Today, we are going to answer a common question a lot of people
ask us.
Should you use text on your thumbnail?
That's coming up.
Hey guys.
My name is Tim Schmoyer, and this is Derral Eves from--
Derraleves.com.
Yeah.
So he's got a great channel.
I'll link to it below.
I'll tell you about it in a second.
But this is a common question.
One of you guys called WhyKnot wrote in and asked this.
How important is it to add text to a thumbnail?
I'm actually rethinking a lot of this type
of stuff on my own channel because I
do use text, as you know.
And you use text also on your thumbnails.
I actually do.
So what's your advice?
Text, no text?
What do you think?
Well, it really depends on what type of channel
that you actually have.
We actually pay a lot of money to see what videos actually
convert off of what thumbnails, and I've
found that if people are looking to be entertained,
you know what, you can get away with just doing
more of a ha ha in a thumbnail, or in a shocked look,
or something to grab-- ha!
That's my thumbnail right there.
But it's basically something to really draw
their eye in because really, you're
competing with all these other videos that are going on.
However, we also found that how to videos
or instructional videos, if you do have text in it,
it actually gets people to pull them
in if it's graphically appeasing.
So if it's more like a storytelling type of channel,
like maybe the vlogging or web series or something,
probably go more less text?
No text at all.
I definitely would do no text at all
if you actually have some great animation
or the pictures are engaging.
Right, yeah.
OK, cool.
If they're not engaging, they're boring,
but text on there for sure;
Derral has done a lot of research on this.
How do you go about testing them if people wanted
to know for their content how to best--
if they should text or no text?
Well, believe it or not, we actually
do everything on Facebook.
We actually run Facebook ads and see
what text-- so titles-- work and what thumbnails actually work.
And we're able to see-- we can do split testing
and see which actually has a higher conversion,
and then we kind of narrow it down.
And honestly, I've seen on bigger campaigns where
we did that, we would see 80% more click through rate, which
would get a lot more views.
And if you can work on your titling too at the same time,
you're going to actually find that people are actually going
to share that video as well.
OK, cool.
I think like one of the things that I've been thinking through
with my thumbnails is like the text kind of seemed
to take over, and it kind of almost
overpowers the rest of it, which can be fine in some cases.
But I'm feeling like I find I tend
to click on the thumbnails that are more visual then like I
just reading the same thing I just read
in the titles type of thing.
Exactly.
So I'm thinking about kind of still using text but trying
to make it a little bit more visual as well.
When I do use text, I try to not use the same text
in the thumbnail that I'm putting in the title.
Like, I don't want to insult people's intelligence,
be like I just read that, Tim.
Thank you very much.
So when you do use text, should you copy?
Should you not copy what's in the title?
Yeah, it really depends--
How do we complement?
It really depends on your strategy.
Like for me, I might use common keywords
that people would see visually.
And then oh, look at the title.
Just like pop out.
Yeah.
Yeah, it'd be able to do that.
That works extremely well.
But honestly, sometimes when they're glancing through,
they're not even looking at your title,
they're looking at that thumbnail.
And so whatever grabs your attention
to have them click on that video, that's
the most important thing.
Cool.
And so there's something else you should click on.
It's called a link in the description below.
Link.
That goes to youtube.com/derraleves,
and what will they find there?
They're going to find a lot of tutorials,
a lot of things about YouTube, channel evaluations, Q&As,
kind of like your channel.
So if you guys like Video Creators, which
you should and you do, right, so you
should definitely check out Derral's channel.
You'll learn a lot of really great YouTube stuff from him.
I subscribed.
I watch your stuff when it comes through,
and so you guys definitely should, too.
So check that out down there below,
and then go past a little bit further and you'll get
to a comment section, and I would love to hear from you
guys about how you use text on your thumbnails, do you,
do you not, what kind of text works best,
what kind of doesn't.
And what have you learned from your own experiences
about using text on thumbnails?
And if this is your first time here,
I'd love to have you subscribe because--
Time is really cool.
Well, that's true, I guess.
That's not where I was going with this.
I love helping you guys as creators grow your YouTube
Channels and your audiences because I really believe,
and I know Derral does too, that a lot of you guys
are doing awesome stuff on YouTube
that are changing lives.
And we want to help you guys spread your message so that it
reaches the people who really need
to hear what you have to say so that your channels grow
and that lots of people are impacted [INAUDIBLE].
So we do that in many different ways here,
but you can find all that out after you subscribe.
So do that, and we will see you guys over
at his channel in here and talk to you guys sometime later.
Cheers.
Don't ever do that [INAUDIBLE].
There ears will pop.