Write Better YouTube Titles In 54 Minutes (Jake Thomas | Creator Hooks)

no one's going to click on our video if you don't write a good title what if the only reason that people weren't watching your videos was that you were choosing bad titles the best titles create an emotional response that cause you to click the three I'm calling them click-worthy emotions are curiosity fear and desire and it's usually curiosity plus fear or curiosity plus desire that's Jake Thomas he's the writer of a popular newsletter called Creator hooks which is dedicated to helping you write better YouTube titles based in human psychology what I love about Jake's approach

is that he's very data driven I've got a database of 408 titles right now 61 of them have curiosity 46 have desired 40 have fear or negativity so in this episode you'll learn how to research your own titles how to leverage human psychology to get more views some of the most successful Frameworks Jake has found and why curiosity is the most impactful emotion that you can tap into but now let's talk with Jake [Music] [Music] a lot of people when they're you know just starting their trying to do some research look at other channels that

are kind of like them but I feel like a lot of people are also sucked into the Trap of saying I'm just gonna model off of the biggest names in the business I'm gonna go and see what Mr Beast is doing I'm gonna go see what Emma Chamberlain is doing I'm gonna go just like see what these people are doing really well and model after that because if it's working for them it seems like it should work for me is that the right way to think about it and if not how should I be doing

research across different channels for my titles I don't think it's the the right way to do it so if I got Emma Chamberlain's titles up right now cooking Ugg season my childhood bedroom it will be okay so like she has a title that's literally just cooking and that's all it is and unless you're Emma Chamberlain that is not going to work for you unless you have let's see 11.8 million subscribers it will not work because it's just just like a plain statement there's no emotion there so no I think that you should uh model people

a couple steps ahead of you you know like if you're just getting started maybe you want to model people in the you know 50 000 or you know five thousand fifty thousand five hundred thousand someone who's not like a just total celebrity and just has like you know so much influence outside of YouTube that no matter what like they're going to be successful so definitely don't look at the people way high up try to find people a couple steps ahead of you see what they're doing and I think that's like just definitely the best thing

that you can do especially getting started if you don't know anything like even like you know how do I write my intros how do I do my lighting how long should my video be when you're getting started all the answers are there but just looking at what is working for your competitors and then you know as you kind of do that you'll slowly get like kind of your own feel and your own Vibe but definitely the best way to do it is to kind of copy first like people do like copy work like you know

you hand write old sales letters to learn how to become a good copywriter people have been recommending that for like I don't know 70 years or something like that and it's been working for them don't try to be like super original don't try to model an mha Berlin no offense in her but it's probably not going to work for you try to find people a couple steps ahead of you and do what they're doing I think that's good advice for creators of any kind actually because it's it's really easy to go and and look after

these bigger channels or creators or Platforms in general and think well if they're doing it it must work but there have been some times in my life where I've looked at uh landing pages home pages sales pages of big websites and said oh this must be what works and then copied that and then within like days or weeks they change it because it probably wasn't performing so like not only should you look at people who are closer to you but maybe you should even reach out to people and ask if there's not like clear public

data you should reach out and say hey I'm just curious how this is going for you maybe not the first question in their Twitter DMS but you know get get to it because I think that's a really smart advice sometimes people are succeeding in spite of not doing things in the most effective way yeah definitely but also like if you're just getting started like just just do it like don't let analysis paralysis you know kind of stop you from taking action like all right cool like when I first launched my um my newsletter I had

like a really really ugly newsletter title or sorry newsletter um like landing page it was terrible like my conversion rate was bad when I got started and then I kind of asked around and I started looking at others and I eventually figured it out but uh just like copying like the first landing page that I saw like worked for me to get up and just get moving and another thing that someone told me this a couple of weeks ago and it was you can't sit your parked car and I was like oh this is great

like um yeah when you're when you're just getting started like just move yes and then figure it out yes how did you get to YouTube titles of all things I've been in like Marketing in general for like 10 years or so I was uh I worked at a Facebook Ad Agency and it was it was terrible and our my favorite client they were like Hey we're hiring a writer so I was able to like jump on board with them and I hadn't had I didn't have any YouTube experience but he's like hey you're going to

be our editor-in-chief our media buyer and our YouTube channel manager and I was like oh this is great like no no YouTube experience and my boss was like a really really good copywriter and he beat into my head the importance of writing titles he's like because we were a fishing channel and we had like spent a lot of money to send our fishing coaches out uh you know like kayaking or out on the boat spending all day like making content so we would we spent a lot of money on our content and he's like if

you don't write a good title then we wasted all of this money you know filming creating uh you know fishing catching all these fish and also uh if you don't write a good title then we're not going to get any of the benefits like no one's going to click on our video if you don't write a good title so like the pressure was on that sounds like a lot of pressure yeah it was and the only problem was he was great and like my favorite Boss by far but he wasn't like a he didn't know

how to teach me how to write good YouTube titles so it's kind of on my own uh I almost got fired because I was so bad at first oh no and like I actually talked to him about it like a couple years after and I was like yeah like when I got started it wasn't the best he's like yeah it wasn't it wasn't the best we weren't sure if we were gonna keep you you're telling me it wasn't the best but but somehow I kind of figured it out and the thing that like the thing

that made it click for me was we were a fishing channel and my boss went on a podcast of a hunting channel and they did a podcast that was uh newbie hunting gear and the guy said like that newbie hunting gear podcast crushed it for them so my boss came back he's like hey we're gonna do a podcast about newbie fishing gear so I was like all right cool like let's do it turns out that was our best podcast like for the month like for the past few months that's when it kind of clicked it

was like okay I don't need to be original I need to just like find something that works and then model that and it's not like copying right like you know there was newbie hunting gear where newbie fishing gear like we're just following that same model and then once I realized that I got on a roll and like I finally understood like okay like it's not all up to me to be like totally original and write these great titles and then we find it like turn it around I didn't get fired our Channel like 3x our

Revenue Forex so everything was everything was good after that and then once like kind of I figured out all right cool like this is how you write a good YouTube title like from a beginner then I slowly figured it out and I was like oh cool like here are the patterns that all of these successful YouTube titles have now we can kind of get out of that box of like just modeling to like actually coming up with original content how did you go about finding these templates of breakout sort of successes because it seems like

YouTube has just an endless amount of content so how did you boil that ocean start to way fine to specific title structures that worked for you just spending a lot of time studying YouTube titles you know going to a bunch of different channels and YouTube makes it super easy because you can see the publish date you can see how many views they have and just like just spending hours every single week for over a year or you know almost two years now just like scanning like okay like you know this video is published uh you

know a couple weeks ago but it has like a hundred thousand views all of the other videos published around it have like ten thousand okay there's something here and then you take note of that and you do that you know a thousand times a couple hundred times then boom you start to see you start to see pattern so it's really just putting in time and studying and taking really deliberate notes how much were you looking at the same industry and channels in that same industry versus something that might be like a little bit orthogonal to

it like it's kind of touching that industry versus something that's completely out of that industry but doing well really just like trying to get a a broad spectrum of Industries like the craziest thing is when I see today I was looking at it was like a like a hair Channel and one of their best videos like I was like oh I've seen like this exact model work on like all sorts of other different channels yeah so just really just trying to get a really broad spectrum of titles and then you know putting all those notes

together and like seeing the patterns and it's like oh it really doesn't matter like what industry this is in like you know regrets always work well or something like that when you're doing this are you putting this into a spreadsheet is it structured is it just gut feel and if it is structured how does that look it is a little structured that's just in Google Sheets so I've just got like the title The publish date and like the the URL and it just started as that and then as I started to recognize patterns it's like

okay like let me know this one had fear Okay and like then I would go through all the other you know 100 titles that I had before all right this one had fear this one had fear this one had fear cool okay like you know 30 of these titles have fear and then I would start to notice like new patterns so it was just it was real it's really simple just in Google Sheets and there's it's nothing fancy just as I you know as I kept learning new things like all right let me jot it

down let me see if I can organize this a little better and just so people are on the same page you're not talking about the literal word fear you're talking about the emotional pull of fear correct yes correct okay talk more about that because I I've heard you talk about some of these emotions that you think underlie a good title is it fair to say that emotions are what make a good title yeah so a couple a couple weeks ago I was looking at this guy's Channel and he was struggling with his YouTube channel and

he's like hey man like I'm putting in all the work I'm like you know my uh my thumbnails are getting better my storytelling my editing is getting better like what why am I not growing and I looked at his titles and they were all bland statements like there was no emotion and the three I'm calling them click-worthy emotions are curiosity fear and desire and it's usually curiosity plus fear or curiosity plus desire and that's like the simplest way to explain what makes a good title is just curiosity for your desire you know and there's a

bunch of different nuances you know below that but that's like the just the high level version of what makes a good title I like that you're focusing on kind of emotional terms and ideas as opposed to strictly like templated language because I'm sure there are Trends within language that work pretty well but I would imagine they they probably get stale also so when you're looking at curiosity fear and desire and saying I want to tie capacity to fear or curiosity to desire how often are you seeing trends like go in and out so far I

haven't and it's been a couple years so I haven't seen any like big trends go in and out yet like the main Trend that I that comes to mind is like a like a 20 like 14 BuzzFeed article like 36 new podcast mics you'll never guess number 17 or something like that doctors hate this guy yeah yeah and like but it's still using like there's curiosity there's like a little bit of fear there you know it's a list and that those things still work well it's just like how you apply them people kind of cut

on and now it's like all right that's too clickbaity for me but I mean it's the still the same principles were working back then and they're still working now and I've read a lot of like you know copywriting books from like the 30s 1930s 1950s 60s and they're all just saying the same thing like it's it's all psychology that gets people's attention and gets people to click do you have any examples of titles that are pulling on curiosity and fear or curiosity and desire that people can kind of start to map this in their mind

to what this looks like just kind of to get like super nerdy here I've got a database of 408 titles right now and 61 of them have curiosity 46 have desire and 40 percent have fear or negativity so wow a couple of examples here seven things plant experts do that you probably don't that kind of opens up a loop there it's like oh like in that opening a loop is a great way to build curiosity you're starting a story but not finishing it when you read that title like oh what are these plant experts doing

that I'm not so there's a lot of curiosity yes yes it's there's fomo there you know which is like you know fear of missing out so there's fear there's also curiosity like what are these things that these plant experts are doing what about desire give me a desire example how a pro YouTuber actually makes thumbnails like just the word actually is like really simple you kind of feel like you're getting in on a secret there like how they actually do that it's like okay like I thought that I knew how they make titles or how

they make thumbnails but like here's how they really do it here's how they actually do it kind of feels like they're you know like kind of giving you Insider information or you know you know pulling back the curtain there so you feel like you're getting in on a secret so that's one way to build curiosity but you're also speaking to a desire so you know if you want to make better thumbnails it's like oh here's how the pros do it so there's Authority there as well so you have desire you have curiosity by revealing a

secret and then you also are you're talking about Authority so like that has like some instant trust and credibility credibility there because this is how the pros do it when you are writing titles for yourself or for other people knowing what you know what is your starting point for making a title it starts with the idea it's like putting lipstick on a pig like if you have a bad idea it doesn't matter how clever you are at like word smithing good titles or or how you know good of a graphic designer or good of a

thumbnail maker are if you have a bad idea then you're just wasting your time so it always starts with the idea and that's that's the most important thing and then just coming from there it's like you know what angle do we want to kind of attack this topic and that kind of depends on what have we done before and like a lot of people say the secret to like creating content is just saying the same thing 100 different ways because there are like there are some ideas or some topics that just work well no matter

what so you just got to kind of you know ride that wave while you can but the secret is like just saying that a bunch of different ways so for an example like let's say we're a finance Channel talking about like picking stocks so you could say like how to pick stocks as a beginner right so you know talk to beginners and like be calling out beginners is a great way to get people to click because you're calling out a specific audience not only is that audience like like very specific like if you're a beginner

like if you see like kind of your name right there in the title it's like oh shoot this this video is for me but also they're like the hungriest right you know because they're beginners they want to learn and they're the most insecure so uh right now I'm learning how to play the piano I'm learning on YouTube and I went through a through a YouTube um Channel teaching piano and I was watching like all their videos on how to play the piano after like two hours I'm laying in bed and I'm like wait what did

I just do and I watched all of the videos that had the word beginner in them and that was because I was like insecure about my piano playing skills like rightfully so because I was a beginner and I felt that all the other videos were they were too advanced for me like oh you know this song or this exercise is too advanced like give me something for me give me something specific for beginners so I was insecure like I felt that like like this video was just for me so that that's a you know one

great uh way to get people to click is to just call out beginners right there in your title so if you're you know making your stocks video how to pick stocks for beginners you could talk about like you know the best uh the best stocks in uh you know November 2022 timeliness is another good one um you could talk about like regrets like I regret picking these stocks last year people love regrets ah those are just like a couple different ways of saying the same thing over and over again and I'm calling them click triggers

there's like 31 and we've already talked about a lot of them like you know revealing a secret opening a loop regrets um it's just like fear desire all that stuff and those are just like kind of moves that like moves that you can make or like pitches that you have like in Your Arsenal like you know how am I gonna if you're a pitcher you're looking at Aaron judge and like how am I going to get him out first off there and judge it's not gonna happen but uh but you're like all right you know

what am I gonna throw him like you know the sink or the slider the fastball change up you know and that's how I kind of look at these click triggers it's like all right what's the best way uh to get people to click and get people excited about this topic the we had to use visual b-roll there so that people watching this you know like sports Aaron judge pitcher what what does mean uh I'm also like thinking to myself we've got to find some way to get video of Jake playing piano now I love it

after a quick break Jake and I get even more in the weeds of how he researches and chooses titles and later we dive into some of the theories that Jake has that he's still collecting data about so stick around we'll be right back if you like creative elements you would love my Weekly Newsletter Creator science I send it every Sunday and it breaks down everything I'm learning about how to be a professional Creator it expands on the things we talk about here on this show and it even goes behind the scenes of my own business

and shows you what I'm doing what I'm experimenting with in my own Journey if you're serious about this I think it is a must read more than 14 000 creators already subscribe so if you are not already subscribed go to creatorscience.com And subscribe for free and I'll talk to you on Sunday welcome back to my conversation with Jake Thomas before the break Jake and I were talking about his research process and something I shared with Jake is that one of my favorite ways to do my own research is to pay close attention to the things

that drive me to take action if I click something why did I click that if I buy something why did I buy that I have a I actually have like an Evernote document from like 20 like 16 or 2015 or something and that was like my first like uh obsession with titles and like what gets people to click because I was that was like when I was really like learning everything I didn't know anything I was just kind of starting to try to make it online then I was like oh wow like I'm you know

um this this article really caught my eye so I would put in the document and I was like oh this one caught my eye too I put in the document and I noticed after like the first five they were all fear-based I was like all right is this just is this just me like what what is going on here fear is working very well on me I hate that about our psychology it's such a bummer but it's true but like the idea of titling all of my videos to like prey on people's fears and insecurities

it's just like so antithetical to what I want to do but like I get it I get that it works we have this little bit of tension with with our Channel where we know like hey you know what YouTube audiences they love to talk about money they love to hear about money they love to look at money that historically has never been what the show is about but like I get it so we play the game a little bit but I'm I'm constantly fighting against like what how much am I youtubing this show and going

too far yeah are you like are you just gonna try to find a balance there are you gonna like stick to your guns and like just know that it's a it's a really good question because I and I'd love to hear your take on this I feel like we're already playing the game on hard mode a little bit because long form interviews not the typical content that does well on YouTube now it seems like there might be some Tailwinds there where YouTube is saying like we actually want to encourage this type of content and behavior

I feel like we're entering an already hard game and playing it from like the hardest perspective and titling comes up sometimes because it feels like we should lean into the name recognition of the guest in the title because that's probably our best angle and then Conor does a really good job of finding some of these these uh trends that you've talked about like we've used the secret a couple of times in the title but it's hard because that video the payoff to that video is one part of the interview and there's all kinds of stuff

that goes into the interview so if it was just me and I wasn't trying to play any type of game it would just be like episode whatever Jake Thomas and that would be it but I don't think that would work so well what do you think I agree I mean there's that that balance and like I'm doing it a lot so I have a dog YouTube channel I got a dog email list and a dog blog and then also I'm on Twitter and then I do some other stuff for clients and but on Twitter like

one of my best uh threads or like 99 of people suck at writing YouTube titles and it's just like just totally bashing fear like all negativity there it's like every time I do that like those types of titles just work well and I don't know I go I go back and forth one way to I'm just going to kind of deflect this question that is not what you do one one way to uh to like make like turn that uh ickiness dial down is to say like you will regret uh you know not titling your

YouTube your YouTube videos like this right that's like you're turning that way up like that just feels icky like you will regret it doesn't feel good but if you say I regret titling my YouTube video like this oh it's an experience thing it's not like an attack it's like yeah this is my experience yes yes sharing your story you know my biggest mistake I regret so like if you want to use like the the like the really effective emotion of fear but you want to turn the ickiness dial down share your own story or like

he did this not like just taking out the word you you know that's the probably the best way to do it but for me it kind of depends on like how is my business going like if I'm growing it's like all right cool yeah I'm gonna be a little bit less aggressive right now like I don't really I don't need this thread to do super well like I just want to kind of serve my audience if I'm like dang the newsletter is not really growing right now I really need to step up growth then I'll

be like okay let me let me play this game not on hard mode let me let me do what I know works even though I may feel not the best about it but still you know still not like being like totally fear-mongery and clickbaity I mean I don't know if that's a good answer but that's how I think about it a little bit when you have like competing ideas for a title let's say that the idea itself is good you feel good about it and you're looking at different types of titles that all are playing

on curiosity and fear or curiosity and desire how do you end up making a decision which one to go with one thing that I'll do is I will like just search my title and try to see has this uh has this done well in the past so like we let's say that you're in kind of an obscure Niche like let's say you were doing you know like steam mops uh I don't know if steam mops are popular maybe they are so if you were like uh you know my biggest regret uh you know buying my

first steam mop or if you wanted to say like I'm like all right cool I could do that or I could say like you know five mistakes to buying your Steam Mop you could write that same title but like with vacuums or something like a little bit broader and you because I'm just looking for that Trend like has this has this trend for something similar in this you know similar to this has it worked before like YouTube will tell you YouTube is great like like I said they have the view date and the or the

published date and the view counts so they'll let you know yes this has worked or no this has not worked let's say that I wanted to lean into this strategy and as an interviewer who's already pegged the guest name is important for the title which would you agree should I be using that as one of the most important parts of the title it depends for me uh no like I'm I don't think my name I don't I'm not like a heavy hitter but if you're interviewing garyvee absolutely you know if you were titling this interview

you might do something like you know the best way to write YouTube titles or five YouTube title mistakes everybody you're probably making or something like that something a little bit spicier than that my name isn't care doesn't carry a ton of weight so I would either give my I'd either like skip it or you could say like you know uh the biggest YouTube title nerd or something give me a label I don't think it would be like the best thing to do yes you could and uh one one of these days maybe my name will

carry weight but um but I would give myself a label or uh you know just you know talk about a benefit or something or a mistake or fear or something like that if I were to lean into Justin Welsh let's say he has a growing profile more people are searching for his name if before we release our episode we search Justin Welsh and we look at the first five videos that are listed there how closely should we model the actual titles of videos that are doing well versus use that to say let's do something completely

different it depends so probably like with with Justin like he's blowing up but also he's like not that big like you know this isn't like a this isn't a super big space right so if you model it really closely that's kind of that's teetering on the the um the okay this is like kind of sort of copying uh but not really so you know in the case of like because like this is a small smaller industry I don't know you you might want to figure out what are the elements like that are making people click

like the creative elements oh what is yes what are these creative title elements that are making people click like do do all of them have like you know two million dollars in them or do all of them have you know solopreneur in them or you know other things that you might include and it's like okay I definitely need to include the number like you know how the solopreneur made what you know however many millions of dollars like that's it like that's a great hook and I'm gonna do it but if they're all different then it's

like okay cool like this is this is kind of a free-for-all uh there's no real themes here I'm just just gonna you know pick you know the most interesting thing about the video or the most interesting thing about Justin and go for it how do you think about brevity because as you're listing off some of these they they seem pretty concise and I could easily reason my way into saying let me just add like three tags because we talk about three different categories in this podcast so what if I just say here are the five

mistakes people make here are the 10 best YouTube titles and also here is why you need to be thinking about curiosity desire and fear and put that all into a title yeah I think there's a I'm gonna spit like some cliche things at you like if you confuse you loose if there's like so many different uh like it's kind of like keyword stuffing almost but like not really keyword stuffing just a bunch of different things if you confuse you lose so if your keyword is like really long then you know it's just not easy to

instantly understand also uh no Focus no audience so you know the more commas and the more ands you put in your title like the longer it is it's just not going to have a focus it's not gonna have like as much power to like it's not really gonna pack a punch and people like oh I really I really want to watch this I'm doing a bunch of a b tests on whether or not the word and or like having multiple subjects affects a uh affects a title so I will have some more data for you

there but I'm I'm just I'm trying not to use the word and I'm trying to be brief I'm trying to focus on just one thing just like the single most powerful thing you know this is YouTube and people are scrolling and you know you want someone to like instantly latch on to that one thing if there are three different subjects there then it's going to take people a long time to read it a lot a lot longer of a time to read it than if it was just one subject it's going to take people longer

to understand it and like that's too much work for their brain if they're just scrolling so the likelihood is greater that they're just going to um that they're just going to just kind of scroll on by here's some data for you so my email subject lines so I run the Creator hooks newsletter and it used to be Creator Hooks and then I would list out three things like you know biggest YouTube fears YouTube mistakes and hitting a million subscribers so it was always that Creator hooks colon three things and then I switched to only having

like only kind of modeling one of the titles from Creator hooks it was a little shorter it was more concise it was one idea and my email opened rate open rate went from about 35 to about 50 percent oh wow so it was like 35 to 40 and now it's like 45 to 55. so having you know just one thing has helped I love this data this is so good one thing that you haven't mentioned is thumbnails or description so I guess that's two things and I think we both agree that having a good con

good idea with good content is prerequisite let's say that that like that's what you should focus on is having a good idea have good content because none of this probably matters if not how do you weigh titles versus thumbnails do descriptions matter at all we are are getting a little bit out of my expertise I'm mostly just nerding out on titles as far as descriptions go I don't think they matter that much I mean YouTube is smart and they have a lot of things that they're looking at you know tags and descriptions I think are

less important than YouTube like actually seeing what is in the video because they do that and like all right this is what the video is about like it doesn't maybe it doesn't matter as much as like this the description so they know what your video is about thumbnails this is my personal opinion but I think that thumbnails are more important in entertainment and titles are more important in education um I I think because you can show a story much better in entertainment so yeah you need to have a killer thumbnail in education it's not as

it's not as important I think it's still obviously very important but I think that you need to have a great idea and convey that idea mostly in the title I think the the title is kind of the best way to plainly convey that idea spicy takes I like this I like the spicy takes when you are playing around titles and I know you test titles you do a b testing on these things how frequently do you do that like when is too early to say and this isn't performing the way I thought time for me

to go back to the drawing board and try another title so I usually wait I wait it out because I am fairly confident in my titles for the most part also I've seen like some of my videos have blown up like after like a day and a half like just kind of randomly like you know here's my graph and all of a sudden I'm like oh I didn't do anything and then all of a sudden it like kind of usually drops off too but I didn't I didn't make any changes to make it blow up

I didn't make any changes to make it slow down but what I always do with my a b testing is I wait five days days because if you test too early YouTube is you know showing your video to your subscribers so people are way more likely to click on the first day and then it kind of goes down and with a B testing I use tubebuddy or thumbnailtest.com those are two different tools I think the only way to a B test right now is switching the title or or the or the thumbnail every 24 hours

knowing that it switches every 24 hours if you launch your test on the first day your first day is almost always going to be the highest CTR because the YouTube is going to show it to like your most loyal followers and people who are clicking on the first day are usually your most loyal followers so just kind of by default you're way more likely to have a higher CTA on day one than day two so that's just kind of gonna give you bad data right there so I wait at least five days for things to

kind of like settle down and it's like all right cool now I'm going to test this and I know that this is going to give me the most accurate data because that kind of wild crazy almost like inflated data in the first couple days is gone so I wait a couple days I test it out I know a lot of people test it out like within an hour or two hours and yeah yeah and I don't know how I feel about that I usually don't do that I mean if it's if your video is like

really flopping like yeah maybe maybe go with your plan B I just like to get real data I love studying the A B test data and it's not perfect but if you use it as like a compass say okay these Trends work for me these Trends don't work for me like not that okay this was 10.2 percent higher like you know this is this is the one it's more like okay cool like in 10 different tests like this theme is working way more than this theme like I'm gonna use this theme more going forward so

yeah so just wait it out um or sorry that's what I do I wait it out I know a lot of people don't do that and then I try to get real data and I try to just kind of learn from that I haven't used tubebuddy or any of these tools paint me a visual picture of what that looks like to use a tool like that to test these things with uh tubebuddy um you can upload you know one alternate you know so you're a b testing you can't a b c d test so then

you'll upload you know a thumbnail or a title you can do both I would definitely recommend only doing one at a time unless you were testing like a whole new idea then you might want to have a new set of title and thumbnail it's like super simple we just upload it uh you know click like run test and then you'll set like how many days you want to test I usually test for seven days per title so on tubebuddy if you're only testing you know another alternate then it'll be 14 days come back 14 days

later and then you can see the results like it'll show you the click-through rate I'm going to show you the Impressions you know clicks for impression also show you the watch time it'll help you know like you know sometimes you might have a much higher click-through rate but maybe your average view duration went down and it's like okay maybe this video is clickbait or this title was like two clickbaity like people just clicked it and went away right away what I've often seen and maybe like this is just me like reading bad data and making

like making assumptions there I've often seen a higher click-through rate correlate with um a higher watch time I think that's because people are just if you write a more interesting title people are more excited to uh watch it so like yeah more people are clicking on it because they're more excited to watch it so they're gonna give it a longer shot than like maybe people like people were kind of doubting it like ah I'll click it and like you know they're just going into it like I probably don't want to watch this video and you're

just gonna confirm their beliefs right away when you don't have like some crazy insane intro so when you're making an A B test in tubebuddy they aren't able to do that in real time across titles are they can they serve like different audiences different titles and give you a real-time tests across okay so it's like a global change for a period of time yes yes I uh I don't love that they they change it every 24 hours and then they look at the data for that time period and they kind of aggregate that data so

yeah I don't love it it's not perfect and that's why I say use it as a compass to say okay like this is a trend not like all right this is like this is the law when we come back Jake and I talk about chapter titles in YouTube and some of the theories that he's still testing so stick with me we'll be right back hey thanks for watching creative elements this is a brand new channel here on YouTube so liking the videos leaving comments subscribing the channel sharing the show all that support goes a long

long way right now it is all seen it is all appreciated and even though this is a brand new channel here on YouTube I've actually been conducting interviews with creators just like this for more than two years there are more than 100 interviews that you can go back and listen to with creators like Seth Godin James Clear Cody Sanchez Tori Dunlap even YouTubers like Ali abdall Matt diovella Roberto Blake and Marie Poulin I've actually created some playlists for you to help get you started to dive into some of the best episodes that we've done to

date just go to creative elements.fm playlists the link is also Down Below in the description but you can filter episodes there by platform or medium if you want to just look at episodes with YouTubers or just episodes with instagramers you can do that with those starter playlists at creative elements.fm playlist and again link is down below in the description hey welcome back you may have noticed that in our videos we have chapter markers all throughout the video and the reason we do that is I've seen those chapter markers get pulled into Google search results so

I asked Jake how he thinks about chapter markers and if he makes good use of them I don't use them for my uh for My Dog Channel and maybe this is me like like trying to be like old school maybe too direct marketer but like I want people to watch the whole video I don't want them to like skip like right to all right let me just skip to this like single chapter only watch like what I want like I kind of want to suck them in and maybe this is like a maybe this is

a bad we'll watch this whole video yes that that is what I'm thinking and uh maybe that's like not the best like user experience maybe that's just me the ingredient I don't know but uh that is how I'm going about it right now if someone has like some good data to change why uh to change my attitude on that I will happily uh listen but as of now I am not doing chat and and I've seen mixed review I've seen people who are much smarter than me let's tell you what I just told you I've

also seen people who are much smarter than me actually use them on their channel so I don't think that anybody has like a a good solid answer for that how do you curate an uh an issue of Creator hooks how do you decide what goes in at that week what you talk about I imagine you are probably looking at far more videos than make it end in a typical week everything is based on a hook score and what that is is how how many views a video got above their average for the channel kind of

like recent average so I'll look at you know if a video got a million views I'll look at the 10 videos like or the five videos before and after so kind of 10 videos and we'll calculate that average and I'll be like okay cool like this you know Channel averages about a hundred thousand views of video but boom this one had a million views so there's something about this video that people can learn from so the problem uh with that approach is that some channels just put out Banger after Banger and like there's like there's

no deviation from the average so that is that is one problem with that so that can like take me a while where I'll just go through 10 channels and every video is a banger and it's like oh well I can't use any of these in the newsletter because like you know there's nothing telling me that this did better than the other so I have a list of like 300 channels that I I'll scroll through those 300 channels and I've had a lot of people in travel recently sign up for my newsletter so I'm trying to

just find like uh outliers outlier videos in the travel industry I will go and I'll poke around I'll find like one channel that like does travel videos like I'll watch one of their videos and I'll see what's recommended and like you know are there any other channels or other kind of outliers that were recommended I'll do that process for like I don't know 20 or 30 minutes and then I'll go to my home page and it's all outlier videos of travel videos so just kind of doing that process and just playing around trying to find

like just one video that blew out up and outperform the other videos on that channel so yeah so the list and just just playing around on YouTube for hours and like two three four hours on a Thursday or Friday afternoon and try to get YouTube to suggest outlier videos to me and then eventually I'll get five and I'll put those in the in the newsletter how often do you use the Curiosity plus desire or fear framework for the subject lines of your emails the whole like kind of idea behind Creator hooks is that you can

use like kind of the same hooks no matter like kind of what industry you're in I just model one of the videos that were in the newsletter so last week's this new approach to YouTube will change your channel forever that was based on this video of this new approach to photography will change your channel forever you know for my email subject line I modeled a photography YouTube video title so in a sense it is a little bit you know clickbaity because it's not I'm not delivering on the title but I'm more of like kind of

being an example of saying hey here is how I would use this hook and I'm going to use it in an email subject line and it's still going to get people to click and be happy they clicked I've had like three people say oh like you didn't deliver on you didn't say what you said in the in the email subject line and I've explained it to them and everyone has kind of kind of understood but yeah I'm just I'm just modeling YouTube video titles from a variety of Industries for my YouTube email newsletter and that

has worked well for like 52 open rate I might try this model more closely aligned with what I am writing in the newsletter but like the Curiosity desire curiosity fear model for subject lines the problem is I try to stay within like six to eight words in a subject line so it doesn't get truncated on a mobile phone and I feel like it would be hard to do that with this model like you'd have to be real concise because you're gonna have to start with some sort of emotional language like how to or something where

you aren't even talking about what's in the newsletter yet yeah that is one of the most frustrating things is like especially on YouTube just making sure uh you're kind of within those character limits a couple like reasons why that's important is like one like if it's too long you know if people are skimming they're not going to see it and two it also might get truncated you know it's the same thing with email subject lines like it depends where people are opening your email it depends where people are watching your YouTube videos if you write

a really long title it's going to get truncated so that's that's definitely like one of the hardest things about writing titles is how can you pack as much like emotion and information while being like clear uh in you know less than 55 characters or whatever what we haven't talked about at all is SEO search engine optimization YouTube as a search engine how much do you think about that when it relates as it relates to titles because it seems like an opportunity that I've heard some people speak to but it doesn't sound from what we've shared

so far like that's a big strategy on on your list real quick can I tell you a story going back to email subject lines I love story time all right so I have a Blog it's about Golden Retrievers and when I started to start a Creator hooks I was in the middle of a series on my blog and it was like eight month old Golden Retrievers chewing biting you know potty training then I did three month old Golden Retrievers four month old gold retrievers five-month-old golden retrievers and three and four month old Golden Retrievers the

email like the click-through rate my click-through rate is like I don't know eight percent or so between like six and ten percent when I was doing kind of the boring subject lines I was just like three month old Golden Retrievers you know it's keyword stuffing my click-through rate was like four percent on those and I was like dang this stinks like what if I did the creator hooks approach to this so for five month old Golden Retrievers which is like not as like sexy as like two month old golden retrievers like because it's super new

like if you have a five month old Golden Retriever now you're kind of settled in so I did why teenage golden retrievers were the worst and that doubled my click-through rate it went for like four percent to like like 8.5 or like nine percent and that was that was using negativity there it was like you know using fear like and it was also using a label like we talked about labels earlier instead of five month old Golden Retrievers it was Teenage golden retrievers so it was a little bit broader but also like still very descriptive

and then I used negativity just talking about why they're the worst Ted is 10 months old right now and he is definitely the worst right now [Laughter] so you're saying right for the human don't write for the robot um I like that advice although it does seem like man there's got to be some marriage of the two because I feel like I mean the magic that I see on this channel is when YouTube is like hey we should put this on the home feed we put this in the browse features but it seems like a

lot of the back catalog success right now like Justin Welsh that's succeeding on the strength of his name being searched and so I feel like there's some marriage here that I'm trying to find and it also depends on kind of where we're trying to like where we're trying to get our content shown so in the email subject line it's all like attention like kind of interruption marketing right so in that case why teenage gold retrievers are the worst like worked a lot better than kind of a another you know kind of like a boring one

but when I published the blog post my subject line was five month old Golden Retrievers keyword stuffing right so it does depend on you know where you're trying to get people like if you're trying to rank in search it might be a little bit different than if you're trying to get views from like browse or like the home page or like recommended and stuff so like going back to SEO one of the things that you could do is have like kind of the main subject up front and then have like one of the click triggers

like something that's going to get people a click at the end you might if we're talking about uh Justin Welsh you know how Justin Welsh so you have his name the keyword right in front you know made 10 uh you know made a million dollars in 2022 as a solopreneur or something towards the end like you have timeliness so like in 2022 you have like you know made a million dollars like a huge desire so just following up things uh following up your main subject at the end is one of a one of the better

ways that I've seen people rank on search so you can use like a big desire so like made a million dollars you could use timeliness that one works really well so just like slapping the current year at the end of your title is like one of the best ways to get people to click that is most effective starting in like as early as like November to like November December it's like super effective in January like if you're I don't know when this is gonna come out but if you're planning your content like have all of

your tutorials and like have all of them in January and use in 2023 in every single one and like just really pile on the in 2023 just use that strategy as much as you can in the early part of the year because every single month it's just gonna get worse like you know it's if it's like August if you publish a video that says in 2022 it's like okay like 2022 is old news right it's August it's been 2022 for eight months but like you know towards the end of the year okay now people are

starting to think about ooh 2023 it's gonna be like a you know you're kind of like Trend jacking um you know newsjacking Trend surfing whatever you want to call it but it's going to be on everybody's mind so and also people like clicking on numbers so it's just like a it's a great thing to do for ranking in search you can also um include an objection you might be like uh how to get how to get stronger without lifting weights yeah right like someone's like oh man I don't wanna I don't want to lift weights

but I do want to get stronger um cool I'll do that or like you know how to get hot without stopping your ice cream habit yes they're like how to get a six-pack without counting calories like boom oh that was so great I want to hear if there's anything on your mind that you have a hunch about and you're starting to research but you don't have enough data to back it up I want some some spicy give me some spicy take size to something you believe but you'd have you don't have any data to back

it up yet oh so we talked about one earlier is I think that people should not use the word and in uh in titles so did you see I think it was like the writers of South Park so like the like easiest secret to write a good story is to like just use the word butt no we found out this really simple rule that maybe you guys have all heard before but it took us a long time to learn it but we can take these beats which are basically the Beats of your outline and if

the words and then belong between those beats basically you got you got something pretty boring what should happen between every beat that you've written down is either the word therefore or but right so so what I'm saying is that you come up with an idea and it's like okay this happens right and then this happens No No it should be this happens and therefore this happens but this happens therefore this happens uh because there's like some conflict yeah yeah exactly but I think and it's kind of like uh dilutes a story at least in a

title like when you use the word and you're saying oh cool this is about more topics than one so yeah that that is what I think I don't know if that's true or not but uh yeah I think like the more I think you know don't use the word and just make everything about one single subject another thing we could talk about is like the art versus the science of a thumbnail of a title the science is like just like modeling right so we can talk about okay cool I'm starting a new channel I'm gonna

be in uh Fitness and I know that like everybody wants to um you know how to how to get a six-pack without counting calories like boom that's it's kind of science right it's like it's proven everybody makes a video or like five best chess exercises or something so science is just like modeling but then you have like the art of writing a good title and that is uh something that I'm like personally working on like really hard but I think that comes to one like being clever and two knowing your audience so one example of

like the art of writing a good title is uh Leon hendricks's title uh how this dumb product made a million dollars So yeah so there's contrast between like dumb product a million dollars and that's art right like like boom like he that's very well worded you're using contrast and contrast builds a lot of curiosity but it's so much harder to teach the art rather than science I think I've kind of like studied uh this the science of writing titles really well but uh I think there are a lot of people that just have like a

natural like talent for the art of writing titles much better than me so I'm trying to step up my game there but you know that is just something to uh something to kind of like you know think about and like you know if you're looking to like write a title or hire someone to write titles like you know just thinking about the art of it and also the art is like knowing your audience too so you could say how to make money online or you could say how to make ten thousand dollars a month online

that's speaking to like your audience's deepest desire and um you know because a lot of people like beginners like that's like the magic number is ten thousand dollars a month if you can uh word your audience's deepest desires like better than they can then like they're way more likely to click so yeah just like the art the art and the science is uh two two interesting things um that need to kind of play around with and then there's also we talked about topic uh so the idea there's the title there's a thumbnail but there's also

the Creator many people are getting this wrong as like people aren't answering the question of why should I listen to you and I got this from Alex ramosie if you can prove that you know what you're doing by like telling your stories or your experience then you are going to have way more success than somebody who is just kind of like uh just sharing what they read yes exactly I don't know like what it is about that but like people can just kind of feel it right you can just if you're listening to someone or

reading someone's or like you know watching them they just feel that like you know what you're talking about you've done that you've been there versus like oh you got like really nice video and like it looks cool and like your editing is great but it's just kind of like repeated like stale content so I think that so many people are messing that up like they're they're not they're not giving their audience a great reason to listen to them they're not proving to them that they have been in the trenches and they've accomplished what your audience

is trying to accomplish I think that's one thing that's holding a ton of people back I absolutely love diving into Data like this and hearing from people who really do the research so if you want to learn more about Jake subscribe to his newsletter at creatorhooks.com or follow him on Twitter links to both are in the show notes thanks to Jake for being on the show thank you to Conor conoboy for editing this episode and Nathan townhunter for mixing our audio thanks to Brian skill for creating our music and Emily Klaus for creating our artwork

if you like this episode tweet at me at J Klaus let me know or leave a comment here on this video and if you really want to say thank you please leave a review on Apple podcast or Spotify thanks for listening and I'll talk to you next week