- Better thumbnails lead to more clicks.
It's as simple as that.
And when you have thumbnails
that look like this, this, this, this; even this.
We'll get back to that one later.
You can get millions of views.
And this is why?
- [Male Announcer] vidIQ.
- [Female Announcer] vidIQ.
- [Announcer] vidiq.com.
- Look, I know the title says, This Is Not Yellow,
but it clearly is yellow.
This must be click bait.
Oh, it's got 18 million views.
Must be value in there somewhere.
Hello everyone, welcome back to vidIQ.
I'm Rob and if you haven't already realized,
you are slap-bang in the middle of a series
on how to make better thumbnails
that will get you more views.
For the full playlist, click over here.
All right, let's jump straight into this one
with a question.
What do all of these thumbnails have in common?
The answer is that, while they are all
a very high-quality images, they are pretty simple
with only two or three main elements.
That means that when you shrink them down to 10%
of their original design size, in other words:
thumbnail preview size.
You can still tell what's going on.
Another thing that should be pretty obvious
is that they are not just still frames from the videos;
they are dedicated, professionally shot,
professionally edited images, designed to tease you
about what's inside the video.
As a simple demonstration,
these are the thumbnails YouTube has automatically
generated for me.
Any idea what this video is about?
I didn't think so.
What about if I add my own custom thumbnail.
Have you got any ideas what this video is about now?
Please say how to download a YouTube thumbnail.
Unless you capture the perfect moment during your film,
and the chances are you will need to create
a prepared shot.
If you're wondering how video creators
get the YouTuber look, this is what they do.
Posing in front of a camera.
And with these images, you can start
to create really interesting foregrounds and backgrounds
that contrast with each event.
So that the viewer directs their eyes
to the things you want to highlight in your thumbnail.
The next question you need to answer is,
does the image show emotion and, or excitement?
As an example, this looks okay.
But when we shrink it down to thumbnail preview size,
what are our eyes drawn to?
What if we zoom in really close on the face?
Now what are you drawn to?
It's the eyes.
The whites of the eyes.
And that creates a better human relationship.
When there is a human in the thumbnail of course.
It's not enough just to have a person in the thumbnail.
They have to convey an emotion.
Or just look damn cool.
(chime)
Of course, not all thumbnails can convey emotion.
Especially if there's not a person in the thumbnail.
But they should all be able to tell some sort of story.
Imagine what the title of each of these videos might be.
If you can make an educated guess, then the thumbnail
is doing its job.
Whether it is a simple air-post to review
or some new lava thing in Fortnite
or something to do with lights maybe.
There is a theme to each of these thumbnails
that creates intrigue, entertainment or excitement.
If we pause on this one for a moment, you might argue
that we can't see the whites of the eyes
in this skateboarder.
While this is true, what we have instead is an action shot.
It depicts movement in a static image,
which is a difficult skill to pull off.
And what do these sound waves represent?
Well, believe it or not, this is a video
all about skateboarding ASMR.
The weird, wonderful and glorious sounds
of those wheels against concrete.
Each thumbnail is teasing a simple, yet powerful message,
but compels you to click and find out more.
Another common trait of awesome thumbnails is consistency.
And we're not just talking about quality.
Each channel creates a style that you can see
throughout their thumbnails.
The goal should be to create thumbnails the viewer
can instantly recognize as your thumbnails
from your channel.
Whether it's MKBHD's style, ALI-A's vibrant
and repeated patterns.
Peter McKinnon's sheer beauty or indeed vidIQ's
color scheme and that bald, beautiful face.
You know which thumbnails come from which channel.
And while we have all of these thumbnails on the screen,
have you noticed how vibrant they are?
How rich the colors are.
How detailed and sharp the image looks,
even at such a small size.
They pop out of the screen don't they?
Well this isn't achieved through a blind look.
Video creators do edit their images to be more colorful
and sharper at a smaller size.
And they do pop out of a screen.
In this example, through Photoshop, we are adding
an image adjustment layer on top of this simple thumbnail
and increasing the saturation;
to make the color pop just that little bit harder.
Next, we are going to add an un-sharpen mask to my face,
which just brings out more detail that helps sharpen
the image at these small thumbnail preview size.
The effect may seem subtle in this simple example,
but when you throw it onto YouTube, where it's competing
against everybody else's thumbnails, it can have
a huge impact.
Another thing you may have noticed
in all of these thumbnails is the economy of text.
I'm going to try and modernize a classic phrase here.
A thumbnail can type a thousand words.
Does that make any sense?
Text should be used very sparingly.
No more than two or three words.
Remember, you have a video title to do that.
And the last thing you want to do is regurgitate
your title in the thumbnail.
Which is a very common mistake.
As with everything, there are exceptions to this rule.
And if you are doing something that is
very educational and needs to say exactly
what it does on a ti-ne, then it may be valuable
to use a text.
But try and keep it as limited as possible.
Probably no more than five or six words.
This next one is a very quick one,
but always remember YouTube alignments.
You cannot avoid this timestamp blotting your thumbnail.
Just be aware that it is always on the bottom, right hand
corner of your thumbnail or you'll end up with this problem.
(buzzer noise)
These are all the thumbnail guidelines I've started
to follow more religiously in the last year.
And the results speak for themselves.
We've increased click-through rate, that's how many times
people click on our thumbnails, by 100%
in the last 12 months.
If you're unfamiliar with how click-through rate works
we cover this in detail with our thumbnails essential guide.
Check the video out over here.
Now there is something to remember about
all of these thumbnail tips, tricks and guidance.
Once you know them, don't be afraid to break them.
Which brings us back to the most efficient thumbnail
ever created on YouTube.
One color, 17 million views.
This is a disruptor.
Something that follows no rules and because of that
it stands out as something totally unique.
It helps that the title is perfect too.
It challenges your understanding and compels you
to click, to get an answer to the question
that's in your head, which is, what does this mean?
Here at vidIQ, our thumbnails have consistent branding,
consistent themes, consistent colors.
But when decided to shake things up
with something as simple as washing out the colors
and placing a number next to someone you may know,
about a story you may have heard of.
The results were staggering.
Here's my challenge to you.
The next time you're on YouTube watching your favorite
video creators, take a look at their thumbnails
and ask yourself, why do I click on this content?
Take those answers and spend twice as long as
you usually would do creating your next thumbnail.
Because as I said at the top of this video,
better thumbnails lead to more clicks.
Let's do this.