ICYMI: 5 Steps to Develop Your YouTube Content Strategy

With Katie Steckly | Expert Series

The ICYMI series of trusted industry voices continues with creator Katie Steckly. Today, she’s breaking down the five steps to developing your YouTube content strategy in 2025 and sharing her list of must-have tools.

This is part of an exclusive series for paid subscribers. I invited industry leaders to write about their specific area of expertise — with an emphasis on tactical advice you can immediately put into action.

Katie is one of my favorite YouTubers and among the first names I think of when it comes to building out your brand or creator account. I’ve followed her for years and then finally got to meet her at Social Media Week last year and she’s as nice as she is talented!

5 Steps to Developing Your YouTube Content Strategy

Okay, here’s my hot take: YouTube is the most reliable of all the social media platforms, and whether you’re a brand or a content creator, you should be posting over there in 2025.

The first couple months of this year have already shown us that some of the platforms that we’ve become dependent on might not be such a sure thing (will TikTok survive after this 75 day extension? What is Mark Zuckerberg even doing over at Meta anyway?) and YouTube feels like a reprieve from all of that.

Admittedly, it’s also the highest barrier to entry of all the platforms. But it doesn’t have to be intimidating. Let’s break down the five steps to developing your YouTube content strategy in 2025.

1. Choose your fighter: Search or Recommendations

This is the incredible thing about YouTube - there are two totally different ways that your content can be discovered on the platform, which means that you can choose the best strategy for you as a creator or for your brand.

First, there’s search. People are coming to YouTube every day to search for videos, whether it’s for a tutorial, product reviews, or anything in between. This is a great opportunity for brands to capture traffic that are seeking out their products.

Personal example: I’ve been wanting to buy a new travel backpack, so I’ve been searching for reviews on YouTube. I read about the Pakt Travel Backpack in a Reddit post, and when I searched for it on YouTube, I found an extensive demo video from the Pakt brand on YouTube. For physical products, particularly high ticket ones like travel gear, YouTube videos are the perfect way to showcase your product and gain trust from your potential customers.

The second (and arguably more significant) way to get your videos discovered on YouTube is through the algorithm. Just like you might be used to on Instagram Reels or TikTok, the YouTube algorithm identifies viewers’ interests, and suggests videos on the Home Page, and in the Suggested Videos column next to a video that’s playing. Getting your videos to appear in those browse features is the fastest way to gain new viewers. But in order to do that, you need to understand how the algorithm works and use it to your advantage.