Your video thumbnail and title are the first thing viewers see when your video is suggested to them. Use these tips to make engaging content:

• Use compelling titles for your videos that accurately represent the content.
• Create thumbnails that accurately represent your content. 
• To reach a global audience, consider translating your titles, descriptions, and captions by having your community add subtitles.

Avoid using misleading, clickbaity or sensational titles and thumbnails

While some creators can use these methods to drive clicks and Watch Time, viewer feedback and platform performance data show that these methods can turn potential new viewers away from your channel, and away from YouTube. 

Our goal is to help viewers find the videos they want to watch and maximize long-term engagement and satisfaction. Misleading, clickbaity and sensational titles and thumbnails impact viewer satisfaction and engagement. Viewers can and often do report videos that are misleading, clickbaity and sensational. We look at these reports as well as at a number of other signals from viewers, including: audience retention, likes and dislikes, and viewer feedback to help tune our recommendations. Videos are less likely to be recommended to new viewers if their titles and thumbnails are:

• Deceiving or misleading: Misrepresents the content of the video.  
• Shocking: Includes offensive or outrageous language.
• Disgusting: Contains gross or repulsive imagery.
• Gratuitous violence: Unnecessarily promotes violence or abuse.
• Indecent: Implies sexually suggestive or lewd conduct.
• Loud: Uses ALL CAPS or !!!!! to overemphasize titles.

Example: Let’s say you have a video in which you share your opinions on a tragic event. You wouldn’t want to feature offensive language in all caps as the title and description. Also, don’t use a graphic image that is intended to shock or offend as your thumbnail. For more tips and examples, check out this Creator Academy lesson.

• Be an effective editor: Create a compelling opening to your videos and then use programming, branding, and packaging techniques to maintain and build interest throughout the video.
• Build your subscriber base: Subscribers are your most loyal fans and will be notified of new videos and playlists to watch.
• Engage your audience: Involve your audience in your videos and encourage comments and interact with your viewers as part of the content.

• Build long watch-time sessions for your content by organizing and featuring content on your channel, including using series playlists.
• Create a regular release schedule for your videos when uploading to encourage viewers to watch sets of videos over single videos. You can even schedule video publish time.

You can use YouTube Analytics to see what videos are successful at keeping viewers watching:

• Watch time report: Find out which of your videos has the greatest watch times and view-through rates.
• Audience retention report: See which of your videos has low watch times and view-through rates. Recurring dips or decreases in audience retention graphs may have a common reason why viewers abandon the videos.
• Audience interaction reports: See which of your videos drive community actions like comments, favorites, and likes.