- How do you make your videos stand out?
How do you get more views on your videos?
How do you grow your YouTube channel?
So there's two answers to those questions
and we're gonna go over one of those today.
The first one is create an amazing keyword rich great title.
The second one is to create a great
looking eye-catching thumbnail.
So in today's video we are going over how to put together
a great looking thumbnail and I'm gonna show you
some apps that you can use to make that happen
and go over some best practices and things that you can do
to make your thumbnails stand out.
The first thing that I want you to understand
is your thumbnail is the doorway, it is the gateway,
to your video, it is the thing that stops people
from watching your video or it is the thing
that gets people to watch your video.
So if you don't get the viewers attention,
they're not gonna watch your video.
Jeremy Vess said it best, you have to win the click
and that is an awesome way to say it because when you have
a sea of thumbnails showing up when somebody searches
for something, you have to win that click.
You need to be the thumbnail that they tap
or they click on and if you're not you lose the click
which means they're not watching your video
which means you're not growing.
So let's talk about what makes a great looking thumbnail
and things that you need to keep in mind
when you're building your thumbnail.
But before I do that, I do wanna say to make sure
your channel is verified so YouTube will allow you
to upload custom thumbnails.
I'm gonna put a link in the description below
so you can figure out how to do that
if you haven't don it already.
Now if you look at any of the top thumbnails
for just about any search term,
you're gonna find some common things.
They're usually gonna be intriguing or they're gonna be
some sort of an action shot that's gonna make you want
to click on that thumbnail or it's gonna be super colorful,
super eye-catching, the fonts are usually gonna be
really bold and easy to read or there's gonna be
no font at all but it's gonna have the good looking image
that's gonna be relevant to the video
and it's gonna have a great title.
So focusing on the thumbnail side,
you wanna make sure the image is as large as possible,
so make your thumbnail the size of 1920 by 1080
or a 16 by nine ratio because what happens
is when you upload it to YouTube, YouTube will compress it
and shrink it down so the larger that is,
the better it's going to look when it's compressed.
You also wanna make sure that your thumbnails are optimized
for mobile devices and if you're a mobile creator,
well you've already got a phone so you can easily
test this on your phone.
You wanna make sure that your fonts are bold and easy
to read if you're putting text on there to begin with.
You wanna make sure that any facial expressions
or anything that you're putting in the thumbnail makes sense
when you view it at it's smallest form on a phone.
One thing that you can do is after you have your thumbnail
made, you can upload it to YouTube, set it to private,
not public, make sure it's set to private
and then go in and look at it on your phone
and see if the timestamp is gonna cover up anything,
see if it's gonna cover up any text,
see if your text is easy to read.
Is it bold enough?
Are the images on the thumbnail easy to read?
Can you make out what's going on?
And if you're unsure, hand it to a friend
or a family member and ask them, hey can you see
what's going on in this thumbnail?
Tell me what you think is happening in this thumbnail.
I spend a lot of time on YouTube looking at thumbnails,
seeing what people are doing in their thumbnails,
tryna get ideas, trying to figure out why this is getting
clicked and why this one is not
and one of the main things that I see
that's problematic is people are putting fonts,
their text on the thumbnail that you can't read
once it's shrunk down and I'm looking at it on my phone.
So keep that in mind.
Use bold, easy to read fonts.
Looking at thumbnails on a desktop or a tablet
is a completely different experience
than looking at it on your phone so keep that in mind
when you're choosing your fonts and your text.
Keep it bold, keep it easy to read, so when it shrinks down,
you don't have a problem with somebody tryna figure out
what's being said on your thumbnail.
And as I always say, be mindful of the timestamp.
It's gonna be in the bottom right hand corner
and that moves around based on if it's on your desktop
or if it's a tablet or if it's on a phone,
so when you check it on your phone, check the timestamp
to make sure it's not covering up any of your text.
Now let me show you two different thumbnails.
First thumbnail that you're looking at,
it looks okay, but the font is skinny
and it looks alright on a desktop, it looks okay on a tablet
but when you shrink it down, it's gonna lose a lot
of detail and you're not gonna easily be able to read
what it says when it's on your phone.
Now compare that with this second thumbnail,
they're big, bold, easy to read fonts
and you know what's going on immediately.
When you shrink them down and compare them side by side,
the one with the bold text easily stands out.
It stands out a lot more than the one
with the skinny small fonts.
It also helps if you don't put too many words
on your thumbnail, cluttering your image up with words,
it's never gonna work, it's too much to look at.
Let me show you this example.
You can use a lot of text on your thumbnail,
it's just too cluttered, too much to look at.
But if you simplify it, just add a few words,
add value to the image that you already have,
add some focus words and draw the users eye
exactly where you want it to go,
show them exactly what you want them to look at,
show them what's inside the video.
Don't make them waste any time trying to figure out
what's being said on your thumbnail
or what's inside your video.
The next thing you wanna do is you wanna make it pop.
You want it to be colorful, you want it to be eye-catching.
You want someone to notice it as they're scrolling through
their phone, they're laying in bed, they're scrolling,
scrolling, scrolling and boom
there's your thumbnail, it gets their attention.
Color is a wonderful way to do this
and I'm gonna put a link that I made
to a video right there where I walk you through
how to use a color wheel to choose the right colors
for your images and your thumbnails.
You can also use faces in your thumbnail.
Data has proven that faces get more clicks
than thumbnail without faces, of course it's not necessary,
but they do get more clicks.
But if you are using a face,
think about a face that shows emotion.
Think about a face that shows excitement.
They call it a YouTube face, right?
(gasping)
YouTube faces, those get clicks.
Now that might not work for your niche,
it might not work for what you're doing,
but if it does work, try it,
test it out, see how it works for you.
Now when I add my own face to my own thumbnails,
I'll go in and I'll whiten my eyes.
I'll actually make my eyes a little bit larger,
I'll exaggerate things a little bit because I just want
my face to pop out just a little bit more.
I also add a little bit of color and I do that
by adding saturation, you can use Snapseed for that
or any photo editing app, you can add saturation,
you can add ambiance to make it stand out,
to make it pop a little bit more.
You can also do things like cut yourself out,
put a stroke around you or put a drop shadow behind you
and that's gonna make you stand off the background
and give it a little bit of a 3D effect,
which is gonna be more eye-catching.
Now is don't know what kinda content you're making,
so a face might not work for you,
but if you're using something where you can use
an action shot, use an action shot.
Anything that looks like a really cool shot,
you can scroll up through your video feed
and you can find the right image, take a screenshot of that,
open that up in a photo editor
and use that as your thumbnail.
Keep in mind you want people to be intrigued,
you want them to thing wow.
You want people to think what is going on there.
Or you can get their attention with the expression
on your face or the colors that you use,
but the goal is get the users attention.
If you do not get their attention,
you will not win the click.
That's something you have to understand.
Attention equals click.
So whatever you have to do, don't click bait them,
but keep it relevant to your video, but win the click.
Now part of winning the click is also being consistent.
You wanna have a consistent look
across your channels thumbnails.
You wanna have some sort of identifying mark
or some sort of a look or some sort of a vibe
where people can identify the thumbnails as yours.
So once they get to know you and they get to know
your stamp or your look or your font choice
or whatever it is, however you make your thumbnails,
they can easily identify your thumbnail when it's suggested
to them in a sea of other thumbnails.
They can say, oh, that's so and so's thumbnails,
I remember that guy, I'm subscribed to that guy,
I like his content, I'm gonna click on that.
So a few ways you can do this
is by creating a vibe or a look.
For example one of the things that I do,
I use the same font on every single thumbnail
and I tilt it the same way and I put it
on top of a wooden background and that's kind of my look.
Now I'm always testing thumbnails if you go to my channel
right now and you don't see something like that,
it's because I'm A/B testing my thumbnails
and I do that using TubeBuddy,
link in the description below for that.
So if you wanna learn how to A/B test your thumbnails,
which everyone should do that, go check that out.
And if you don't know what A/B testing is,
A/B testing allows you to load up two thumbnails
and over the course of time it will tell you
which one gets more views, which on brings you
more watch time or which one brings you more subscribers
so you can choose the best thumbnail based on whatever
goals you have for your channel.
Okay back to the branding of the thumbnails.
One of the things that people like to do is they'll put
a logo or something in the bottom left-hand corner
or the top left-hand corner or even the top right corner,
not on the bottom right because that's where the timestamp
goes and that applies for any branding element
that you wanna put on your thumbnail.
That could be your logo, that could be a color selection,
that could be a font choice,
it could be a certain type of image, it could be a border.
There's lots of different ways to do this.
So look around, see what other people are doing.
Find some inspiration and then come up with your own
ideas to make your thumbnails uniquely yours.
Now let's talk about some apps that you can use
to make this happen.
First and foremost, you've got Snapseed.
Snapseed is totally free, it's by Google
and it is a fantastic and super powerful app.
I'm gonna put a link to a video that I made right there.
If you're just getting started and you're overwhelmed
by all of this, that's the video that you should watch
to get started or if you just wanna make simple thumbnails,
that's the video to watch.
Second on the list would be PicsArt.
This is an amazing app that's kinda like a Photoshop
for your phone and I'm gonna put a link to video
that I made right there that walks you through
making a more professional looking thumbnail.
You can do transparent images
and you can build it up in layers, really really amazing.
They have a free version and they have a paid version.
You do not have to upgrade so when the page loads up
and says that you need to upgrade,
just look for the little X somewhere on the screen,
tap on that and it's gonna continue
to give you the free version.
If you're an Android user and for some reason you don't
like Snapseed or PicsArt, you can
check out an app called PixelLab.
It's another free app and I'm gonna put a link
in the description below to a video that my brother Nick
made showing you how to make a really good looking thumbnail
that kinda look like his, using this free app.
Amazing app, check it out if you don't like the other two.
You can also use your favorite video editing app.
You could use something like Kinemaster,
you could take a screen grab of the video,
drop some text on it and export it out.
You could then open it up inside of Snapseed
or inside of PicsArt or PixelLab, make it come to life,
make it pop, add more elements on top of it
to get the really good looking thumbnail
built off of your video using a screen grab.
And of course you can also use one of the Photoshop apps
or Canva which allows you to start off of a template based
thumbnail or channel art.
And by the way, if you're looking to do your channel art,
I'm gonna put a link to a video that I made right there,
where I used Canva and walk through the process
of creating your channel art.
If you wanna learn how to make content on your phone
or be a mobile YouTuber, be sure to hit that
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so you don't miss out on future content.
Thank you so much for watching, I do appreciate it,
and I'll see you in the next video.