The educational niche on YouTube is a very interesting space where videos often struggle to find the balance between giving accurate information and entertaining an audience.
Good news is that viewers in this niche find enjoyment in that accurate information so they become one in the same, but if this was the only thing needed to keep viewers watching, then algebra lectures would be going viral.
The key is in treating your audience like intelligent people and presenting genuinely accurate and educational information whilst still adapting an entertaining tone and structure.
If, like a lot of creators in this space, you come from academia, this may sound like a bit of an oxymoron. So let’s break it down.
1. Accurate information.
A key aspect of the educational niche is helping people understand something new. This ranges from videos meant to be shown to kids in classes to content creators who want to share their speciality with the world.
One of my favourite creators in this niche is Cleo Abram (which you should absolutely check out if you haven’t already). We’ll use her as an example throughout because she does the accuracy/entertainment thing scarily well.
Let’s look at a video she produced about gravity being a lie. The first thing to look for is actually in her description where she cites the sources used throughout the video. So accurate information check, but Cleo does a really clever thing when she cites these sources to make sure the video doesn’t turn into a lecture.
2. Incorporating information
Cleo rarely if ever says something along the lines of “this source suggests that” because that’s academic language. Cleo instead speaks as if talking to a friend and lets the visuals do a lot of the explanatory work, trusting her audience (and her audience trusts her in kind) to know that any information she presents is well researched and accurate.
Instead of going straight into an academic definition of gravity, she instead opens with:
So what I learned in school is that gravity is what holds me down on earth, but it’s a force that objects with mass exert on each other. So the earth pulls me towards it and I, in some tiny way, pull back on the earth too.
This is accompanied by an animation that shows what she means in real time which helps the viewer visualise the theory.
To use Cleo’s own metaphor, imagine you’re back in school. Rarely did teachers practically show you what they meant when they taught scientific theory (or maybe they did, if you had cool teachers). Well the core idea here is that you want to be that cool teacher by showing examples of what you’re explaining in real time.
3. Weaving a story.
But even cool teachers had to teach a specific curriculum. Not here! A big part of making educational content entertaining is turning the lesson into a journey. If Cleo just tells us why gravity isn’t real, then we’d just stop watching.
Instead, we need to build up to the big argument or big payoff of the video, in this case, why gravity isn’t real.
Cleo does this through mini-sections that build on top of each other:
- The big problem with gravity
- What is a zero gravity flight?
- What is gravity?
- What’s Einstein’s equivalence principle?
- What does zero gravity feel like?
- Why is falling the same as floating?
- How did gravity disappear?
- Why is gravity not a force?
And so on.
The success of this largely comes down to the structure of the script, particularly how it keeps the audience engaged by linking smaller building blocks to the larger question of why is gravity a lie?
4. Never Assume That the Viewer is Clueless.
The worst thing you can do in this niche is assume that your audience knows nothing, because you will fall into a trap of over-explaining instead of allowing them to synthesize their own conclusions.
Let’s go back to that opening gravity section from Cleo. Notice how she says “when I was in school”, she relates the lack of knowledge to herself within a shared experience.
This makes sure that any experienced viewers won’t be put off and that any less experienced viewers can learn and synthesize their own conclusions without feeling talked down to. She repeats this process as the information becomes more complex, explaining the progression but not telling the audience what to think.
Essentially, she is presenting information, analysing it and making a connection to progress the video in a clear, understandable and engaging way for her audience.
And really, that’s what it boils down to. The specifics of how you approach this will differ depending on your niche and whether you lean more academic or more casual and conversational like Cleo.
The big takeaway here is that if your audience feels like they’ve really engaged with the content you’re presenting, they will be entertained.
If you want to see all of this properly in action, you can check out Cleo’s full video here: