In a sea of video thumbnails, you want yours to be the most clickable.
But what's the science behind a great thumbnail and why is it important anyway?
So I'm giving you all my best strategies for how to make a good thumbnail for your YouTube.
There is one specific YouTube metric that thumbnails drastically impact and this can
make or break the growth of your channel so keep an eye on this one on the YouTube studio.
I'm gonna show you how to get to that in just a moment.
Now, YouTube is a big place.
Thousands of hours are video are uploaded every minute so naturally, not every thumbnail
knocks out of the part so I want to save you the hassle by telling you the biggest misconception
about YouTube video thumbnails that too many creators are falling for.
And of course I want to give you my 5 best things for creating custom YouTube thumbnails
and trust me, I have done a lot of trial and error to figure this out so stick to the end
of this video and I'll tackle those together.
There is one YouTube metric that thumbnails can drastically affect and it's really important
for you to know this because YouTube is measuring your success and this can make or break your
channel because if this metric is not good, they're not gonna put your videos in front
of many people.
If it's good, they're gonna show it to more people.
So, this metric is your click-through rate.
This is the number of clicks divided by the number of thumbnail impressions on a video
so in other words, how many times your thumbnail is seen on YouTube and clicked on compared
to your competitors.
So for example, if your thumbnail is seen a thousand times on YouTube and 100 people
click on it, that's a click-through rate of 10%.
So we aim for a click-through rate of at least 4%.
I know that might sound low but think there's a sea of YouTube thumbnails here so your goal
is 4%.
Now if you go to your channel metrics and you see the thumbnails for each individual
video and you see that some are less than 4%, switch it out, test it out and see which
one is going to get you the better metric.
Half of all YouTube channels and videos on YouTube have an impressions click-through
rate that can range between about 2 to 10% so again, make sure you're looking at that
goal of 4% and you can switch it out.
TubeBuddy is a software that I like to use and I'll link in the description below.
They actually have split testing tool that you can put up 2 different thumbnails against
each other and test out to see which one gets the better click-through rate which is worth
the investment of time to do that and you invested that money in software.
It's a minimal cost but the better your click-through rate is on these videos, the more people that
can see them, so that's another thing that you can try testing out for your YouTube thumbnails.
Now a common misconception about your YouTube thumbnails is that you should include the
video title in your thumbnail as the text.
If you take a look at my YouTube channel, I think my thumbnails are pretty good.
You can go check it out and see it as an example
You definitely want to include some text in your thumbnail if you can but you don't need
to reiterate the video title in there and also remember your thumbnail is so tiny that
you don't want to have too many words.
You want it mostly to be an imagine of you or the subject of the video and you can put
some words in there that's like a hook or another headline of that video.
Your video title is optimized to rank for YouTube search results so your thumbnail is
your chance to intrigue people to click with maybe some other words that are different
from the title of the video.
Think of the text in your thumbnail as an alternate video title or something to offer
more context on what the video is about.
So if you do this right, viewers will often click without often knowing the video title
because that title might have peaked some interest for them.
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Now I want to share with you my 5 best tips for creating custom YouTube thumbnails.
These are so important, these are things that I've been using on my channel for years since
I started my channel in 2016 and what's helped me to grow it to what it is today.
The first thing that you're gonna need is first of all, verify your channel.
You won't be able to upload a custom channel until your channel is verified so all you
have to do is go to YouTube.com/verify, it's gonna ask you for like a phone number to just
confirm that you're not a robot, go through those directions there and that will verify
your channel.
If you don't verify your channel, YouTube is going to auto-generate 3 random options
for you and typically they're just random screenshots that have nothing to do with the
video, might even be you in a silly position or your mouth hanging open so you want to
make sure that you actually want to verify your channel so you have the ability to upload
custom thumbnails.
My 2nd tip for custom thumbnails is to be bright and bold.
So typically you want your thumbnails to be clear, having it stand out but also not to
be too busy.
If there's too much going on, it'd be difficult to read and understand.
Remember a thumbnail is so tiny that if there's too many words on it, it can't read it anyway.
So again I recommend a big picture of you or the subject of the video and then some text.
My 3rd tip is to include the subject's face so just like I mentioned, we want to be able
to see your face or the subject of the video and this also helps the algorithms recognize
that there is a person in the content and typically humans connect to humans.
We want to connect with each other and if we can see that person on there and feel like
oh, they look friendly or they look fun and exciting, I want to listen to them and see
what this video is about.
That's gonna actually help them to click through by seeing your warm and inviting face.
So if you can put your picture on there along with a little bit of text, that's what's gonna
help you to click-through.
Speaking of click-through, my 4th tip is to intrigue without the clickbait.
So your thumbnail should be relevant to the video and peak your audience's curiosity.
You know, include a hook, some emotion, maybe even have some props or visual cues in your
thumbnail to peak curiosity but illustrate what the video is about.
Don't have it be like a bait and switch that they think it's gonna be about one thing and
it's clickbait, it gets them to click through but then it's misleading.
That is gonna affect your watch time and if YouTube sees that your watch time is low,
YouTube isn't gonna put that video in front of more people.
So, there's 2 metrics you're looking for the most are your click-through rate, that people
are clicking through your thumbnail and your watch time to see that people are actually
retained and watching throughout the video.
And my 5th tip is to be distinct but also align with your branding so I recommend including
your branding colors so that subscribers know that it's your video and not just randomly
based on your thumbnail.
And we want to make sure that your thumbnails aren't just all the same.
Use different images and text.
So one of the things I do is I do after a video, I actually keep rolling and I'll do
a pose.
So I'm still in the same outfit, same position and that's what the outfit will be for that
particular video.
Whenever I go on to a YouTube video and see that all of their thumbnails are just the
same, it looks like they haven't put too much effort into the quality of their videos and
really the most important qualities in the videos are the things that you're saying,
the message, the words, the context that you're relaying to your audience but if I see the
thumbnails and they all look the same like maybe they're either the exact same screenshot,
it's not click-worthy, it's not intriguing me to actually want to click.
So take some time, take some effort to actually customize your thumbnails and there's a very
simple way to do this at 0 cost to you.
One of my favorite softwares to use is Canva.
It's a free cloud-based graphic design software that you can use the free version.
They also do have a paid version if you want more functionality but I use the free version
for years.
Canva has a ton of thumbnail templates that you can just use ones that are proven to work
and switch it out with your text and your images and be able to upload them directly
to your YouTube channel without you having to pay expensive costs and hiring a professional
graphic designer or without you having to go to school or take a course to learn all
about design and graphics because Canva has it all done for you.
If you're making videos right now, what do you use to create video thumbnails?
Do you just choose one from YouTube that autogenerates for you or do you use Canva?
Let me know in the comments below.
Having great YouTube thumbnails can be the difference in a channel that gets noticed
and is consistently growing or a channel that is forgotten about.
So it's really important to take these tips, use my 5 tips that I gave you in every single
thumbnail that you make and I totally recommend to stay consistent in monitoring your metrics.
Go into YouTube creator studio and look at every videos, watch time, you want that watch
time to be at about 40% or higher and your click-through rate for your thumbnails, you
want those to be at above 4%.
Again if they're less than 4%, go back into Canva, re0design a different thumbnail, use
a different template and upload that one and you can always change out maybe the color
of it, you can change out maybe some of the text on it but don't change anything else
about your video, just change the thumbnail.
We only want to split test one thing at a time.
One of the other things that you can do to make sure that you're standing out from your
competitors is to look up the topic of your video that you're showing up for so if this
video is about how to create your YouTube thumbnails, I might type in to the search
and see what other videos come up from that and see what those thumbnails look like.
And if there's a pattern to those thumbnails, let's say all of them are using green and
blue, maybe I make my thumbnail orange and yellow so that it's different and that it
stand out from other competitors.
So keep that in mind as you're creating thumbnails for yourself.
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