Meet YouTube's Secret Title Guru (100 Million Views)

[Music] don't be original never just kind of come up with something out of the blue always base it off of a previously Successful video that's Jake Thomas a title specialist whose channels have done over a 100 million views because he spent thousands of hours studying viral titles and the psychology of what made people click out of the almost thousand titles that have broken down 60% have curiosity 46% have desire and 39% have fear in this episode you'll learn how to model successful titles I create two lists called The Dream 10 and the model 10 pretty

much like any question that you could have about YouTube can be answered from your dream 10 or your model 10 what most creators are getting wrong so many people they only want titles in their Niche they only want ideas in their Niche stop coping directly from your competitors and much more thank you to artless for sponsoring this video what is the job of the title on a YouTube video what does a good title do for you first off it depends on the traffic Source I think the the the job of the title is to confirm

like yes you do want to click this video yes this is what you're looking for let's say you're trying to get traffic on like the homepage um or or um or uh you know recommended you especially the homepage if you're just you're not really actively searching for something you're just going to YouTube and you're like all right what does YouTube have for me it's very kind of passive when you're in this kind of passive you hunt for Content you're your title just you kind of want to just get out of the way like yes this

is what exactly what you're looking for um we don't want to overwhelm you uh click on the video If you have a super long title it's a lot of work to to read a whole title process in your head okay do I actually want to watch this video do I not in that case it it is just kind of you want it to be simple and clear and very very easy to understand if you are uh searching so if you're trying to rank and search it's a little different because people um they're more actively hunting

for for answer really so you want your title to be like hey this video is for you like this is exactly what you're looking for no click on this video this has me thinking about my own viewing behavior I'm glad you're separating out like recommended areas versus search areas because when I'm searching for something it strikes me that I actually read the titles before I look at the thumbnail the title is more important to me on search than the thumbnail is but when I'm on the YouTube homepage if I'm just thinking about hey I'm going

to be on the the the bike for 45 minutes and I want to watch a video I'm definitely looking at the thumbnail first because they're larger for for a bit of the card so what have you learned about viewer behavior and how titles complement thumbnails do you find that people act like me or do you find that people put more weight in titles or thumbnails what do you think I think what you just described is pretty spot-on at least from my experience for instance a thumbnail I came across the thumbnail the other day the thumbnail

text was you know it was like don't do this and then the title was like 10 mistakes to buying land so you know was don't do this like to the warning and the thumbnail was great you know it got your attention and got you to read the title it was like okay shoot like you know this you know this uh this thumbnail is one of the mistakes I I want to know more I want to know what all the mistakes are he did the exact same title like you know his next video or a couple

videos later and the thumbnail text was just like it wasn't as Punchy it wasn't as powerful and even though we had the same exact title the the way that the thumbnail and the title work together um it was not as powerful it didn't make you want to know more and I think that not a lot of people are putting enough thought into okay what is my title or what is my thumbnail going to make somebody think and then you how is my title going to continue that thought process so I know I know where I'm

like speaking like in kind of like super high level stuff um but a lot of people will just like kind of repeat um you know your your title and your thumbnail and I was doing some research yesterday on Diary of a CEO and I was trying to make the case and like oh yeah you should never do that and then I noticed the Diary of CEO did that kind of a lot but they seem to only do it when what they were saying was so powerful so like one example was like leave the United States

before 2030 and it was like such a great warning and that was so powerful that it's like okay you know you can do that um but for most people uh if you don't have a super powerful thing then you need to kind of think of how do I attack you know or how do I you know leverage somebody's curiosity in different ways so like the thumbnail might build like you know be a warning and maybe there's some curiosity and then the the the the title is like you know all curiosity or even desire um so

like for the most part when you're thinking about getting people to click you think of like you know fear curiosity and desire those are the three click worthy emotions so it's like how can I use you know one in the in the title and then you know can I can I mix and match those three emotions in the title and the thumbnail so yeah think uh I think most people could benefit from uh from having different stuff in the in the title and thumbnail however if you have a really really good um concept then you

can get away with it what is the difference in terms of impact views that a good title has over a bad title it can be uh it can be massive so we can talk about the impact and then we can talk about the effort so uh the effort is 10 words right uh five to 10 words um you know we don't need uh we don't need graphic design skills we don't need like crazy lighting and like really good assets um we don't need a script writer you know to write 2,000 words and all this stuff

it's just five to 10 words so if you can get better at YouTube titles it can be uh insanely beneficial um so that is the the good news about YouTube titles one example I have is I worked for or I did like a little bit of title writing for um for B2B uh YouTube channel they were super boring all they did was like uh their CEO would go on podcast and they would just like cut it up so like oh let's just repurpose all the other content for YouTube and they would get like I don't

know two three 400 views and all I did was write better titles and make a little bit like better thumbnail text like the thumbnail was just literally a screenshot from the video cuz they didn't want to build any assets and they would get like two to five times more views um with all we did was change the words and um they were in a very boring Market however they made a lot of money so you know doubling or five fxing their views you know probably made them a lot of money um so that was just

like that's a super small answer um I have a channel and um it's like a little secret side project and I was modeling one of like one of my competitor's best videos I wrote a better title uh their video had like a million views mine had like 7 million views so in that case uh you know writing a better title got me six million views more than my competitor that was very uh that was very very nice to see so you know it can be huge it can be you know going from 200 views to

1,000 views or it can be going from 1 million views to 7 million views um and even more and that's just that's just my experience it makes me think there's for every package there's probably some theoretical spectrum of how good that package that idea can perform and there's a wideness to that spectrum and that's probably true for titles and thumbnails and I'm wondering if the spectrum is broader between a bad title and a good title versus a bad thumbnail and a good thumbnail I don't know the answer but it kind of speaks to whether you

think one is more potentially powerful than the other I guess that is a great question so I think Super generally I think that titles are more important for educational channels and thumbnails are more important for entertainment channels so you know if we were talking about entertainment channels you know the spectrum of a good or bad thumbnail could be massive and I think that I think that that's where you would get the most out of your of your efforts and your research and like thinking up with a of a good idea with a really good thumbnail

like how can you just build so much like anticipation um in this thumbnail if you have an entertainment Channel um and then you know in that case the the title is pretty much just like hey this is what this video is about like it's crazy you're going to love it um versus if you have an educational Channel you know the you for the most part you can only get so creative in your thumbnails you know you see way more powerful thumbnails and and entertainment but in education you know especially if you're you know like with

your channel like you can't have a crazy thumbnail showing like you know me doing like something insane or like you know are you doing you know something crazy it's like you know it's as a podcast like we're not doing anything nuts but we can have very powerful words that that grab our audience's attention like speak to them like at their core um you know talk about their hopes their dreams their fears I think you're spoton that the Spectrum can be huge and I think it's depending on if you're education or entertainment yeah really focusing on

generating curiosity with our titles was a huge takeaway that I had from our first conversation and then continuing to feed into that Curiosity with the video's intro through the visual and sound actually the first episode we did together was the first time on the channel where we started to add music and sound to our intros with the help of art list who happens to be our sponsor for this video art list is your all-in-one platform for Creative assets that will take your videos to the next level need to find the perfect song to set the

tone of your [Music] video how about sound effects to immerse your audience at the beach hiking through the rainforest [Applause] exploring a city use art list we use art list for all of our videos and love it it completely leveled up our podcast intros which was a huge Catalyst for growth on this channel and with art list Max we can get music sound effects footage and Motion Graphics templates for one price without having to worry about any of the licensing sign up with our Link in the description and you will get two free months on

any annual subscription thank you to Art list for supporting the channel the last time we talked you mentioned again these three click worthy emotions of curiosity desire and fear and the way he described it then was like curiosity is kind of the top level that's really what you're ultimately trying to do and then you tie that to either uh desire or fear in both the title and thumbnail is that still how you think about it yeah it is um it's even like I guess more prevalent so last time we talked was I don't know like

a year ago or something and um in my newsletter I break down like kind of five viral videos every week and I'm just seeing the same stuff it's been two years it's been like or uh it's been 150 uh uh email newsletters so almost three years and I'm just I'm seeing the same stuff I'm seeing fear I'm seeing curiosity desire and fear every single time which is awesome you know and it's it's just psychology uh you know even when you read like copyrighting books like from the 1930s like Robert call your letter Book uh is

one of the books that I I read recently and it was 100 years ago and the stuff is still relevant so yeah I'm uh you know that's really just what I'm trying to do with Creator hooks is get to the bottom of human psychology and so far it's all the same do you see more desire or more fear underneath the Curiosity I will say that it um it depends on again kind of like search or um you know search or or browse so a long time ago so I I ran a niche website for a

while and so I was pretty big in the um in the SEO stuff and I heard that like Google only showed like positive titles in the thumbnail or sorry positive uh like you know positive uh angles uh um you know uh not titles but yeah I mean yeah positive titles on page one you know so if you're trying to search like nobody is searching like mistakes like you don't you don't search like okay uh you know podcast mistakes or like YouTube mistakes you know most people are like how do I grow my channel so for

the most part if you're trying to R search you you want to think all right what are people searching and it's usually positive stuff so I've got some stats for you out of the almost thousand titles that have broken down 60% have curiosity 46% have desire and 39% have uh fear that's wild because in the first video the first time we talked over a year ago it was 61 % curiosity still 46% desire and 40% fear so statistics don't change much when you have a statistically significant sample size no that's incredible I'm uh I did

know I I gave you those numbers last time and that is crazy that they're almost the same I really like this delineation again between search and recommended because you're so right people are searching for outcomes I don't think people actively search out like fear or loss or negative emotions but we're much more prone to click them when we see them it's like it's like an Impulse buy versus something we go and seek out at the store and what I see for a lot of the channels that are doing long form podcasts the way we are

they definitely take like the negative angle and I find it personally emotionally exhausting you know like I see how it could work but the other thing i' I've noticed and this is this goes for Content even outside of YouTube when you lean into Human Nature to be LOE or be naturally pessimistic you tend to attract pessimistic pessimistic people and I don't know that's like the audience I want to build but it's it's undeniable to me the uh potential of playing into negative human emotion because it drives results so how do you think about that do

you do you see any correlation between negative titles and like sentiment around those channels that is a that is a fantastic question so I've been obsessed with titles for a long time I have like an Evernote document from like 201 like6 or 2015 of like titles or like it was like blog post titles that caught my eye and I I only put like five or 10 on there but one day I was looking at it and it hit me every single one was negative um and I am definitely a uh I'm a positive person I

am optimistic however all of the titles that I wrote down that grabbed my attention were all negative so that's a that's a little anecdote so like you know maybe you know maybe uh you know maybe it's not just um you know it's not just you know the the type of person um you know who who likes this negative stuff it also depends on the content like you could like we could title this this um you know this this podcast you know you know the biggest mistake every YouTuber is making with YouTube titles and then I

this conversation has been pretty happy and pretty like positive so far so so there is a little bit of uh kind of a difference between you know what is the title and what is like the actual um you know content about so it's not like you know we're doing like a tear down of you know like some like celebrity gossip then yes you know in that case uh yeah that would probably attract those those people um I think there is a difference between what is the actual content and what is the title that you're just

using to grab somebody's attention and get them in the door but negativity and drama and fear is just so good at grabbing people's attention um that you know it's it's tough to it's tough to get away it's just biological and it it like hurts me to think that like hey I'm I'm preying on this psychological weakness that all humans are hardwired for and causing you like physiological stress in the in the moment to get you to click on this video where I end up making you feel better but I'm I'm reading this book called WRA

attention in the focused Life by winf Gallagher it's all about attention and he makes this case that there are two types of attention there's bottom up and top down and bottom up is the like physiological biological hardwired nature of humans as an animal where we automatically identify threats and things in our environment that are screaming for our attention and it's like this passive it just happens and then there top down attention where you have intentionally said this is something that I am looking for that attention is more like physically taxing requires willpower basically and so

it strikes me that this is like again the difference between negativity and positivity like we are hardwired without effort to identify from the bottom up sources of potential loss or threat or danger and uh when it comes to collecting things that we want whether it's status or resources or outcomes whatever that's more of a top- down approach so it's I I think I think if you want more attention the negativity side the top down or the sorry the bottom up approach is probably going to be more effective yeah I think it was Patty who said

like there's no boring way to tell somebody that you won the lottery you know so like if you have something awesome like then like tell them that like you know just be like kind of upfront like hey this is this is a great this is an awesome video you're going to love this but negativity is a lot easier um there are ways that you can use positivity and like and and kind of come at things with a with an exciting angle you just need to be a little bit uh a little bit more skilled um

it's hard but there's certainly ways you know Authority is one of the easiest ways so like you know talking about Mr B's like you know you know Mr B secret to you know building his YouTube channel it's like okay that that's a that's a really cool idea and it's positive um you know we're talking about you know uh benefits but it's not just like how to grow on YouTube it's like you know you're using Authority and you're using some curiosity so you're using a secret there so there are ways um it just takes a little

bit more work um but you got you got to be a little bit more thoughtful we've talked about curiosity fear desire these are three of somewhere between 40 and 50 click triggers that you you catalog and talk about in Creator Hooks and Creator hooks Pro can you first Define for us what a click trigger is in your mind yeah so click trigger is a a trigger that makes somebody click you know that's like kind of the easiest uh the easiest thing um I'm I'm pretty sure that I got that from uh Caitlyn B uh she's

a she's on Twitter um you probably know what I'm talking about she uh she yeah she's great so I I think I got click triggers from her but I specific speically made them for YouTube titles I think I have 33 in creater hooks Pro and you know at a high level you know fear curiosity and desire are those are three of them um but then also like within curiosity you know click triggers might be like opening up a loop or revealing a secret or being counterintuitive and those are just different ways for um for you

to like kind of write titles and how to like think Super tactically about how do you write a good title and how do you build curiosity and how do you get people to click of those 3 3ish click triggers besides curiosity fear and desire what do you think are some of the most powerful that people undervalue um I mean the biggest one the mo certainly the most powerful one is timeliness so you might know this as like Trend jacking or newsjacking like Mr B squid games is the the best example of that so he kind

of rode that trend of squid game being very popular and he got like 500 million views on that video um so that's a a testament of how uh how good how powerful that trigger uh can be however if he did it again squid game is old news right so you can't do it all the time um you know another one might be like the Olympics um so the Olympics are are coming up in a little bit you you can make content around the Olympics it might do very well and then it might then it's just

going to totally Flatline for the next four years because nobody cares about the Olympics anymore um you know same thing with like holiday season you know really any Trend any trend is like uh you know you can blow up but then like as soon as the trend is over it's irrelevant so if you're trying to grow fast you can ride Trends um if you're trying to get a you know I was listening to your to your interview with h with Ed yesterday if you're trying to get a community of viewers um Trends you know really

isn't the best thing to do um you know you probably want to talk about um you know Timeless um you know hopes dreams uh you know and and fears there so yes Trends is the most powerful but it's also the most uh fickle if you will you've said a couple times that you don't like long titles you've told me before you don't like having the word and in a title because it tends to confuse it and make it longer naturally how long is too long or maybe said a different way what is the what is

the threshold that you try to stay within when you're writing a title the first thing that came to my mind was like 45 to 55 characters that being said if you were trying to rank inserch um you can get away with longer titles um because like we talked about earlier that you're actively looking for an answer so you will pay more attention to the title um it depends on your audience if you have a younger audience uh it's primarily um you know thumbnail driven it's like entertainment and then you just want to have a really

short uh like a really short title if you are if you have an older audience then you can get away with um with longer titles so so it really depends but you know you know for for most things 45 to 55 characters will work do you think that there's too short uh no so one of the titles that I recently shared in the newsletter was clear ketchup that was it I think that's the shortest title in uh that I've I've broken down in creat hooks Pro I think it had or in the newsletter and I

think it had like a million and a half uh views and they repeated the the title in the thumbnail the guy held up uh you know he held up a bot of like clear ketchup and the title was clear ketchup um and it was just it was two words um like you know imagine if like you hired me to write you a title and I'm like all right Jay it's going to be YouTube titles and that's going to be the title it's only those two words um but uh but clear ketchup was so good because

it's an oxymoron it's like it's ironic it's it's counterintuitive it's not possible so it builds so much curiosity so no I don't think it can be too short however for the for the most part you're probably not making a video about clear ketchup so um so you don't necessarily need keywords in your title um but you need enough so that the audience knows what your video is about um you how I think about it is I'm writing titles for humans so that these humans know what my video is about not necessarily for the algorithm what's

bugging you about the world of titles right now what are you what are you seeing that you're like frustrated by that the uh the you think the space is getting wrong oh that's a great question a couple things I guess the first thing that comes to mind is straight up copying copying your competitors and making kind of like the same video um I prefer to whenever I can uh get inspiration from outside of my Niche um and just try to do better and this is also this is me being a title nerd so like you

know of course I'm going to try to do better um but uh but I think so many people uh they only want titles in their Niche they only want ideas in their Niche and I think that if people just opened their minds a little bit and just kind of you know realize that they can get inspiration from outside of their Niche and that can help them grow and that can help them come up with like fresh ideas so they're not always like a step behind and copying their competitors I think that that would help a

lot of people you know for like for Creator hook Pro like my my like paid thing it's it's a database of viral videos and people all the time are like oh do you have titles in this specific Niche and it's like that's that's not the point of this like the point is to get inspiration from outside of your Niche so that you can bring fresh ideas to your audience so I think that that's it just like you know stop copying directly from your competitors and uh kind of you know broaden your horizons a little bit

I love that advice because when you copy from someone in your Niche it's going to literally be derivative this is the definition of derivative so you can't really expect it to do as well or better than the thing that you're seeing I mean we see it in our videos now we have guests on they go on another Channel and they take like the same angle and it does pretty well but not as well as our video because it's literally derivative so I like this advice but how do I how does one go about actually researching

titles from a different Niche how do I how do I get outside of my bubble to start looking at different titles that might work for me so first off I have a quick disclaimer so I I have a little one of my little like side project channels one of the best videos is copied almost word for word um for from another Channel and like every channel in this Niche makes the same video and it's like the best video in every channel so like there are topics that just work um so like you know if that's

the case then yes like you know there are a couple of them or you you just got to make that video um so I understand that however so like when I was I was a channel manager at a fishing company and we were like an educational Fishing Company in the southeastern United States so we were pretty Niche you we weren't worldwide or like you know even like bass fishing um is you know is is all over America well we were only saltwater fishing um in a in a small place so what I would do is

I would look up like um you know like Finance channels so like the easiest example is you know a finance channel would be like best credit cards of 2024 so we would do best trout lures of 2024 you know I'm not copying exactly but like you know best blank of current year um so it just took that framework and I like made that for myself um for for our Channel and then we would do best red fish Lures of 2024 best snook lures of 2024 best like flounder lures of 2024 so we would look for

Frameworks that were successful and then we would see how how often can we iterate on those Frameworks so that's the the thing that every I think everybody needs to be doing is just looking for Frameworks and like what's like the Psy ology what actually made people click there you know getting getting past like oh this is about credit cards no this is about you know best list of products so if you can try to just think of instead of just the topic you know what what is really making people click um I think that's going

to help you get inspiration um and from really anywhere Facebook ads email subject lines um you know uh titles like on or headlines and like the newspapers like the grocery the grocery store like you know those are those people have been writing titles for like decades and you know their jobs depend on that so you can get a like great inspiration from um you know from those from uh magazine covers and you know also like magazine titles so those um you know those are some some things that you can uh that can help you get

inspiration outside of your Niche so that you're not just copying I want to go and revisit revisit this um leap you just took from fishing to finance sounds like a brilliant move how did you pick finance and if it's not Finance how how do I just like pull out of the air a different industry to start looking at videos in that industry do you have someplace you go for a list of that do you have inspiration that you find somewhere yeah so that's a that's a good question so we were an educational channel so I

wanted to go to another educational Channel um it's great if you look at like some competitive channels so like Finance entrepreneurship um Fitness especially you look for these competitive channels or these competitive nich and think like you know what is working there um you know because it's not like you know basket weaving or something where like you know if one channel is like just crushing it but that's only because they're the only Channel and they have no uh you know they have no competition you want to look for um you know for competitive niches um

you're kind of you know adjacent so like you know so we were we were education and like you know these Finance channels were also education so kind of the easiest thing is like you know if I'm a talking head Channel um maybe I do like you know news or something I might look at other talking head channels like you know maybe like you know religious channels or um or like you know sports news or you know like politics or whatever just two is like kind of an adjacent Channel they have like the same content style

as you um you know they're maybe a couple steps ahead of you um and then you know try to get inspiration from those that's like one of the first things I do whenever I uh whenever I either start a new channel or I'm working with somebody I create two lists called The Dream 10 and the model 10 so the dream 10 these are all my competitors um and these are the people who are talking about the same topics as me and then my model 10 are they have the same um content style so they're talking

head or you know education or like you know kind of or Vlog you know whatever your style is or faceless so I have my model 10 and they talk about different stuff than me but they have the same content style and that's where I get a lot of inspiration from so pretty much like any question that you could have about YouTube um can be answered uh you know how long should my intros be you know what should my thumbnails look like uh how can I monetize uh how long should my videos be all of all

of those questions can be answered um from your dream 10 or your model 10 disclaimer I have a Creator hooks Pro account and I was updating my profile and you have this drop down menu of niches to pick your channel Niche and that strikes me as a really really great list and it also mirrors closely lists I've seen in like podcast charts basically like you have your Arts you have Beauty and Fashion you have careers you have entertainment you have Finance so if you if you're hearing this you're like how do I just even think

about different niches that are competitive go to like the Apple List look at the Apple charts and see how they segment different podcasts those same niches exist on YouTube and I think that's a really smart idea of saying are you education or are you entertainment what are the things exist in the realm of Education if you're there what other types of Talking Heads Are there I love the advice of competitive niches as well because you know that they have to like really step up their game super super smart and I'm really thinking of you know

what does my audience think and how can I challenge those assumptions you know what are they thinking what do they know is true um you know I love kind of like breaking myths I think that is a super powerful um strategy that really anybody can employ in their Channel how do you do that how do you get how do you really get in the shoes of your audience and understand what they're thinking or wrap your head around the myths that they know the easiest way is to ask Chad GPT just look up like um you

know hey CHP um you know I have a YouTube channel for people who are into productivity um what are their biggest excuses you know give me give me their 15 B biggest excuses for why they're not productive you get all these excuses you know uh give me their you know give me 15 myths that they think are true that's the easiest way um you can also look and see what is working for your competitors um on YouTube and just trying to think like oh is is any of this stuff wrong and then doing a lot

of research on on YouTube um seeing what titles are working seeing what people are commenting um getting in on Reddit uh and Facebook groups um are also uh other great ways to do that and also Twitter um I've been loving uh or sorry X I don't know what whatever you want to I'm going to call it Twitter um you know also also Twitter for uh for trying to see what the what the general consensus is you know what are people replying what are people talking about what's getting attention um so all those are great ways

to to do um you know audience research this is something that I see a lot people feel like um they're creating a lot of the same content as somebody else and it's because a lot of times we're consuming the same information as everybody else so the more you vary the information that you consume the more different that the end product you create will be most people are looking you know I have a fa those Channel and like so most people are are looking for how do I do this the fastest way how do I get

somebody from the Philippines to write me an article for $10 um and just in my opinion uh everybody can do that I think that if I have the you know the best content with the best titles and thumbnails you know I'm hoping that um you know that I'm creating a kind of more legitimate channel that being said I've seen some titles in my Niche that's just like totally stupid and Bonkers and not true and they have like a million views so it's like you know good for them and like their content is terrible um but

I'm I'm I'm hoping I'm thinking for long term you know what is what is going to be best for my audience on my channel and I think quality over quantity and um just being hopefully the most reputable Source in this Niche um you know even if I have you know all these competitors which I which I do because it's a it's a faceless popular Niche um you know I think I'll still be able ble to stand out and I'm hoping that by putting in a lot of effort um and being a little bit more credible

that my content will I'll be able to um you know kind of fend off all of the AI uh all the like the wave of AI um and I think just in general if you can I think uh credibility and authenticity are the two things that uh will not the AI cannot take over no matter how much AI is out there if you can be credible and authentic I think you'll be able to make it and if you were to give just one piece of advice to everybody watching that will help them write better titles

for their videos just one important takeaway from this video or if even if we haven't said it in this video what would that one suggestion be don't be original never just kind of come up with something out of the blue always base it off of a previously Successful video um that will help you write titles faster and also help you write better titles and then you can write multiple titles for the same video based off of all those models and ab test them to see which is actually the best if you want to learn the

right way to AB test titles check out the first conversation I had with Jake where he takes us through the testing process we dig even more into the psychology of writing clickable titles thanks for watching [Music]