- When you wanna grow your channel,
it really doesn't matter how amazing your content is
if no one is enticed to click on it in the first place
and Derral is gonna share with us some of his tricks
for getting more people to click on more of your thumbnails
leading to more channel growth.
Coming up.
(electronic tones)
Hey guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer.
Welcome to Video Creators.
We are all about helping you reach more people,
grow your channel, so you can change their life
with the message that you're spreading,
and Derral is all about that too.
He literally changes millions of people's lives--
- Literally.
- When it comes to optimizing your thumbnails, though,
that's the very beginning--
- [Derral] Oh.
- Most people think the content just has to be awesome,
but you need good titles of thumbnails--
- Well, first off, thumbnails is content.
I really get upset when content creators say,
oh, it's just content in this video.
No, no, no.
Your title's content, your thumbnail's content,
your description's content.
What I like to do is really understand
who's going to watch it
and how they're gonna engage with it.
I've produced a lot of viral videos,
and also ads, and there's one of 'em with a pooping unicorn.
We took time to split test over 150 different thumbnails
to make sure which ones would actually click on
with which audiences and we spent a lot of time
and effort really understanding human behavior.
Now, YouTube has given us great tools
to help us really understand the click through rate
and understanding what's happening at what stages
of the given video release.
The first tip that I'm gonna give you
is imagine explaining what your video's about
in photos without any words on a three by five card
and then shrink it down a little bit.
How can you explain what the video's about
without using words?
And if you can do that, that's a huge win.
This is the second tip, how does it reinforce your title?
The more that you can tell without text, the better it is,
but if you're using text to enhance, then it's great.
The next tip would be really understanding the behavior
of your audience.
First thing that I do
is I wanna see my top-performing videos
and maybe there's something similar that's happening,
but I like to identify what those things are.
- Maybe you notice that your face is in all the ones
that are top performing-- - Perfect!
- Or maybe your face is not on all the ones
that are top performing-- - Exactly.
Next is never to be satisfied with your thumbnail.
Sometimes you need a little refresh.
For me, I like to go on the high-performing videos
and start tweaking the thumbnail.
- What happens if you are tweaking some
of those top-performing videos and they start declining?
- I like to have a time period
before I make that assessment.
- [Tim] Okay.
- I like to see what can happen over a five day period
so I have five days worth of data with the new data
and then you can analyze.
- Will you ever go back and put the old thumbnail back?
- I 100% never delete a thumbnail,
I always save it-- - Yeah.
- Because I've reinstated just as many as I've changed.
- [Tim] Yeah, okay.
- Well, I wanna know why that thumbnail is performing,
so I'll actually even edit another thumbnail
more like the first instead of
just going completely the other direction.
- It sounds like you're saying the success
of a lot of these thumbnails is based
on a lot of testing and analysis--
- Yeah.
- When you, say you split test 150 thumbnails,
how do you do that?
- Wow.
We had 150 thumbnails with about 47 different titles
that we're testing out.
But as we were going through,
we just started narrowing it down
and just try to identify, okay,
this is responding really well with this target demo,
is this the one that we wanna go after,
and so on and so forth, 'til we were able to narrow it down.
For me, there's a tool called TubeBuddy
that I love that I do a ton of split tests
and you're able to do that with your own current content
and see how it performs.
- [Tim] One thing that we've been working on here
with our thumbnails is really trying to simplify them--
- Yeah, that's always a challenge.
- Because it used to be a day on YouTube
where the hyper-edited ones-- - Yeah.
- [Tim] With the bright colors and everything
really performed the best,
but it seems like the more natural images
are performing better.
- We manage a lot of channels and we have a lot of data
and what we're able to see is
it's really depending on your age group.
- Yeah.
- If you're going toddlers or even kids,
brighter's better, really in their face engagement,
more is actually relevant.
But as soon as you hit that 13 year old age group
and then on up, the more that you get to the 20s, 30s, 50s,
stuff like that, what's going on is they want real things--
- Yeah.
- And the more that it looks real,
simple, natural, not so in their face,
but it still has the elements of emotion,
using their face, and so on.
YouTube is really good at auto-generating thumbnails.
Sometimes those auto-generated thumbnails
are even better-- - I know.
I hate when that happens.
- It's like-- - Oh!
- 'Cause I test it.
- I was oust by a robot.
- I'm like, why did I just spend an hour taking--
- [Tim] I know.
- On a thumbnail,
but I think everyone's over-complicating it.
I really do believe you need to tell a story,
but it needs to be simple enough
that they can understand what's going on at a glance.
- [Tim] Yeah.
- 'Cause that's all you have is a glance.
- I have a challenge for you.
Walk us through the process of what you would do.
- Wow, so are we using this thumbnail?
- Yes.
- This is a lot of pressure.
- We're gonna actually do it right now.
- I wanna make sure I'm staying
in the theme of your channel.
I don't want them to say,
oh, is this not Tim Schmoyer video?
How we actually make people want to click on this?
A blank screen, like click for me, just one color,
we're not even in it, and the word, would you click.
Would that work?
- I don't know, they're here.
- Let's go with a couple options here
because I never am satisfied with one.
You know your audience better than I know your audience.
What would get them to engage with that thumbnail?
- If we were gonna put our faces in it,
it would be us maybe-- - Hmm.
- Like a question.
What would not work, though, is if we tried
to show a computer screen
with all these different thumbnails on it
and an arrow going towards one.
Then it starts getting too complicated--
- Yeah, yeah.
- And things start getting too small.
- I think the last one would be you pointing at me
and, no, no, no, pointing back.
I think we need to get some depth in this a little bit--
- [Tim] Oh, okay.
- [Derral] And the title should be--
- [Tim] You're blurred out as little bit?
- His thumbnails sucks.
(laughter)
I think the first one is gonna be the winner,
but it might be your idea or it might be the third idea.
I think the point is, okay, what's going on here,
who's the audience, what would they engage with?
Start thinking about it.
It shouldn't just be a five minute process,
this should be something that you're digging deep on.
Don't make a decision now.
What I normally do would get titles and thumbnails,
give it a night, wake up in the morning, and say,
oh, what was I thinking there? - Yeah.
- And start crossing things off and get really engaged.
- Believe it or not, YouTube actually provides
some really valuable tools inside your analytics
that'll give you data exactly of how you can test
which videos are performing best for your audience.
We just shot that video, put it over on Derral's channel.
Click that video you see right over there
and we will see you over in that next video.