of text, screenshots from the company's CMS, and stock media symbols of tools and software.  

✅ Click here to recreate this video.

Idea #4: Interview an expert

Interviewing an expert is one of the easiest ways to create valuable how-to video content because it involves minimal preparation. You only need a camera, a microphone, and a list of questions to guide the conversation. Or you can do a recorded video conference and leverage the knowledge and expertise of the expert to deliver valuable content to your viewers.

Example video: How to get your idea across the line in work environments

In this video, a university teacher is interviewed by a student. As we quickly learn from their dialogue, the student is an AI avatar, Digital Dominique, which only makes the interview even more interesting.

What makes this video powerful:

• The unique approach of introducing a digital human as an interviewer is creatively illustrated by showing the avatar on a monitor next to the teacher.
• Alternation of camera angles with medium close-ups and close-ups on each participant to showcase the most important information in the video. 
• Supportive soft ambient music that makes the interview feel more relaxed and casual without overshadowing or distracting from the professor's insights.

Idea #5: Make whiteboard educational videos

Creating whiteboard educational videos is easy because they can be produced using basic materials like whiteboards, markers, and a camera or whiteboard animation software such as ExplainEverything. You don't need complex vide editing or special effects, but only a basic setup to effectively explain concepts through engaging visual storytelling.

Example video: How to never run out of things to say

Yet another popular video example from a 2M subscribers YouTube channel, this video sets the mission to teach you the soft skill of having engaging conversations without effort. It's a tough but trendy topic among YouTube videos considering 10M people watched it.

What makes this video powerful:

• Combines dynamic and creative drawings with alert background music that naturally pushes you through all the scenarios in the video. 
• Uses scenarios as storytelling elements to make the content more relatable, to introduce each tip the narrator provides, and to keep viewers engaged.
• Pops speech bubbles, animated text, and bullet points as playful elements that help you visualize the concepts discussed.

Idea #6: Create the tool onboarding tutorial you wish you had

Tools and software make work easier once you pass the learning curve. That's why tool onboarding explainer videos are so useful. And they're also easy to create, requiring minimal resources like simple video editing software. You could:

• Record your screen while doing a general presentation of the tool for your audience.
• Demonstrate specific functions, especially those that solve the issues your customer care representatives have to answer most often.
• Guide your tutorial by answering general FAQ questions.

It's best to break down your onboarding tutorial into mini-lessons, with each micro-video focused on a specific function, action, or question.

Example video: Intro to GONG: How to analyze your call

In this onboarding tutorial, the ACME team introduces the GONG platform, a conversation analytics tool that should make life easier for anyone looking to get better at selling. The video highlights the tool's key features and best practice recommendations.

What makes this video powerful:

• Illustrates features and functionalities using visual cues and examples extracted from the platform's interface.
• Ensure a nice flow with seamless transitions between scenes, even when it alternates visuals from the platform with presenter-led scenes. 
• Soft, professional background music, perfectly in line with the topic, much like what you'd hear while on a waiting call.

✅ Click here to recreate this video.

Pick a topic and start creating your how-to video today! 

There are many different teaching topics you can wrap up as how-to instructional videos, review videos or DIY videos. Pick an idea your target audience will resonate with and use it to create your first video.

Not sure how to make your first how-to video? Let us teach you, with a little help of AI. 👇