2025 YouTube content planning with AI and Poppy: In 1 Hour

2025 YouTube content planning with AI and Poppy?

Heading into a new year, creating a YouTube content plan has been at the top of my mind. But it seems daunting, so I developed a video topic planner that’s easier for visual people like myself.

And with Poppy AI doing some of the heavy lifting, I was able to create my YouTube content plan for 2025 in less than an hour!

I recently sat down and planned out pretty much my entire 2025 YouTube content plan in about an hour, with a little bit of hefty lifting from AI…

and I want to show you exactly how I did it. (And no, I’m not using chat GPT to rely on being a YouTube strategist. I’ve got a better tool to show you!)

Discover how I planned my entire 2025 YouTube content in just an hour using a powerful AI tool—watch now to learn my secrets!

VIDEO: YouTube Content Planning w/Poppy AI: Plan Entire Year in 1 Hour

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This post is sponsored by Poppy AI.

2025 YouTube Content Planning with AI and Poppy: The Power of Visual Planning

As a visual person, I find that seeing my ideas laid out helps me organize and strategize better. I love using sticky notes and whiteboards, but for this task, I turned to a digital tool called P oppy. This platform allows me to create a visual grid that makes it easy to brainstorm and organize content ideas.

Setting Up Your Content Categories

To start, I created a blank board in Poppy and set up my main content categories: gear software, setup planning, recording, and editing. These categories help me focus on what I want to create and ensure that my content is diverse and engaging.

Finding the Right Topics

When planning content, it’s crucial to consider three key factors: what excites me, what benefits my audience, and what works well with YouTube’s algorithm.

What’s going to be a win for me? What’s going to be a win for you, for my audience—which could mean my YouTube viewers, my clients, customers, and members inside of Video Brand Academy? What are you dying to know? What’s keeping you up at night?

And then, of course, if we want to be really strategic about growing our channel on YouTube, we have to figure out what’s going to be a win for YouTube. What’s going to work really well in the algorithm?

To find topics that hit all these marks, I analyzed my YouTube analytics, focusing on the last 90 days. I looked at the top-performing videos based on views, subscriber gains, likes, and comments. This data gave me a clear picture of what my audience enjoys and what content performs well.

Leveraging AI for Content Ideas

I don’t want to just recreate all of the same videos over and over again on my channel, of course, but I know that these are the topics that are working really well for me, with you, with my audience, and algorithmically with YouTube. So we’re going to create a content calendar from these topics that we are seating.

Plus, if I have some other ideas of things I want to create—like using Tella right now to record this screencast—I know that I want to create some more Tella videos. I know that I’m going to definitely create some more Descript videos and maybe some Ecamm videos. So I have some topics like Ecam where I don’t think I’ve really created a video about that, so it’s not going to be in these highly performing videos at all, but these are topics that I know I do want to create.

One of the most exciting parts of my planning process was using AI to generate content ideas. P oppy integrates with AI tools like ChatGPT 40 and Claude 3.5, which helped me transform my analytics data into a list of potential video topics. By connecting my analytics screenshots to the AI, I could quickly generate a list of video ideas that align with my channel’s themes.

Exploring Niche Neighbors

Another strategy I used was analyzing channels similar to mine, which I call “niche neighbors.” These are channels with overlapping audiences and topics. By examining their top-performing videos, I could identify trends and popular topics that I might want to explore on my channel.

I wouldn’t call them competitors, necessarily, but they are other channels where their audience overlaps with my audience, their topics overlap, and they are creators whom I like. I like who they are and I like the content they create. So I would love to have YouTube associate me and my audience with them and their audience.

2025 YouTube content planning with AI and Poppy and Creating a Content Calendar

With a list of potential topics in hand, I started building my content calendar. I categorized the topics into themes like beginner tutorials, advanced tips, trending topics, and personal workflow insights. This approach ensures that my content is varied and caters to different audience segments.

My Themes

How do we turn all these topics within these four categories into an entire year’s worth of content without getting bored or repetitive? By giving them themes.

The themes I’m using are like anything for beginners: how to do this, how to do that—you know, how to use Descript for beginners, for example. Then there are topics that are more advanced for somebody who already knows how to use Descript and wants to learn a little bit more advanced features and functions, tips and tricks.

I always want to make room for hot topics or trending topics—videos that aren’t necessarily a teaching video, not necessarily a how-to tutorial kind of thing. And then I also like to create videos that are showing my workflow or my setup, or kind of what I’m doing right now.

I used GPT-40 to make these lists and read these screenshots. It’s much better at crunching data, making lists, and doing boring things like that. Whereas, Claude is much more creative; it can write a lot better and sound like a human instead of AI.

Generating Video Titles and Thumbnails

Using AI, I also generated video titles and thumbnail ideas. By feeding the AI with examples of my past successful content, I could create new titles that maintain my channel’s style and tone. For thumbnails, I used expert advice from YouTube creators to design eye-catching visuals that attract viewers.

Finalizing Your Content Plan

After generating a list of over 160 potential video topics, I had more than enough ideas to fill my 2025 content calendar. I can now pick and choose the topics that excite me the most and align with my audience’s interests. This flexibility allows me to adapt my content plan as needed throughout the year.

But one thing I want to point out and keep in mind is that even if there is a topic in here that I know I’m not going to do. I’m not going to delete that because it’s still a good title, it’s still a good hook. I can just adapt it to another topic.

Lately, I have been tracking my video creation process using Monday.com. But if you are a pen and paper type of person and you’re in Video Brand Academy , you could use the YouTube planner that you can download there, or use the fillable docs, or put these ideas wherever you normally plan out your YouTube content.

To keep going with the power of P oppy, I want to show you a couple of other things because one of the reasons why something like P oppy is so much more powerful than just going directly to ChatGPT or directly to Claude is that you get to feed it who you think is an expert at whatever it is you’re trying to do.

Conclusion

Planning a year’s worth of YouTube content doesn’t have to be overwhelming. By using tools like Poppy and leveraging AI, you can streamline the process and ensure your content is engaging and effective. Whether you’re a seasoned creator or just starting, these strategies can help you plan your content efficiently and creatively.

There’s so much more that I’m going to use P oppy for in 2025 in planning my YouTube content. But if you want to see some of the other things that you can do with P oppy, I will link my Poppy review video. Don’t forget to use the link down in the description if you want to check P oppy out for yourself, plus here’s a coupon code (use coupon code MEREDITH25 to save $25 on the annual option) so you can save a few dollars in the process.

Happy planning!