Change You Tube Thumbnail, See Results Skyrocket!

byjetrbby80316

5K followers

Updated 4 years ago

I'd heard about this technique before, but I was skeptical.

I've been saying I would do it for months, but would conveniently push it to the side every time.

Until now.

Well, now I'm a true believer!

THUMBNAILS (Cannot Over-stress Importance)

Anyone who creates content on You Tube, knows how importnat thumbnails really are.

Your videos can show up high in many places, i,e, on YT Watch page, in Suggested videos, Channel Page, Playlist Page, and in Search frequently (equivalent to Google Page 1), but unless you have a GREAT thumbnail, you're not gonna get many clicks.

No clicks. No views.

No views. no watch time.

The content (video) I posted 2 days ago IMO was great, evocative, and trending. I was very confident it would be well-received.

Secondly, unless your thumbnail is highly relevant to your content, you will not get the watch time. People will click, watch a few seconds, then click away.

I was wrong on one thing.

I THOUGHT I already had a very good catchy thumbnail (The image on TOP), I spent a good deal of time designing it. I KNEW my content was highly relevant.

But after the video was published on You Tube for 21 hours. I was seeing these disappointing results.

After 21 hours since publishing, it had only 59 views and 1.7 hours watch time. Keep in mind this was a GREAT video, and (in my mind) it shouldn't have been seeing such poor results. Even after only 21 hours.

In the past, I would've just let it go, or try to promote the video more agressively on social media. But this time I remembered the advice of a very smal group of experts, and decided to "test".

Took Immediate Action

This time I decided to take action.

Immediately, I assessed (HONESTLY) what was MISSING with the original thumbnail design, and GOT TO WORK REDESIGNING IT.

It only took my 30-45 minutes and I had a NEW IMPROVED THUMBNAIL. (see above).

Yet I was still skeptical what the results might be.

Would my results improve? Stay pretty much the same?

Or perhaps even get WORSE (arghhh!!)?

In the end after 45 minutes, I created it and replaced the original.

Look What Happened

Well, within the first several hours of uploading the NEW IMPROVED thumbnail, I noticed a dramatic increase in views (clicks). The views more than DOUBLED.

More important, over first 24 hours LOOK WHAT HAPPENED and look at the data:

And the MOST important metric the CTR (click through rate or on You Tube "clicks-per-impressions") SOARED:

To summarize. here were the changes and the RESULTS in 24 hours:

• CTR: 7.6% Excellent Improvement (up from 5.1%!)

• Watch Time: 10.4 hours Massive Improvement (up from 1.7 hours!)
• Average View Duration: 2:08 Great improvement (up from 1:41)
• Views 178 A 300% improvement (up from 59)

Amazing, amazing improvement!

You Tube Analytics: An Awesome Tool

Here's a very important takeaway: without having access to the AWESOME on-channel You Tube Analytics, i NEVER WOULD HAVE BEEN PROMPTED TO MAKE THIS CHANGE.

IMO, You Tube has the BEST Analytics, and they are directly accessible right on your channel dashboard.

With You Tube analytics, you can take a "very deep dive" into the data and get very granular, but the analytics are always easy to interpret and understand.

YT Analytics allows you to create many different color-coded charts to represent your data.,

All of these in combination create an amazing tool for you to easiliy interpret the data, assess your weak areas, make changes and improve your performance. .

Start harnessing the power of YT Analytics. Once you start "clicking around" you will very quickly understand the correlation of the data to your performance, and you will become hooked on making perormance improvments!

My Final Thoughts

Think like a scientist.

But in the end, go with your gut.

Execute like a marketer.

I was confident that once people were viewimg the video, I could KEEP their attention and thus increase WATCH TIME (one of the two MOST important metrics on You Tube), because I knew I created GREAT content.

I was right here. What validated this was the massive increase in WATCH TIME.

i also knew once they clicked they would not click away, because my great content was HIGHLY RELEVANT to my thumbnail images.

Both thumbnails were relevant, but I recognized the first thumbnail was MISSING some ingredient.

I was right here again. What validated this was the massive increase in CTR.

Believing my content was great, I thought this video wold receive higher than average views.

I was right here again. In this case, views TRIPLED in 24 hours.

Sorry if I'm sounding annoying here. I don't mean to be.

I don't always think I'm right ( I'm highly critical and always question how my content can be improved), what I mean is THIS time I felt really strongly I hit my mark.

However, I never would have been able to validate ANYTHING unless I was frequently analyzing my ANALYTICS, and knew how to INTERPRET the data.

That's why You Tube Analytics are the HERO.

And an indisprensable tool in your arsenal.

Ladies and Gents, I hope the review of my mental processing has helped you.

APPLY this thought process to ALL of your content - whether you have a blog, a podcast, an online store, or a You Tube channel.

It is essential to your SUCCESS.

Cheers,

Kaju