- What if you could double your YouTube views
with just a few minutes of work?
For most people, this sounds like a bit of a pipe dream,
but it's actually quite simple.
All you need is a little bit
of creativity and a YouTube title formula
I'm about to share with ya.
All right,
I want you to answer this question in the comments below
with just a single word,
that being either before or after.
And that question is,
when do you decide on your video title?
Before or after you make the video?
And to find out why that's really important,
keep watching until the end.
Now, one big reason why small channels never get more
than a few hundred views on their YouTube videos
is because they are terrible, truly, truly awful
at writing titles.
Now you know what I'm talking about, right?
Those boring generic titles that never get any clicks.
But if you're guilty of this, don't worry,
you're not alone.
Even here at vidIQ, after a thousand videos,
we still sometimes struggle with titles.
If we see, after a couple of hours,
a video is performing poorly,
we'll accept that we've made a mistake
and revamp that title.
And so that's why we spoke
to a YouTube title writing expert.
And if you've ever wondered
what a YouTube title writing expert looks like?
Oh yeah, this expert means business.
And his name is Jake Thomas of Creator Hooks.
He helps YouTubers write better titles by using psychology.
And he's basically given us his title formula.
And that formula can be summed up in three words,
- Fear, curiosity and desire.
So if you can learn how to master those three emotions,
you can get really good on YouTube.
And it's not just YouTube titles,
like, we're talking about thumbnails, intros,
email subject lines, Twitter threads.
This is kind of the study of getting people's attention,
and then getting them to click
- So Jake, when you talk about fear,
of desire and curiosity,
which one of these emotions is the most powerful?
- Definitely curiosity.
Now I've talked to people like Derral Eves, Pat Flynn,
and both of those guys said, it's one thing, curiosity.
- Jake says that you can mix curiosity with fear or desire
for even more powerful results.
But curiosity is always the main emotional driver.
When you feel curious about something,
your brain cannot resist the urge to find out more.
And that's what you need to tap into with your titles.
Fear is powerful because we, as humans,
are wired to avoid pain and danger.
And desire is obviously something
that we all feel on a daily basis.
We desire knowledge, money, success,
the list goes on.
And these emotions are universal.
Don't use your channel niche as an excuse not to try them.
Whether you are a gaming beauty or a tech channel,
you can use curiosity combined with fear and desire
to make incredibly powerful titles.
So how do you use these emotions to write titles
that win you the click?
Well, we're going to do it through the help
of this currently censored list of 10 power phrases
you can use to level up your titles.
The first one being, change the viewers life.
- [Jake] There's a couple reasons why it works.
It's a little vague, right?
So, it's kind of an open loop.
Change my life could mean something different for me,
and it could mean something different for you.
So one has a little bit of curiosity.
And two, it speaks to to a big desire.
You know, many people would love to change their lives.
So the truth about that opens up a loop, right?
It starts a story, but it doesn't finish it.
Like if you see that title, you have to say,
"Oh my gosh, what is the truth about?"
Usually it has kind of like a negative connotation there.
Like, you know, the truth about like, you know,
everybody thinks this way, but like, you know,
here's the real truth, right?
So a little bit of negativity there.
It's kind of revealing a secret as well.
Like, oh, you're getting some insider information
about what's actually happening.
- Opening a loop.
We've heard that phrase a couple of times already.
What does it mean?
- An opening up a loop is the most common way
that I've seen people build curiosity.
People also call it a curiosity gap.
You know, there's a gap between what you know
and what you want to know.
You know, the audience, they have kind of like,
a need to fill that gap.
Opening up a loop, is the kind of the easiest way
to build curiosity, and the most popular one.
- Now I'll get back to those phrases in a second,
but what if you don't have the skills
and the creativity to turn those phrases into titles?
Well, here's what Jake recommends you should do.
- I've asked a bunch of creators, you know,
what is your secret to writing good YouTube titles?
And a lot of them have said, "I just model what works."
If you go outside of your industry
and you find kind of a good hook,
then you can take that, you know, spin it for your channel,
and then you can write a better YouTube title from that.
And this is actually how I didn't get fired
from my job as a YouTube channel manager.
- Anything that doesn't get you fired
from your job is pretty sound advice in my book.
Getting good titles requires effort and research,
and to help you along the way, we've got two suggestions.
Every Monday, Jake shares the best titles he's found
through his "Creator Hooks" newsletter.
Sign up for free using a link in the video description.
Secondly, check out vidIQs very own AI title generator,
it's designed to produce highly engaging title ideas.
It has all of the popular power phrases
we've been talking about, built in and much more.
All you need to do is enter a phrase
that describes your video and click "Get Title Ideas."
Even free users have a limited access to this tool,
so take it for a spin,
the links are all down in the description.
Now then, back to that list.
If you want to double your YouTube views
with very little effort,
start using some of these power phrases
in your YouTube titles.
Try typing these phrases into YouTube search
and see what you find.
And plug them into our AI title generator.
You may be surprised at the quality of titles it creates.
And when should you do all of this?
Before you start your video.
That's what we did with this video.
And it helped us plan, script, film and edit it,
because throughout the entire process,
we knew the emotional goal of the video.
So thank you, Jake for the YouTube starter kits
on writing better titles,
but did you know Jake did a full one hour session
on how to write better titles exclusively
for our vidIQ, Max students?
Yeah, it's kind of why I've been wearing this shirt
for the entire video.
You can get more information
about vidIQ Max in the video description as well.
So yes, titles are important,
but if you wanna take your views to an insane level,
you need to figure out how to get YouTube
to recommend your content,
and this video will tell ya how.