Alun Hill YouTube Secrets
YouTube Thumbnails
Simple Best Practices

YouTube Secrets
Alun Hill YouTube Secrets
YouTube Thumbnails !
Simple Best Practices
! Thumbnail Basics During the upload process you have the opportunity to pick one of three frames from your video, or to upload a custom image file.
! ! ! YouTube Secrets
Alun Hill YouTube Secrets
For either option some basic best-practices can be applied:
! 1. Your thumbnail should look good, either scaled small or large Faces work better and engage the audience. Visuals of the finished product work better than the process (e.g. show the cake, rather a picture of the batter). Good thumbnails follow the same rule as good photographs composition, contrast, and color count.
! 2. Choose images that accurately portray your video’s content Accurate thumbnails allow viewers to more easily browser and enjoy your content.
YouTube Secrets
Alun Hill YouTube Secrets
Misleading thumbnails lead to poor audience engagement and will hurt your channel’s performance in the long run. Safeguards are in place to find and penalize channels that upload “racy / naughty" thumbnails - so don’t do it!
! 3. For channels with the ability to upload custom thumbnails, upload a high quality image • There is no limit on pixel size (though 1280x720 is
recommended) • The image file has to be less than 2MB • Accepted file formats: PNG, BMP, GIF, or JPEG
! ! YouTube Secrets
Alun Hill YouTube Secrets
! Thumbnail Placement Thumbnails for your videos, playlists and even your channel are used throughout YouTube to promote your content. Some common placements for thumbnails are in search results, along the far right column of your video’s Watch Page, on your Channel page, and in the video player after a video stops playing (the video’s end card). Through these placements viewers can discover your videos, playlists, and channels.
! ! ! ! YouTube Secrets
Alun Hill YouTube Secrets
! You also should use YouTube Analytics to understand and measure the impact of these tips. https://www.youtube.com/analytics?o=U
YouTube Secrets