While visiting YouTube, video thumbnails allow viewers to get a short preview of your content. After your video has done uploading, you can choose one of three thumbnails YouTube creates for you, or submit your own if your account has been authenticated.
The secret formula for increasing views is to employ a strategy known as clickbait. Clickbait is a technique for convincing people to click on a link that takes them to a video or commercial. This brilliant marketing strategy is taking over the Internet.
What makes a thumbnail clickbaity?
Here are the most effective ways to use clickbait to market your videos.
1. Create emotion title
The key to creating a good clickbait is to design an attractive title. Use words that inspire an emotional response. When delivering stories in videos, many vloggers employ this strategy.
There must be emotion in order to induce a response. If your thumbnail does not create emotions in the viewer right away, they will skip your content and move on to another video to watch. You can use over emphasised images that you hope will make people feel a certain way to include emotion in your thumbnails.
Snap a picture of yourself appearing unhappy, for example, to make the audience feel sad and concerned. People tend to trust what they see at first sight, even if they aren’t truly heartbroken outside of the image. With a relatively genuine emotion that is approachable and appealing enough for someone to click, this strategy allows you to draw in more viewers.
By labelling the video “I ALMOST GOT SHOT,” you are guaranteed to create an emotional response, which will compel people to click on the video. You can also add emotion title along with emotion pictures also.
Emotion is a crucial component of a clickbait thumbnail since it creates a connection between you and the viewer, which leads to more views on your favourite video.
The better the title, the more powerful it is.
2. Provoke curiosity
To capture a viewer’s attention, use a keyword such as “mystery” or a word such as “you won’t believe.” Audiences will be more likely to click on a video with a mysterious or terrifying headline because they are curious. They will believe they are receiving information that no one else has.
3. Tell the audiance what they’ill get from it
Telling viewers how the video will help them or improve their day better is a less dramatic technique to get views. This strategy also increases the chances of people sharing your video on social media. People will find the video valuable and desire to share it if you say exactly what it will do.
4. Use odd numbers
According to studies, Audiences are more likely to click on a video with an odd number that add along with title,
You’ve triggered something in the viewer’s brain by using an odd number. The higher the figure, the better.
5. Don’t promise too much
Make certain that you deliver exactly what you advertise. Remember that you want people to watch more of your videos. Viewers will not watch more of your videos if it is clear that you are promising more than you are delivering.
6. Use pictures of fine quality
Using high definition photos is required regardless of how ridiculous your thumbnail is. If the thumbnail isn’t visually appealing, the viewer can conclude that the whole video will be similarly unappealing. Your photos should be at least 1280 pixels wide by 720 pixels tall, according to YouTube’s guidelines.
The sizing is completely in accordance with the idea of clickbait, since it is vital to provide users with sufficient resolution so that they can easily see every feature of the thumbnail. With correctly sized graphics that offer the user an initial sense of quality to your content, the viewer is more likely to take the hook and start watching your channel more frequently.
7. Good Balance of Color and Brightness
Just like anything in life, the more saturated things are — the more alive they appear to be. In order to bring life into your images, you may want to highly consider editing them with a favorable mix of color and brightness. For example, you can highlight an image with an outline or add a tone to the background that will make your thumbnail pop right out of the screen
Best tools for adjusting color, brightness, contrast, saturation of an image is pixlr use online free. Some others are picmonkey, adobe photoshop etc. People will be attracted to click on your videos if your thumbnails are more lively since they can quickly understand that work has gone into the content.
8. Intriguing Text
Text you add on thumbnail is important factor because, text have a role of make or break a thumbnail. It’s crucial to include words or phrases on top of your photographs since it sparks interest and adds drama.
The text emphasizes the thumbnail and encourages the audience to click on the video, regardless of whether the truth is twisted or exaggerated. Simultaneously, you must ensure that your title and text are not wholly misleading, as this will return sooner rather than later.
The text you use on your thumbnails should be interesting enough to attract people to click on it, but not so much that it casts you in a negative light.
9. Produce high-quality content
Make sure you have a sound strategy and a strong commitment to creating high-quality content if you want to attract the proper audience and make them want more of your video material.and also add quality tiltle , like, 5 top tips, how to loss weight, simple tips, like that. But not add misleading title, because it may decrease in views. Select attractive title for the same content.
10. Consider consistent layout and colors
Make every attempt to use thumbnails that have the same appearance and feel. This helps in the branding and placement of your channel.
For example, the this YouTube channel uses a consistent thumbnail layout and color.
Consistent thumbnails also make your videos stand out on homepage and in the Suggested Video sidebar.
Here youcan seea group of videos from the same channel are shown together for same pattern. This layout patterns catches a viewers eye compared to a random group of mismatched thumbnails
Use a Color Scheme That Stands Out
Here you can see youtube use 3 main colors for their channel.
Red, Black, White.
It will be difficult for your thumbnail to stand out if it has a lot of white, red, and black. So, youtube avoid colors on your thumbnail.
Many youtubers use white, black, red. Instead, try using these colors in your thumbnail:
- Yellow
- Green
- Orange
- Purple
- Pink
- Blue
These colors automatically attract viewers eyes automatically, than other youtube videos.
Optimize for mobile
Use large text on thumbnail, because, small title cant read on mobile screen. Try to use huge texts, so viewers can easily catchout the content of your video. So, the thumbnail must be optimized for mobile device.
Check and Track Performance
You can check the click through rate on youtube studio, and assume how well your thumbnails work. Low click through rate shows viewers not click your video because of poor thumbnails.
So, improve thumbnail strategy by trying another thumbanail and track how the click through rate to analyse the results of old thumbnail vs new thumbnail.
Tips and Advanced Strategies:
1. Plan Your Thumbnail Before You Shoot:
Before you start filming your video, you’ll want to get a sense of how your thumbnail will look. Why? Getting a clean still image from a video is really difficult. Instead, capture a couple photos while you’re shooting. Take a look at this sample thumbnail:
That particular photo of the vegan curry is not included in the video. This photo was taken exclusively for this thumbnail during the shoot.
2. Check Your Thumbnails on Mobile:
On mobile devices, YouTube thumbnails are quite small. Take a look at how your thumbnails appear on your phone for a moment. Is it possible to make out what’s going on in the shot? Is the text easy to read?
3. Try a Logo:
Some YouTubers (like Vice) use a logo to make their videos easily recognizable.
4. Try include face
While this isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, thumbnails with faces have a higher CTR than thumbnails without. Faces appear in practically all of the thumbnails on the BuzzFeed channel, for example… even in food-related videos:
Best tools for create thumbnails
1. PlaceIt
It’s a simple design tool that lets you edit YouTube thumbnail designs to match your brand. To make a great YouTube video thumbnail, you don’t need any design skills, the tools helps to create beautiful thumbanils with different templates.
The price is about 89 dollar per year.
2. Canva
Canva is one of the best professional design tools for creating beautiful thumbnails with several features. You can use it for whatever graphic design work you have, and it comes with over 1 million graphics, templates, pictures, images, and fonts, as well as an intuitive drag-and-drop interface.
While Canva is free to use, there are some premium features, such as stock pictures and clip art. All of the elements have dollar signs next to them. Alternatively, you can pay around $120 per year for the Pro version.
3. Adobe Stock
Adobe Spark has configurable YouTube thumbnail templates that you may use to quickly generate stunning thumbnails. Adobe Spark’s pre-made thumbnail layouts are free to use, and there’s even a category dedicated to YouTube thumbnails. While some may find the capabilities to be a little simple, Adobe Spark allows you to customise your thumbnails by adding custom backgrounds, colours, text, and other elements. For around $100 per year, you can upgrade to a premium plan.
4. Fotor
Fotor has excellent thumbnail-creation capabilities that allow you to start with well-designed YouTube thumbnail templates and tweak them to your heart’s content. It includes a simple, user-friendly interface where you can change your thumbnails and access all of the elements you’ll need to make them look great. To give your YouTube thumbnails a current look, Fotor contains text and design components, as well as stickers and emoticons.
Fotor is free to use, for more features you will paid $40/year
5. Snappa
Snappa is an online YouTube thumbnail builder with beautiful designs, a tonne of high-resolution photos, and everything you need to make clickable YouTube thumbnails. It’s adaptable and simple to use, making it ideal for non-designers. Snappa allows you to customise your thumbnails almost infinitely by starting from zero and adding unique fonts, backgrounds, shapes, and other graphic components.
Snappa has both free and paid versions. You will get more features by paying $120/ year.
6. Visme
Visme is a drag-and-drop YouTube thumbnail builder with a large number of templates to select from. Each template can be changed to adjust the shape, position, and size of any component. Custom text, icons, and artwork can be added to new sections using the panel on the left side of the screen. Visme also makes it simple to use an existing colour scheme or develop your own to match the colours of your business.
It offers upto 5 projects with free version. Plan starts at $168/year.
Conclusion:
