YouTube is the bread and butter of thousands of people. Every day there is a new YouTuber, and if they click the right note with the audience, they can experience tremendous success. But this also means that you will have a lot of competition on YouTube.
It is because on YouTube you will not only find common people trying to make a career, but also brands and businesses. It increases the competition even more.
A brand knows the importance of YouTube for their businesses. After all, it is the second most used search engine, and over a billion people are using YouTube to look at customer reviews of their favorite brands and so on.
So, whether you are a brand looking for a way to connect with your audience, or you are an influencer trying to make a career as a YouTuber, you need to have a strategy.
One of those strategies is using a customized YouTube thumbnail. A thumbnail for your YouTube channel is similar to a book cover in the sense that people the book cover is the first impression and appeals to a customer. Similarly, if your thumbnail is good, creative, informative, and customized, it will attract more people to your channel.
Even YouTube agrees as one of the reports says, that 90% of the channels that are performing better on YouTube are using customized and quality thumbnails. Thus, it is high time that you start making custom thumbnails for your channel as it is the best way to engage and appeal to more people.
Remember that a person will see your thumbnail before they read a title, and taking it lightly, can be the death of your channel. Here are some ways through which you can make sure that your thumbnail is impressive enough for your users.
Let’s Check Effective Tips To Create An Interactive Youtube Thumbnail.
1. Work With A Consistent Thumbnail Template
Every video is different, and the thumbnail will be different too. But what you can do to make it effective and consistent is using a template. Some apps or websites provide custom YouTube thumbnail template like Canva. Use that to create a thumbnail for every video.
It will give a uniformity to your video and will help people recognize your video amongst all the other videos. A couple of more things that you should keep in mind regarding the same are:
When using text in your thumbnail, make sure it matches the color scheme and theme of the video.
Also, ensure that you use editing tools like Canva to edit the image to make it look the same with all the thumbnails.
2. Select A Relevant Image For Your Thumbnail
The best way to make your thumbnail customized and personal is by using a relevant image preferably of a human for your video. For instance, if your video is top ten beauty hacks, then don’t use a photo of a celebrity for it. Instead, while shooting try to take a picture of yourself telling people about the beauty hack or when you are applying the makeup or so on.
Using an expressive headshot of yours is quite appealing for people as it connects with their emotions. It is okay if you are unable to take a picture, you can take a screenshot at the perfect time and use it as your thumbnail.
Editing and adding text to it can be done using any editing software later on.
3. Knowing About Thumbnail Trends Is Important
Yes, you heard right. YouTube thumbnails have trends too, and you must follow them. Here are some of the trends:
- Using your image in the video will pique the interest of the viewers. Also, make sure it is expressing a certain emotion like sad, happy, or frustrated, or so on.
- Using the product image is important too as it tells people what they are looking at
- You can pose a question on your thumbnail too, as it appeals to people too.
4. Take Motivation From Other Channels
You need to figure out what other people of your niche are doing for their YouTube channel. Are they using a certain type of typeface or a filter that makes their thumbnail more appealing for the viewers?
It is important to know because something will be the same with all channels, like high-resolution images or using short but descriptive text, and so on. But you need to figure out what everyone is doing so that you don’t do that. Instead, you can add a unique addition to your thumbnail. For that, exploring other thumbnails is important.
It will make it easy for you to find motivation and inspiration. But keep in mind, to never copy what others are doing. It is important to keep adding your little twist to the thumbnail to keep it unique like your logo or so on.
5. Use Text In Your Thumbnail
Adding text in your thumbnail yields a lot of benefits, like it tells people more about the content of a video. A viewer cannot always guess what the video is about simply by looking at the image. They need more than an image even if you are using your headshot.
- A text can provide more details about the context of the video, and also at the same time help people find your video. How? Through keywords.
- When you add a text to your thumbnail, it can be few words or you can use the whole title. But whatever it is, make sure to include keywords as they can help people find your video quickly.
- But ensure that the text is bold and big as the thumbnail size that we see on your screen is relatively small.
- Another point to remember, use numbers in the text of your thumbnail if the video is a part of a series.
6. Picking The Best Font And Keeping It Consistent Is Important For A Thumbnail
We talked about consistency above, right? Well, one element that can help with consistency across all your videos is your font. When you use a uniform video across all your videos, it appeals more to people, and they will start identifying it with your brand.
The first step towards this is finding the right type of font for your channel. You want to experiment with tons of fonts, but not so much that you end up using a weird one.
Also, keep the typeface limited to two, and use them for all your videos.
7. Color Contrasting Is Important
You want people to click on your video by looking at your thumbnail. Thus, make sure that all the elements on the thumbnail are visible to the viewer. If you are using a dark background or image, and the color of the text is such that they merge, it is of no use.
Thus, keeping color contrast in mind is important. You need to pick colors that work well with each other and are readable.
8. Mobile-Friendly
You want to create a thumbnail that works across all devices, especially on smartphones. It Is well known that many people browse YouTube using their mobiles, so a thumbnail that pixelates on mobile or doesn’t show on a smartphone screen is useless.
Lastly, create an authentic and honest thumbnail. You don’t want to confuse or mislead the viewers because that will put you on a fast-track route for losing subscribers.