So, if you don't know this by now getting viewers to actually click your thumbnail
to hit play is pretty much the key to getting views, and growing your channel.
but thumbnails can sometimes be a cause of stress and anxiety.
I know that's happened to me where I want it to be perfect.
And I don't want to spend like an hour or two I just want to get my videos uploaded.
I got this email.
Hey, Meredith, aren't thumbnails dead, Now that YouTube has changed
the way they show previews?
my heart stopped a little bit when I read that because I was getting ready to record
this video Gwen makes a very good point.
Yes, YouTube does show previews.
But what do you have to do in order to get that preview to show up?
You have to stop scrolling.
So you need to see that thumbnail, you need to see the title.
There needs to be some like reaction in your brain to say,
Ooh, That looks intriguing.
And then after, I don't know, like a second and a half or something, YouTube
will start showing that preview.
But until you take some type of an action, like hovering your mouse or stopping
your scroll, you're seeing thumbnails.
So I don't think they're dead.
I want to show you this little cheat sheet that I created on an index card.
people like to fall into this trap of thinking your thumbnails have to have
certain elements like arrows or pointing, or they have to be certain colors or
you have to be making [shocked face].
if there was one thumbnail rule to rule all of the thumbnail rules...
It would be that.
Your thumbnail and your title work together in a combination.
and I have a whole training on this inside of thriving creators society.
But let me give you the gist.
Most of the time we start out with some type of a, like a random video idea.
for this video that you're watching here, There was something I was
going to be doing that has to do with designing thumbnails.
That I thought I can document this and put it into a YouTube video.
But what I just described to you is kind of bland.
Cause you're like, what is it?
What is the hack?
Right?
So we want to go over on this specificity scale We're not just talking about some
habit or hack or some like a random thing.
We're specifically talking about thumbnails now.
So I'm increasing this specificity over here to say, this is a thumbnail hack.
So you can get more clicks and create your thumbnails at faster.
Then we're going to move up.
We're going to add some emotion.
So here's the emotion scale.
We're going to go from apathy to emotion.
And this is where I'm going to start thinking about
What are the emotions that I think you associate with creating thumbnails,
the feeling of like, oh, I don't really want to create this thumbnail.
I just want to upload the video So there's maybe a little bit of impatience there.
frustration, annoyance, anxiety, These are all words that you may or may
not see in the title and thumbnail.
And I may or may not have said in the intro to this video.
See how this is all a combination?
They all work together.
So we've gone from bland to boring, to intriguing.
Over here.
We move into the clickbait section of this cheat sheet.
The clickbait section is where you just kind of brainstorm.
If this video was entirely clickbait, if I was being entirely way over dramatic about
this thumbnail hack that I want to show you, what would that thumbnail look like?
What would the title look like?
What are the words?
It might be like, OMG.
Or finally, or you're not going to believe this So the way this works in combination
is I like to have my title be specific because I do want it to be searchable.
Thumbnails aren't dead and neither is SEO.
So I want it to be specific with a little pop of emotion.
And then the words in the thumbnail are going to be a little bit more vague.
That's the formula that helped me increase my click through rates.
Now creating intriguing titles.
Doesn't exactly come naturally to most people.
That's why I put 17 fill in the blank hooks for your titles inside
of my YouTube video blueprint.
It's totally free.
I'll put a link down in the description so you can grab it.
Now let's talk about the whole reason I wanted to create this video to begin with!
One really aggravating thing about creating thumbnails is scrolling through
your video to find a good screen grab that you can throw into your thumbnail.
And then even once you do that, it's a little bit blurry, a little bit fuzzy.
Let me show you what I have been doing So you don't have to scroll through
and try to find that one spot where you were in the middle of a word and
it kind of looks like you were smiling.
You don't have to do that anymore.
Just take some good still images of yourself to reuse in your thumbnails.
So here's what's happening today.
This is not my normal setup.
Obviously, I'm holding my microphone like all of the TikTok Bros.
Do you recognize these photos?
Some of them are kind of wacky, but I love to set up lighting, camera,
good lens, makeup, hair, everything.
Take a whole bunch of still photos to use in my thumbnail images.
if you look through my, uh, thumbnails from the past, like year and a
half-ish, you'll notice I'm using some of the same photos, and that's
because it's so much easier to create a thumbnail with your face in it when
you have 1: actual photographs, Like the photo quality is just better.
And 2: you also have this whole range of emotions and pointing, pointing
over here and pointing over there and making the "stupid YouTube face."
(it's horrible and I hate that it works, but it does!) So
here's how this is all set up.
So this is my normal desk.
I usually sit here And I figured out that (look at me vlogging!
Oh my gosh.) So there's my camera, there's my Elgato Key Light, and
these are on the Elgato Poles
And so all I had to do was raise those up to have them be at the right level
So my Canon M50 Mark 2 is connected to the computer I'm using Canon's, just
regular software to take still images.
So putting your camera in actual photo mode for this is what you're going to
want to do because you have a bigger frame than just like 1920x1080 and you'll be
able to get like a much crisper image.
How weird is it that I'm talking to my other camera, Let me turn this around.
I think you could also do this easily with your phone.
For the best results, you wanna make sure you have really, really good lighting for
this so let's just take some pictures.
So this is the Canon software.
This is like the preview window after I take the picture.
And then this is my actual, like me in the actual camera.
So I am going to demonstrate So I'm here.
I'm in frame.
and we're going to make sure that it's focused on my face.
, which it is.
Fix my hair.
This is just a demo and I'm gonna hit this button over here, which
is basically the shutter button.
I have the camera set to a two second delay.
So when I hit the button over here to take a picture.
I have like a couple seconds to go from hitting the button with my mouse
to putting a pretty smile on my face.
Not bad, right?
I might even remove the chair altogether a lot of this is going to
be cropped, so it doesn't, it doesn't really matter if, like, you can see
the stain on my carpet over here.
Like those kinds of things don't matter.
What I like to focus on is just like, am I in focus?
Do I have any stains?
Is my hair okay?
Is my makeup okay?
Now if you're thinking, okay, so what is she gonna do?
Just like stand there and smile a hundred times for the camera?
No.
Oh, this hack is so good.
If you go to google.com.
and do a search for emotions and then go to images.
This tells you confused and patient, grumpy, excited, obnoxious, and it tells
you the face to make for those emotions.
so that way you have this whole variety of thumbnail images where you can
choose the emotion you want to convey in your thumbnail, So if this is a
topic that frustrates you or frustrates your audience, you might want some
images of yourself looking frustrated.
I have always been kind of like, The queen of facial expressions, but it really helps
to pull up what are all of the emotions and what does that facial expression look
like to get some ideas and inspiration.
You're gonna look really silly in all of these images but I promise it's going to
uplevel your thumbnails I changed my shirt a couple times, These images are probably
okay coming straight outta the camera, but I am gonna pull them into Lightroom.
However, I'm not a professional editor, we'll figure it out.
I have 161 images here.
I know they're not all gonna be like usable.
But I'm gonna pull them into light room.
And from here I'm gonna go through and kind of like cull the ones that
aren't gonna work for me at all.
If I come across one, like this is really blurry, I'm only actually
editing the ones that I want to keep.
so I ended up with, um, about half, uh, that were decent enough to keep, this is
Lightroom cc, not like Lightroom original.
And one of the first things that I'm doing is just coming under
edited and just hitting auto.
So I went through and hit auto for all of these images.
So I know that the exposure and the saturation and all that stuff is
just automatically gonna be set.
Because remember I said I'm not a professional photographer.
I'm pretty good.
Look at that, but I'm not a professional.
Look at all of these amazing thumbnail images that I can use!
From here, I'm just going to export these into their own folder.
So I have the originals, and then I have these edited ones.
They're just regular, full size, 100% quality, so I can pull them into Canva
where I actually designed my thumbnails.
but remember.
The one, thumbnail hack to rule them all.
Is that your thumbnail and your title work in combination.
That's why I included 17 fill in the blank hooks that you can use for your titles
and even for your thumbnails in your next YouTube video, I put that in the YouTube
video blueprint, that's a free download.
And although I have a thumbnail design secrets video that I'll
queue up for you over here.
let me know in the comments, if you want a full tutorial on how I
create my thumbnails inside of Canva, just say, Hey, Meredith, give us a
thumbnail Canva tutorial, please!