Tell a story with your title and thumbnail

Use thumbnails, titles and descriptions to draw in viewers

Contents

Best practices

Your videos themselves contain a story. But, you should think about teasing that story out with your videos’ thumbnails, titles, and descriptions. Think of these pieces, collectively, as your content’s billboard. A compelling video billboard can be the hook that attracts new fans who are looking for great videos and channels on YouTube. The thumbnail, title and description combinations you create can make your content irresistibly clickable, or easy to skim over and ignore - so make sure to optimize them.

  • Great thumbnails

    Thumbnails are usually the first thing people see when they find one of your videos. Make sure you’ve got a strong, vibrant thumbnail that looks great as a small image and conveys the most important information about your video. Thumbnails show up in different sizes and formats across YouTube and external sites with embedded YouTube videos.

    General Guidelines

    • When shooting a video, take shots that will make great thumbnails.
    • Always upload custom thumbnails with the video file.
    • Design thumbnails that reinforce your videos' titles and the actual content.
    • Make sure the thumbnail adheres to YouTube's community guidelines.

    Visual Guidelines

    • Make sure thumbnails look great at both small and large sizes.
    • Ensure they accurately represent the content.

  • Titles

    Titles should work with your thumbnails to tell a cohesive and compelling story. Titles help audiences and YouTube’s discovery systems make sense of your content - so be sure to include relevant keywords that help describe your video. Titles should:

    • Include descriptive and relevant keywords toward the beginning of a title.
    • Display branding and episode numbers toward the end when appropriate.
    • Keep titles concise so they don’t get cut-off because of a high character count.
    • Always represent your content accurately; misleading titles can cause audience drop-offs that negatively impact viewership and watch-time.
    • Create titles that reinforce their respective thumbnails.
    • Update titles so they remain relevant and continue to attract views over time.

  • Descriptions

    Descriptions should:

    • Accurately describe your video in one or two concise sentences.
    • Be consistent with the story of your thumbnail and title; all three - thumbnails, titles, and descriptions - are seen together in search results.
    • Either continue the narrative of the title and thumbnail or add information that doesn’t fit in the title. Be creative!

    Descriptions can also get viewers to take an action from the watch page.

  • Summary

    • A thumbnail should be bright and visually compelling, accurately represent the content, and look great at both small and large sizes.
    • Video titles should reinforce their respective thumbnails, be descriptive, promote sharing, and use relevant keywords.
    • Together, the video’s thumbnail, description, and title should tell a story about your video.

Mastery checklist

  • What makes a compelling thumbnail?
  • How can you measure a thumbnail's impact?
  • How do you craft a strong title?
  • Why should you have a strong title/thumbnail/description combination?

Examples from creators

Vsauce: Are we ready for aliens?
Think about why this is a great example of a good title/thumbnail combination. Based on what you have learned, what suggestions do you have to improve the description? (Video in English)
Vsauce: How much does a shadow weigh?
This is an example of a compelling thumbnail/title combination. You already have an idea of what this content will be about before watching the video. (Video in English)

Community activities

Put your new knowledge to work! Answer the activity questions below. Then share your answer with the community to get feedback from other creators.

1. Select one of your thumbnails. Write in one sentence the story you think your thumbnail conveys.
2. Share your thumbnail in the community - ask for one sentence describing the story your thumbnail conveys. What differences did you see between your sentence and those provided by the community? How will you adjust your thumbnail based on the feedback received?
3. Post the title of your latest video in the community. Ask for input on what your video is about based on the title alone. How accurate were the responses?
4. How will you adjust your title based on the input provided?

Check your knowledge

Question
Which of the following elements contribute to a compelling thumbnail?
Close-ups, in-focus, high resolution, accurately represents content, looks good large or small.

Multiple images, low resolution, minimal contrast, any content.

Close-ups, low resolution, looks good large, in-focus.

High resolution, accurately represents content, multiple images.

Great job!
Your thumbnail should be clear and compelling regardless of size.
Not quite right - try again!
Consider how your thumbnail represents your content and how it will display on different sized devices.
Which of the following should you include at the beginning of your title?
Keywords

Branding

Episode numbers

Date recorded

Right!
Keywords help in the discovery of your content so place them first.
Close, but try again!
While each of these items is important you may want to consider placing another element ahead of them.
Why should titles, thumbnails, and descriptions be considered together?
Because they each tell a different part of the story.

They should not, because each has a unique purpose.

The title is more important than the description and the thumbnail so it should be considered first.

Thumbnails, titles, and descriptions tell a cohesive story encouraging viewers to click and watch

Awesome!
Thumbnails, titles and descriptions work as your content's billboard, attracting new fans to your content.
Not quite - try again!
Consider the overall story you are trying to tell between these three tools.
Awesome job completing the questions! How can we make this page better?
 

Measure success

How effective are the thumbnails and titles for your individual videos?
Use the Audience retention report in YouTube Analytics and focus on the beginning of the absolute audience retention graph. A steep decline can indicate:

- That the story of the thumbnail and title is inconsistent with the beginning of the video.
- A slow-moving intro (i.e., not getting to the point of the video quickly, a long graphical sequence, or misleading/spammy content).

Try it now  

In this collection

01:
Tell a story with your title and thumbnail
02:
Get your viewers to interact
03:
Understand your audience
04:
Keep your channel fresh
 

What to do next

Get your viewers to interact
Get your viewers to interact
Maximize engagement with your annotations and descriptions
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