Everyday, millions of people are flocking to YouTube searching through an endless sea of videos. They want to find information, they need a laugh, or even if they just want to be entertained they can rest assured that YouTube is the place to find just what they are looking for. Let's face it, this is why so many of us started YouTube channels in the first place. It's a huge platform with tremendous potential and opportunity for anyone trying to make a name for themselves online.
In fact over “100 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every minute” so the real question is – how do you make your YouTube videos stand out among the crowd? What can you do to increase the likelihood that someone click on your video when it comes up in the search results alongside all the other videos?
I'm sure you already know the answer to that question.
Create an attractive YouTube Video Thumbnail.
Introducing The YouTube Slicer
Having the perfect thumbnail for your YouTube videos might be one of the single most important things you can do to get people to click on your video. This is why I'm so pleased to introduce you to this cool YouTube thumbnail maker called TubeSlicer from Joey Kissimmee. This is the same Slicer that is used by well-known YouTuber Gideon Shalwick, who has amassed millions of views on his YouTube channel.
With TubeSlicer you don't have to worry about if you have the right YouTube thumbnail size. Previously I was using this static template, which you can still download here, as a guidance for the size of YouTube thumbnails. But when I started using TubeSlicer and the awesome background templates that come with it, both my daily and monthly YouTube view counts have increased tremendously because more and more people are noticing my videos on the search results page.
[tweet_box design=”box_08″]A Great YouTube Thumbnail Design Will Attract More Views on Your Video[/tweet_box]
In this video, I'm going to show you how easy it is to Create the Perfect Custom Thumbnail Using the YouTube Slicer
If you have any questions about YouTube or about taking the course, just give me a shout on SpeakPipe!
TubeSlicer Fills The “Missing Template” Gap
The YouTube Slicer is truly unique. If you look around at the other popular online image editing tools like PicMonkey and Canva, surprising you'll find that they do NOT have a pre-formatted template for YouTube thumbnails. TubeSlicer is the only one that is designed specifically to accommodate the file size for the oblong video shape and format. So when you want to make an image for Pinterest – use Canva or PicMonkey. But when you upload a YouTube video, pull out the slicer (like I do)!
The first slicer that Joey created was the Facebook Timeline Slicer and I still use that one to this day. He later went on to create the YouTube and Podcast Cover Art Slicers and he's currently working on slicers for Twitter and Google+. But I don't want you to think he is doing this all by himself. Designer Ian Belanger (he's the guy who designed the custom theme for Ana Hoffman's Traffic Generation Cafe) is Joey's partner and helps him run the team. In case you didn't know, these two are responsible for the Showcase child theme I use on this blog and all the other themes from Appendipity.
Video Transcript
We all know how important it is to have an attractive thumbnail on our YouTube videos well today I'm gonna show you a tool to make those thumbnails very quickly and you can customize them any way you want with the YouTube Slicer. Before we open up the TubeSlicer I wanna show you real quick this tool called Clipping Magic that's gonna let me remove the background from this image.
Now I want to give a shoutout to Joey Kissimmee he's the one who created the TubeSlicer and he's also the one that told me about this tool called Clipping Magic. If you don't have Photoshop this is a cool way to remove the background from the image before you upload it on your thumbnail.
Okay guys here we are over at the YouTube Slicer. Now what Joey Kissimmee has done is he has shared with us some templates that we can use for backgrounds. So let's just take a look at some of those backgrounds that we get with the TubeSlicer.
You can go with the starbursts you see has them here in just about every color in you also could go with — let's take a look at the targets. Those are also very popular because they tend to draw the person's eye in so that they are focused on your thumbnail when they see it in the Youtube search results or even on the Google search results. I prefer to use a little bit more subtle background so I usually go with the extras and these are just subtle shadings so this just gives you an idea all the different backgrounds and then there's just some other logos and icons that he's included in there for us.
So let's make a Thumbnail! When you’re using the Slicer and bringing your images into the dashboard just remember to hold down the shift key to keep everything in proportion. Now I know I did that really quick, but let's just go over what I did.
If you noticed the Slicer kinda works in layers similar to Photoshop. So I added the background layer then I put in my picture and then usually anytime I have YouTube in the title of my video I usually grab a YouTube logo from the YouTube website then I added the different type layers.
I just wanna show you something is really unique that I love about the Slicer and that's what you get this little stroke around your font. And here's how you turn that off if you wanted to go without the stroke.You just click on that little S up at the top. But I like to have that stroke on. So I leave it on.
Now, the other thing I wanted to show you is the variety of the fonts that are in here I could use Times Roman. Or there's another nice one the Sketch Block I think that's a pretty cool one. But there's a lot of them in here for you to choose from. If you want do a Terminator if you're into gaming that might be a good one to use as well.
Hey, I'd better go back to the Impact font that I was using. And now what I need to do is, I'd better make sure I save this. So all you have to do is click to download and then make sure you change the name on your file and save it.
One last thing, that I wanted to show you here on the Slicer. If you want your thumbnails to be 1280 by 720 you just click on the 1280 YTSL button. And that will take you over to a different dashboard.
Now what's different about this is whenever you add an element like an image or a new font, or background always just hit this reset canvas button. Other than that it works the same as the Slicer that just showed you guys. But I just wanted you to see that we do have a 1280 by 720 YouTube Slicer. So go ahead guys – it’s real important to get those custom thumbnails out there so that your videos get clicked on in search – for YouTube and for Google!
Thanks for joining me today and once again I'm Ileane Smith. If you have any ideas, any questions or request for future videos please leave me a comment and don't forget to subscribe. Talk to you soon.
Peace!
Recommended reading and additional resources:
- Follow These Ten Blogs to Improve Your YouTube Results
- Driving Traffic with YouTube
- YouTube Strategies 2014: Making And Marketing Online Video
