📌 Overview This advanced multi-phase n8n workflow automates the complete research, analysis, and ideation pipeline for a YouTube strategist. It scrapes competitor channels, analyzes top-performing titles and thumbnails, identifies niche trends, gathers audience sentiment from comments, and produces data-driven content ideas—automatically writing them into a structured Google Sheets dashboard. This system is ideal for: YouTube creators Agencies Content strategists Automation engineers Anyone who wants to generate YouTube content ideas backed by real data 🧠 High‑Level Architecture The workflow is split into 5 phases , each building on the previous: Phase 1 — Niche Outliers (Input: User Form) Scrapes 3 high‑quality channels from your niche, extracts their outlier videos, and analyzes why they work. Phase 2 — Broad Niche Insights (Weekly) Scrapes the top trending content in your broad niche (e.g., "AI", "fitness", "personal finance") and logs weekly insights. Phase 3 — Niche Insights (Daily) Scrapes the top videos in your specific micro‑niche daily to keep track of content momentum. Phase 4 — Comment Analysis Analyzes real comments from your channel to understand what your audience likes, dislikes, and wants more of. Phase 5 — Content Ideation Generates 3 highly‑optimized title + thumbnail concepts using all prior insights. Everything is automatically logged into a Google Sheets dashboard. 🧩 Phase-by-Phase Breakdown ⭐ Phase 1 — Niche Outliers (Form Trigger) User enters 3 YouTube channel URLs in a form. Workflow scrapes each channel using Apify YouTube Scraper . Filters for top-performing videos. Extracts: title, views, likes, thumbnail, URL. AI analyzes: Power words in titles (OpenRouter/GPT 4.1-mini) Thumbnail attention hooks (OpenAI Vision) All insights are appended into the “Niche Outliers” sheet. Purpose: Understand what the best creators in your niche are doing. 🌐 Phase 2 — Broad Niche Insights (Weekly — Sundays @ 5 AM) Workflow scrapes the top videos for a broad niche (e.g., “artificial intelligence”). Analyzes: Title structure Power words Thumbnail cues Writes weekly insights to “Broad Niche Weekly” sheet. Purpose: Stay informed about macro‑level trends. 🎯 Phase 3 — Niche Insights (Daily @ 6 AM) Scrapes the top videos in your specific micro‑niche (e.g., “n8n automations”). Runs title + thumbnail analysis. Appends daily results to “Niche Daily” . Results feed directly into Phase 5. Purpose: Track daily momentum and trending formats. 💬 Phase 4 — Comment Analysis (Channel Feedback) Scrapes your channel’s latest 5 videos . Extracts up to 30 comments from each. Aggregates comments. AI identifies: What viewers love What viewers dislike What viewers are asking for Stores patterns in “Comment Analysis” sheet. Purpose: Understand real audience demand. 💡 Phase 5 — Content Ideation Using AI Using insights from all previous phases: Top titles Power words Thumbnail patterns Daily niche trends Audience comment analysis Channel positioning The Creative Agent produces: 3 optimized video titles 3 matching thumbnail concepts These are appended to the “Ideation” sheet. A Slack notification is sent when ideation is ready. Purpose: Fully automated content idea generation. 🗂️ Outputs in Google Sheets The workflow populates these tabs: 📌 Niche Outliers (top competitor videos) 📌 Broad Niche Weekly (weekly trend analysis) 📌 Niche Daily (daily trend analysis) 📌 Comment Analysis (audience sentiment) 📌 Ideation (final titles + thumbnails) 🔧 What This Workflow Automates ✔ Competitor analysis ✔ Thumbnail + title breakdowns ✔ Daily niche tracking ✔ Weekly niche tracking ✔ Viewer sentiment analysis ✔ Fully AI‑generated content ideas ✔ Automatic data logging to Google Sheets ✔ Slack notifications This is essentially a 24/7 AI YouTube strategist . ⚙️ Setup Requirements Apify API Key (used in 5 scraper nodes) OpenRouter API Key (for GPT 4.1-mini intelligence) OpenAI API Key (for thumbnail image analysis) Google Sheets OAuth2 Credential Make a copy of the provided sheet template Fill Set nodes: Phase II: Broad niche (e.g., "AI") Phase III: Micro niche (e.g., "n8n automations") Phase IV: Your Channel URL Phase V: Your Channel Description 🧪 Testing Guide Test the Form Trigger with 3 competitor channel URLs. Test both Schedule Triggers (weekly + daily) manually. Verify Sheets are receiving rows. Run the full pipeline end‑to‑end. Confirm Slack notification. Everything should chain together smoothly. 🎉 Final Result By the end of this workflow, you have a: 🧠 Data‑driven YouTube strategy system that: studies your niche finds outliers understands your audience detects trends generates smart content ideas every day