The second most often used social media site worldwide, YouTube, comes after Facebook and ahead of Instagram. Right after Google, YouTube is also the second most utilized search engine worldwide with over 2 billion active monthly users – 500 million hours of video seen daily. You know where you need to be. Getting people to find your videos while searching for content that is relevant to your brand is a huge first step. Getting those people to click on your video once they find it usually comes down to one thing — your thumbnail image. Here’s how to optimize your YouTube thumbnails for maximum clicks.
Create Custom Thumbnails
Your thumbnails on YouTube can appear in three different ways:
Options for thumbnail
- Auto-generated — YouTube chooses at random a frame from your video.
- Manually uploaded: You choose and post a custom picture.
- No thumbnail: Your video shows without a thumbnail.
Custom Thumbnails Win: Why?
Almost always, an uploaded thumbnail will outperform an auto-generated one. A quality custom thumbnail performs better than a good auto-generated thumbnail.
The key Thumbnails require
- a resolution of 720 x 1280 pixels.
- File size: less than two MB.
Creating a picture that meets YouTube’s criteria and appeals more to your audience only requires a little time and work.
Use Faces and Emotions
People connect with other people, especially on social media. This explains a great part of influencer marketing’s success. If your content features you or someone else — especially if that person showcases emotion or expression — use that photo for your thumbnail.
Show happiness, surprise, anger, silliness, or even sadness. Remember those clickbait headlines everyone got so mad about? “You won’t believe what happens next.” Well, faces and emotions act like those headlines because they set up a story and induce curiosity. If you can’t showcase a human face, try an expressive animal, pet, or character.
Include Text Overlay
Speaking of curiosity, text overlay helps push the narrative and tease the topic of your video. Choose large, readable fonts that contrast with the background colors of the text and the thumbnail picture itself. Place the text strategically so it does not interfere with any faces or emotionally expressive images. Keep the text short, ideally three to six words.
Remember that thumbnails appear in a lot of places — as small icons in search results, suggested videos, and other places across the platform — so make sure your text can be read even when shrunk down to a small size. Hint: Choose text colors that will pop even when the text is small or partially obscured.
Stay On-Brand
You want all of your video content to seem like it comes from one source — your brand or company name. You also want the look and feel of your thumbnails to be consistent with other assets you use across your marketing strategy.
As users learn to know your style and visuals, this raises brand recognition. Include your logo on each thumbnail image, but do it in a way that does not distract from the main image or any text overlay. To give your thumbnails a whole cohesive look, use similar color schemes throughout them. If you have a specific font that matches your branding, use it on all your text overlays as well. This will reinforce the connection between your videos and your brand further.
Test and Analyze
Like titles, Thumbnails have to be with the understanding that they are not set in stone. Once you begin releasing videos, routinely check performance metrics as trends show up.
Track The Key Metrics
- Watch Time & Drop-Off: Pay great attention to viewing time minutes and the average % view drop-off in the initial few seconds.
- Impressions vs. Views: If you find many impressions but few views, you may have a clickbait title issue or content delivery issue.
Correct and maximize
- Low Click-through Rates: Should clicks be low, your thumbnail may not be interesting enough; think about changing the title, picture, and keywords.
- Iterate as Needed: Change thumbnails depending on performance insights without thinking twice.
Boosting Credibility and Clicks with Purchased Engagement
Purchasing subscribers, likes, and views will provide your content the first boost it needs when optimizing your YouTube thumbnails for the highest clicks. Users are more inclined to click on a highly viewed and strongly engaged video as it seems more credible and appealing. Additionally favoring highly engaged videos, the YouTube algorithm increases their prominence in search results and recommendations.
Users are more likely to click on your well-designed thumbnail if the video has a large number of views and likes since this suggests that the content is worthwhile. This approach provides the momentum your video needs to draw organic engagement, therefore overcoming the difficulty of standing out on a packed stage. Purchasing involvement serves as a trigger to intensify your efforts at optimization.
Conclusion
One effective approach to boost clicks and interaction on your YouTube thumbnails is the optimization of them. Your movies will look better if you create distinctive imagery, use expressive faces, add compelling text, and stay on brand. Test and improve your strategy by constantly using engagement techniques to increase credibility and exposure for the most impact.
Sources and links
https://www.pexels.com/photo/eggs-in-tray-on-white-surface-1556707/
https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-space-gray-iphone-5-34407/
https://www.pexels.com/photo/accountant-counting-money-210990/