Competitor Intelligence Playbook

Use this outline to choose relevant public competitor channels, compare topics and formats, and record hypotheses for your own content. Public competitor data does not expose private revenue or retention.

A topic gap is a hypothesis to investigate, not evidence of demand or a guarantee of views. Check audience questions and your own channel results before planning a video.

The session starts with a competitor selection framework: how to identify the 5–10 channels that most accurately represent your competitive landscape, versus the common mistake of tracking the largest channels in a niche regardless of relevance. Proper competitor selection is the foundation of gap analysis — if you're tracking the wrong channels, the gaps you find won't be actionable.

The gap identification section covers three methods: keyword gap analysis (topics competitors rank for that you don't), format gap analysis (content formats competitors aren't producing where audience demand signals are strong), and recency gap analysis (evergreen topics where the top competitor videos are more than 18 months old and due for updated coverage).

This playbook is most valuable for channels that have been publishing for at least 6 months and have an established niche. Channels in competitive niches — tech, finance, gaming, health — will find the gap identification methods most directly applicable, since these are the niches where competitor tracking provides the clearest signal-to-noise ratio.

Creators who have relied primarily on intuition for topic selection and want to build a more systematic, data-driven approach to content strategy will get the most from this session.