Why Most Creators Get Titles Wrong with Jake Thomas - EP14

🔥 Quick Intro

Most creators treat titles like an afterthought.

Jake Thomas explains why that is one of the biggest mistakes you can make if you want more clicks, more views, and more growth.

He breaks down the psychology behind attention, why modeling beats trying to be clever, and how the same principles can apply to both long-form and short-form video.

👉 Episode in a Nutshell

Jake Thomas shares why titles are one of the highest-leverage skills in online business.

He explains how a few words can massively change results, why proven formats beat originality, and how psychology drives clicks across titles, thumbnails, intros, and even subject lines.

You will also learn his Dream 10 and Model 10 method for finding better topics and better formats, plus the three emotions that make people click.

⏰ Timestamps

00:00 - Why psychology matters more than platform changes
00:00 - Why titles have massive leverage
02:14 - How Jake became obsessed with YouTube titles
06:02 - Why you should not try to be original at first
09:18 - The Dream 10 and Model 10 framework
18:53 - How titles work differently in search and feed
24:00 - The 3 clickworthy emotions
29:15 - How to build a strong title before making the video
35:53 - Jake's software for title research and ideation
40:24 - How titles and thumbnails work together

💡 What you will learn

- Why trying to be original too early may be hurting your video performance

- The simple shortcut Jake uses to find title ideas that are more likely to work

- How to spot the emotional triggers that quietly drive more clicks

- Why the best title might not be the one that describes your video best

- How creators can borrow winning patterns without sounding copied

🔗 Resources

- Creator Hooks newsletter | Jake's title breakdowns and examples | creatorhooks.com

- Creator Hooks app | Jake's software for title research, inspiration, and testing | app.creatorhooks.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

The actual psychology of what grabs people's attention, how do you make them click? That's just one of the core components of growing an online business. But the cool thing about psychology is that it's never gonna change. It's been around for a hundred thousand years. People aren't changing in our lifetime in the next couple thousand years. All psychology is gonna be the same. Just finding people who are creating good content and who use good formats is kind of like the cheat code for writing good titles. Any question that you have about YouTube can be answered by.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Jake Thomas, you've been analyzing hundreds, if not thousands, of viral videos, and you've built up a database of I think over 600 YouTube titles. Tell me why the big focus on titles? Why is that so important to you?

SPEAKER_01 0:49

Yeah, we're uh we're at uh almost 1500 now. So my my website is uh a little dated there. But um yeah, I mean I I love I love psychology and just the the fact that YouTube titles, they're it's one of the like highest leverage skills that you can can have on you know to grow your internet business, to grow to grow a YouTube channel. I mean, they're just like seven to ten words, but if you have a a good YouTube title, that could be the difference between a thousand views or a hundred thousand views just by changing those seven to ten words. So there's just there's like infinite leverage on being good at YouTube titles. And then there's also just there's so much crossover. Like if you know what gets somebody to click and what people find interesting, then you can use that those same skills for YouTube, YouTube intros, YouTube thumbnails, YouTube shorts, um, you you can use it for like Twitter, LinkedIn, email, subject lines, uh blog posts, really everything. You know, once once you know how to grab people's attention and how to get them to click, that's just one of the core components of growing an online business.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

Awesome. So, how did you get into this? Because you know, everybody has to write a title, but uh in your case, you've decided to just hone in on just the titles, and you've made a name around being one of the world's top experts on just writing titles for you know YouTube videos. Tell me, how did you get into that?

SPEAKER_01 2:17

I think I'm the only one on uh the only YouTube title nerd, which is awesome. You know, as a as a business owner, uh being the only person in this space is great. But um it's so I I worked for a fishing company and it was my dream job. And I was pretty much just like sitting at home watching fishing videos all day and then publishing those on YouTube. But when I first got that job, my boss was like, hey, like this is the title, is the most important thing. Like, if nobody clicks on your videos and on our videos, then we will have wasted all that time uh making that video because no one's gonna watch it. We're also gonna miss out on all leads, all sales, viewers, subscribers. So he's like, no pressure, but like there's a lot writing on if you can get people to click by writing a good title. And I almost like when I first got started, I was so bad that I almost got fired from that job because I I didn't know, like, you know, I was like, shoot, how do you how do you write a good YouTube title? And every we published every day, or actually we published twice a day at that time. Um, and every single day at like three o'clock, I would send him like, All right, here's a video going live today. Here are you know the the the kind of like five different title ideas I'm thinking of, what do you think? And he would kind of bash them, and then he would come up with like a much better title within like five minutes. Um and I'm like, man, how did you do that? And uh eventually I I slowly figured it out, and I'm like, man, this like this is such a valuable skill. And I and I like psychology. I love I love just thinking about how how much leverage you have by just changing a couple words. So I kind of I was really mad that this was such a big weakness for me, and like once I saw how valuable it was, that I kind of made like I was determined to figure it out. And then once I I finally started to kind of make in some tracks and figuring some stuff out, uh, I decided to start a newsletter because I was like the um I was I was talking to our fishing coaches every morning, and I'd be like, hey guys, like here are five videos that worked well in like finance niche and the marketing niche and like the health niche. We're actually gonna take these and we're gonna use these for our fishing channel. And that did really well for us. Our channel started growing. We went from like 75,000 subscribers to like over 200,000 subscribers. I think it took us like two years or so. Um, but uh but that started doing well for us internally. So I'm like, well, what if I like you know it doesn't really matter what niche you're in? So what if I try to turn this into a newsletter? And I started writing the newsletter and people started enjoying it, and then uh it worked out. I went all in on that, and and here we are five years later.

SPEAKER_00 4:57

Amazing. Yeah, so I it this just reminded me of my my very first gig at copywriting. It was just before I became an entrepreneur. I was still back in New Zealand, and one of my friends was doing uh, you know, he's importing little RC cars, remote control toys and cars, you know, and he was selling it on the eBay equivalent uh of New Zealand and he was doing okay sales. And I said, Hey, I I've just done this copywriting course. Let me let me just because I noticed his his um you know, his his uh the text, the copy for his ads are really bad. And I thought, all right, let me let me just try this out, see what happens. And it was amazing. We had like uh three three times better results just by changing some sometimes very often just the title. It was such an interesting thing. This is 20 years ago now, but um there's something interesting that yeah, it's it it's it's amazing. It's like the it's like magic, it felt like magic, really. Um but there's something that you often talk about, and it's a little phrase that that seems to pop up or that popped up quite a bit in my research, and that is this little phrase here don't be original when it comes to titles. So tell me tell me a bit about that, because I think a lot of times we we feel like we've got to come up with everything from scratch and uh and and and write the world's best and most unique title for our videos. What's the deal with this with don't be original? What does that mean?

SPEAKER_01 6:27

Yeah, so like I'm learning how to play the piano right now, and I'm not trying to go rip a crazy solo. I'm I'm you know, I'm not trying to be original. I'm trying to play Mary Had a Little Lamb and happy birthday. Um, and then once I figure out how to play those, then I'll go through more um more difficult songs. And then once I know, okay, like this this is what makes a good song, this is kind of the basics of what of what you know sounds good on the piano, then I can maybe go and be original if I want. But I'm still more likely to be a successful piano player if I just kind of model what works. So there's kind of like that spectrum of like when you're when you're first getting started, it's so you're you're gonna increase your likelihood of success by modeling what is proven to work by a ton. So like when I said I figured it out for that fishing channel, so what what I did was I was started modeling other successful videos. So we would write, like I would have like a you know, topwater fishing lure review, and I'd be like, oh, like I try to just come up with some crazy title by myself, and they always came out either cringy or clickbaity or stupid or unclear. And then so instead I was I would look up like blow dryer review or like laptop review. And you know, number one in the search might be like uh you know, the only laptop you need for uh for developers in 2026. So I'd be like, okay, well, I'm just gonna take that title, you know, the only topwater lure you need for fishing in Florida in 2026. So just pretty much like stealing, um, you know, stealing that format almost word for word. And then eventually, after I did that a thousand times, I started to finally understand, oh, like people like when when you use open loops and build curiosity, or when you drop in the current year, um, or you know, when you call out a very specific audience, like I started to learn those things, and then I started to be a little bit more original sometimes, but oftentimes just kind of sticking to the basics of knowing what works, what's proven to work, and then ideally, like just kind of finding something to model, you know, finding a format to model almost one-to-one, um, except you're going outside of your niche. Um, and often if if you go to a very competitive niche, like um, like you know, uh like laptop reviews or something, and you look at what's working, the odds that that video is gonna do well is pretty high because that that uh that niche is so saturated and so competitive that only the best titles are gonna do well. So that's what I mean by don't be original. Internet, like especially, especially if you're getting started, always find a proven format to model very closely.

SPEAKER_00 9:18

You've uh you've mentioned uh previously this, uh I'm not sure if you still use it, but like a dream 10 and a model 10 kind of method that you use uh for that. Is does that relate to modeling from the best? Does that mean like maybe take us through that? Like, do you find that the the the top 10 in an industry and then and the top formats? Because I think when you say model, you mean you also mean it could be like the format and structure of the videos. That can you take us through that a little bit more? Because I found that really fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 9:46

Yeah, so I I got this from Russell Brunson a long time ago, and uh he had like your dream 100 list, and he he said, like, if you're trying to get customers, like you find out you know, the other 100 people who have your same customers, and then you um then you kind of you know you build relationships with them and you do you know partnerships with them and all sorts of stuff, and that's how you can grow your business. And with YouTube, so I have the Dream 10 and the Model 10. So the Dream 10 is like you know my top five, my top 10 uh competitors. And these are people that talk about the same topic as me. So what I I and I look at those channels to find out proven topics. And for most educational channels, if you just get like, you know, find five topics that that your channel that your audience loves, like that's there's often oftentimes there's not that many more topics that you can successfully talk about. So the um the the job is how do you figure out how to talk about those five things a hundred different ways? So that's where I come up, that's where I have the model 10. So my my dream 10 is I'm I'm I'm finding proven format or proven topics for my dream 10 for my competitors, and then my model 10, I'm I'm finding proven formats uh outside of my niche. So my model 10 might be so like when I had the when I was working at the phishing channel, I had from my my model 10 would have fitness uh channels, um, you know, uh finance channels, marketing channels, health channels. And ideally, they're you know, they're they're channels that you like. And pretty much any question that you have about YouTube can be answered by asking your Model 10. So, like, how long should my titles be? Like, look at your look at your Dream 10 and your Model 10. Uh what should my thumbnails look like? How many were how many words should be in my thumbnail text? Um, you know, what should my how long should my intros be? What should like how long should my videos be? Pretty much any question you can have about YouTube is to um is to look at them and then be like, like, you know, what about your thumbnails? Like how much like should my thumbnails be light? Or like how many, like, how many elements should be my thumbnail? What what should like, you know, what what um you know, what should should my face be in there? So all those questions that you might have can be answered from your Model 10. But specifically when we're talking about titles and ideas, I like to just look at at proven formats. Like if I see um, you know, for instance, uh like the only way to blank, and I see that with you know, four or five different channels are using that video, and that video is doing well for all those channels, then I'm gonna say, all right, well, the only way to catch redfish or something. So that you're looking for formats from your uh from your model 10. So you're kind of you're remixing your proven topics and your proven formats, and that's how you come up with a bunch of uh ideas that are more likely to be successful because they're braced based on you know proven formats and proven topics.

SPEAKER_00 12:42

Just a clarification there, uh Jack, if you don't mind, with the the dream 10, you mentioned that's like your your competitors, you know, that's focusing on, you know, is it people focusing on similar topics to you? Because you mentioned with your phishing channel, you also had like uh you know a fitness channel in as part of your uh your your dream 10. Do you do you just focus on people within your niche or do you go wider? What's uh what what's the best practice there?

SPEAKER_01 13:08

So I I might have misspoke. So for the phishing channel, my dream 10 was all other phishing channels. So like I have a I have a YouTube channel um that talks about how to grow on YouTube. That's all, you know, that's um vidIQ, TubeBuddy, um, you know, Ed Lawrence, uh one of 10, you know, all those uh you know, all those Callaway, all those, all those channels. And then for you know going outside of the niche, like Jeremy Ether has a great um a great fitness channel, and I like how he writes his titles and how he comes up with his his ideas. So I would get formats from him. Um but yeah, for the for your Dream 10 competitors that talk about the same topic as you, and then for your Model 10, other channels outside of your niche, but they but they create content in the same format as you or the same style as you. So, like if you have an educational talking head channel, you probably wouldn't want to choose like Mr. Beast or some like vlogging channel because those are just totally different formats. Um, but ideally, you know, someone who's like you look at their titles and your thumbnail and their thumbnails, and you're like, ooh, I actually I really like the way their style. Um I'm gonna you know I'm gonna kind of model them.

SPEAKER_00 14:19

Okay, so so the dream trend is is competitor channels. So say you say you've got a fishing channel, you go and look for for the top 10 other uh fishing channels out there to uh to learn from to see what what's working well for them. But then for the the model 10, it doesn't have to be necessarily in the fishing industry for that particular example. It can be more than that, can be like what what are the what are the the frameworks or models as you call them that that seem to work really well and that resonates with you as well and what you're trying to achieve. Does that sound about right? Because so that the so that the the the the dream 10 is channel specific and competitor specific, whereas the the model one is more general, it can be from any of the the model 10 in an ideal in an ideal world you have 10 channels in each list, or maybe you know, maybe more than 10 channels.

SPEAKER_01 15:06

Um but but it's you're looking for channels that in the model 10, you're like, oh, I really like the way that this creator writes their titles. I love their formats, I love their their thumbnails. And and you can kind of uh you might have a channel that you only like their thumbnails, but you get inspiration from them. And so this goes, this applies to creators all across the spectrum. So I have always been horrible at making thumbnails, and eventually I just copied a thousand thumbnails and I eventually got a little bit better at it. And then, you know, if you're if I'm if I'm telling someone who's just starting a channel, I would say like always model somebody very closely, you know, someone whose style you like. But then the other day I was talking to a creator, uh, someone who I I really look up to, and they are very, very successful with multiple channels on YouTube. And I was like, hey man, what's what's your secret? And he's like, I just look for what's work and I copy what is like proven to work. Like he doesn't come up with anything new. Um, he looks outside of his niche, you know, he does pretty much you know what I just talked about is you know looking for for um for patterns that appear often um you know across YouTube, across different niches, because you know, the more often you see it uh work, the the higher the likelihood that that you following that pattern as well is gonna is gonna do well. So um, you know, so just finding people who are are creating good content um and who use good formats uh is kind of like the cheat code for writing good titles.

SPEAKER_00 16:43

It's interesting how often this comes up in these interviews where you know I'm talking to the most successful uh people in the industry when it comes, well, I've been focusing on short form video in particular, but it's so interesting how almost every single one of them talks about modeling from the best. You know, you go and look at who's who's the best in the industry, and then you go and uh well not copy them, but copy the the strategy maybe or copy the format, you know, and and and still be original within that space. But uh that's really interesting. Um now, Jake, I know you're you're more of a long form guy, and the title that you've been honing in on is for long form uh video, but I I find this really fascinating because I think for short form it's it's the same kind of thing. I'm not sure how much short form folks focus on their titles because you know it's it's a scrolling sort of environment. However, short form videos also appear a lot in search, you know, or or uh other places uh on on YouTube, you know, but if we look at the other platforms as well, it's not just on the the scrollable, you know, thumb scrolling experience that people uh see your videos from. They they they also see your videos and your thumbnails specifically for short form in other places too. So I think that's that's why I wanted to talk to you about this, because I think there's there's this whole world of this whole world of opportunity that people might be missing out on. So so but but what would you say to short form uh video creators? What what do you think like do you think this uh looking at your uh say Dream 10 and Model 10 that could still apply? Because the the the immediate idea that came to me there was uh you know, not even from a title writing perspective, but just from uh you know finding the top 10 uh dream guys, dream channels, but then the model 10 is like the format, because that the oftentimes with short form you find you see people who uh at least from the people I've interviewed, they've all been able to find a format uh that works, and then they just repeat it over and over. So, but when it comes to writing titles in particular for short form, have you done a bit of thinking about that? How is how might it be different, do you think, for short form?

SPEAKER_01 18:52

So there, yeah, there's a lot to unpack there. And I especially so let's start with search. So when we're when we're thinking about search versus like let's say it's like the feed where you're just kind of like mindlessly scrolling, um people are looking for the it, they're purposefully looking for an answer to something. So they they're gonna spend more time reading the title and looking at the thumbnail to see is this video going to deliver on what I'm looking for? So you can get away with kind of longer titles there. I mean, that's something a lot of people ask me is about title length. So if you're trying to rank in search, longer titles, and you want to, you know, you want to make sure that you're making a promise that your audience is excited about when you are, you know, if you're trying to rank in search. So there's that. But then a big thing that I think about is just the kind of the fundamentals and the and the first principles of like psychology and what actually gets people is what gets people's attention and what gets them to click. So one example of like a psychological concept is like a curiosity gap or an open loop. So if I were to use um an open loop, and I'm just gonna call it an open loop because that's the way I like to call it, that's the way I first learned about it. But um, if I'm trying to build uh an open loop in in a with words, I might write a title that might say, um, you know, I wish I knew this before I started my before I started my first YouTube channel. So that opens a loop, you're like, oh, what is this? And then you could also just start your your um you know, you could start your short with that as well. And then also that would make a really good email subject line. You know, so if you learn psychology, that can apply to everything. But then also it works for like visuals as well. So one of my favorite thumbnails is this guy hanging from uh like from the rafters of a store. So he's like hanging from the roof in like a Walmart, and there's so much tension, but like it opens up a loop. He's kind of like, you know, there's something about to happen, and you you have to click, you got to see like you know what happened. Another another thumbnail that comes to mind is like a boulder like roll rolling down a hill and somebody's like down at the end of the hill. It's kind of like mid-action. So that opens up a loop in the same way that you know it's saying, I wish I knew this, is because it, you know, it starts a story, but it doesn't finish it. You know, there's so much tension, you're like, oh, what does he wish he knew about starting a YouTube channel? Or what is gonna happen to this boulder? Because I see this person is down at the end of the hill, and very obviously this boulder is gonna roll down. So if you can just try to think about like, you know, all right, what's actually happening here? Another example is like being counterintuitive. So, you know, if you're if I write a title saying, you know, uh how I blew up a YouTube channel without publishing videos, it's like, wait, that doesn't make sense. You know, I'm kind of challenging your assumptions. I'm uh making kind of a you know just a counterintuitive statement. And you could also do the same thing visually, you could kind of put two things together. that that don't really make sense. You know, maybe it's like um you know it's uh like a a a golden retriever or a dog with like line like tiger stripes you're like wait like that that that's not that's not how I expect things to go right so just kind of knowing you know the actual psychology of what gets what grabs people's attention how do you make them click it is a little bit hard to kind of you know go from words to visualizations um but you know if you if you're if you're like for your script like you know just like you know say counterintuitive things or open a loop when you're in your uh in the you know in the first sentence of your short you know but but the cool thing about psychology is that it's never gonna change it's been around for a hundred thousand years people aren't changing in our lifetime in the next couple thousand years all psychology is going to be the same it's very platform um uh transferable it's not exactly the same you know some some things work better on other platforms than others but um but it's you know it's just a great transferable skill so no matter what platform or what type of content you're creating learning psychology is definitely one of the one of the skills that that you should spend time learning and one of you know one of the skills that you're gonna get a lot out of the high ROI out of out of learning psychology.

SPEAKER_00 23:18

Yeah and I I think that's what I love about your approach is uh is that when you look at the way you come up with titles it's not a it's not as formulaic uh as as you might get from you know from other people talking about it uh and and I think that's really cool. I mean sure that maybe there are some formulas but I I think what what you have for me is like maybe not formulas but shortcuts which I really like. You talk about the three emotions that you need to master.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

You've talked about the psychology but you've talked a bit about curiosity there opening loops but what are those three emotions the three main emotions you think people should master when it comes to writing titles yeah and then just kind of backing up a little bit, you know, when we're thinking about formulas yes like if you're a beginner um start with formulas because that's easy uh you know you're you're gonna increase your odds of of success but as you get a little bit more um experience and also as you're kind of evaluating formulas you're gonna start to know you're gonna start to notice that there's all sorts of uh different you know trends and themes that you're seeing and that's the psychology and if you can you know actually you know more um intentionally think about those like oh why does this work then you're gonna start to accelerate your your learning of of what makes people click and how do you grow YouTube channel or how do you grow really any business online. So uh the and the one thing that I found is if you're if we're just thinking like all right high level what makes a good YouTube title uh it's the presence of one two or three of the three quickworthy emotions that's curiosity fear and desire so curiosity is the most powerful of them it's kind of like a mental mosquito bite like if you get bit by a mosquito you don't want to it's you don't want to scratch that but that mosquito bite you have to scratch that mosquito bite. So curiosity uh it kind of plants a question in the audience's mind and if you do it well they don't just want to answer that question they have to answer that question. So that's just that's one of that's that's the most powerful emotion you have uh fear and then you know so just thinking about like you know what is what is your audience scared of what do they not want a lot of people think you know fear is kind of cringy or clickbaity or warmongery. If you can just think about like all right you know my audience they want to you know they want to do something what's gonna stop them from doing that what are they nervous about what are they scared of um and if you can address those pain points and those problems then you know that's that's a oftentimes is a great way to make interesting content and then you have desire which is just knowing your audience's hopes and dreams and you know knowing like all right so you like you could I could make a video titled you know how to grow a YouTube channel like that's cool like you know my audience does want to grow a YouTube channel. However that video probably isn't going to do well but if my titled a video how to hit your first thousand subscribers or how I made a million dollars on YouTube you know if I made that desire a little bit more specific you know kind of going after exactly what my audience wants then I'm more likely that video is more likely to be successful. So so those are the three motions and it's usually curiosity plus fear or curiosity plus desire sometimes you can mix all three but it's not really about mixing all three it's about doing one or two really well.

SPEAKER_00 26:42

Okay. I'm I'm uh getting um uh sort of um interested here in in getting a very uh hands-on example because I want to see this in action if you're open to it Jake would you be interested in going through uh I just you know just thought of this now kind of but uh would you be interested in going through a a previous video of mine it's a short uh it's on my personal channel it hasn't done particularly well but um looking at it and going if I was and sort of looking at it from maybe assuming this is just before I'm about to post it or publish it um what is the process or steps I would normally go through to create just a banger title for that video so I'm gonna just share my screen and I'm gonna pick a it's probably the the uh let me just go to my screen here. So let's go to YouTube and we'll search for my name Gideon Shalek. So I I I did um Pat's Flynn Pat Flynn's um thirty day 30 day challenge uh a while back and um so I I I created a bunch of videos on productivity and I you know try try to make it funny and or ironic more than funny um and some something okay but uh you know it it wasn't they didn't do amazing but let's have a look here so I've got can you see my screen Jake before we go further all right so um I don't know I've got um let let's take this I think this one did quite well so let's use the one this let's use this one so this one this video was about um me I was messing around trying to you know draw my my timeline or my to do is to do list for the day and I ended up um my pencil case fell off and blah blah blah and so I used that as sort of the thing and my wife gave me a a tip for uh how to you know make it so that this will never happen again and it was great. And so I used the title She Saved Me um as as that as a as a sort of a title but if if I want to like maybe work on that a little bit and say I have no idea what I want to create as a title for the short uh what would I what would I do? Like you've you've talked about the the modeling thing and you've talked about the like model in terms of outliers looking at the best what's performing there but then you also talk about the dream 10 and the model 10 like given you've got a dream 10 and a model 10 uh for this already you know what would you go through to try and come up with a great title for a video like this so I'd first start with the topic.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

So I would make sure that your topic is about what your audience wants. So the kind of the easiest way to do that is to just kind of scroll through you know your channel like trying to figure out what are your kind of recent outliers, what's what's doing what's perfect what's getting more views than the uh than all the other videos in your last you know you know your last 20 30 videos and trying to look for patterns there and then looking at you know all of your your dream 10 and all your competitors like all right what's you know what's working for them out of in their last 30 videos and then you you know you sort by most popular and you say all right you know what's what's you know what are my most popular videos what are my competitors' most popular videos and then you know once you once you look at all that stuff hopefully you'll start to see patterns and you'll be like oh like this I'm I'm finding like videos about you know early morning or like morning habits are working really well or morning routines. So you know so ideally you're starting with a proven topic and then after we say all right well we're gonna we're gonna write titles about morning routine then you would go and you would look at your your model 10 and you would say like all right you know what's what's working well you do kind of the same thing you would look at their last 30 videos all right what is working well for them um and then you do that with all your all your um all your model 10 channels and you try to look for patterns again except this time we're not looking at topics we're looking at formats when you're looking at your model 10. So that's that is how I would kind of run through that and maybe we see that you know every everybody's making a video about like um you know the you know I I regret not blah blah blah so so you might say I regret not trying this protock productivity hack earlier or or I guess going back to the morning morning routine thing like you might say I regret not trying this morning routine earlier. So that that would be how I would kind of use that process. But for this video specifically um you know you just you would kind of think like all right what what does my audience want? You know what are their hopes and dreams and fears here who is my audience and those are all different elements that you could use to um to write a write a good title there.

SPEAKER_00 31:39

So I'm just thinking as you're saying this it you're probably going to be better off if you do this work before you actually create your video or videos. You know you'd be you'd already be doing you already have this research in place and and then the natural thinking that comes from that is that you know you you would you wouldn't write your title afterwards you write it beforehand. Does that make sense? Is that what you recommend? It's I know a lot of people do that as well they actually come up with the title in their thumbnail before they actually go ahead and create the video and and I think probably most people do the other way around. What's your take on that?

SPEAKER_01 32:16

Yeah in an ideal world you definitely rate the title before you come up with before you actually make the video and that's because you know like I said like you need to start with a proven topic and then you need to start with a proven format. So let's say we come up with you know I regret not start not trying this morning routine before um that has to deliver on the promise that you make in your video. And if you don't like that's how you kind of land yourself in clickbait territory. Or maybe you know you you like you find some awesome title and your content doesn't quite deliver on that promise but like you stick that title on your on your video anyway and it's like eh you know that you start to to get into clickbait territory that way. So yeah in an ideal world you'll come up with the title first. However that's not always possible you know for uh podcasts for example you don't know exactly what we're gonna talk about so it's it's a little bit harder for you to title a podcast um you know vlogs and you know like you know just I guess some other experiments you just you just don't know exactly what's gonna happen. So it is a little bit harder. In that case I would probably try to write five titles that I think are going to happen and then I would try to steer the conversation or steer you know whatever events it is in the in one of those directions. That's also that'll also help you create good content is because you thought of all these awesome examples that people would like beforehand. And then you can you know make content that delivers on those cool promises. But then also and this is something that not enough people talk about um you know when we're talking about YouTube titles specifically is what do we title our video or sorry what do we what do we focus um our title on because there's a bunch of different things that we could that we could focus our title on. We could um you know we could describe our video which I think most people assume that their YouTube title should describe their video but it's not necessarily the case the the biggest job of a title is to get people to click uh you the the title might also set expectations it might call out the right audience but the number one goal is to get people to click not to describe your video um and then you know your thumbnail probably adds some more context also sets expectations also calls out the right audience and then your intro sets more context um you know it sets more uh expectations and you know also confirms who the video is for and then you know you kind of get in your content um but yeah I mean in an ideal world uh you're coming up with your titles beforehand and um yeah and that's it's you're playing the game on hard mode if you try to write your titles after.

SPEAKER_00 35:00

That's yeah that's really interesting. And I think that's I think that's a common mistake for people to create their videos first to you know before they even have their their titles or or even their their topic ideas in place and then try and you know tidy it up afterwards after the fact. It's almost like putting a what do you call it a putting a lipstick on a pig or something like that an expression. I'm not sure if that's an English expression something like that. Now what's interesting is you're um you know you're this um kind of guy who's been focusing in and honing in on titles titles in particular and you've done a ton of research you've got all this you know you're a data data guy right you I think isn't your channel sort of named YouTube Nerds Unite or something like that right so you you love data um but you've also been taking all this information experience um and been creating software around this do you want to tell us a bit more about your software that sounds really interesting yeah so I mean what I mean we've talked a lot about the Dream 10 and the Model 10 um in my software that I that is like launching I believe tonight you know as we're the the day that we're recording this. Good luck.

SPEAKER_01 36:09

Yeah thank you um so we you can follow channels and you can create lists of channels that you follow. So when you sign up we kind of all automatically set you up with um a competitors list and an inspiration list. I I use the terms competitors list and inspiration list uh because dream 10 and model 10 were a little bit too ambiguous. Um but uh but you can create any other list you want. But yeah so you know trying to make that easier so I mean it it makes a lot of the stuff that we talked about today a lot easier. So like I just told you like go go look through all your competitors' last 30 videos and and try to see what works. Well like in my in my new software uh you can just have one single feed of all of your competitors and then you can filter by outlier score um or you know filter by views and like you know only only see what works there. So we're making that a lot easier for you. And then as far as like kind of coming up with like the different angle when you when you use our AI like it's programmed to first help you come up with different angles for your titles and then you can kind of dive deeper into a different angle and that'll help you um help you really kind of think more strategically about your title um not just like kind of describing your title but trying to think outside of the box and and just show you a bunch of different ways that you could potentially uh title your video. And then another a huge thing that I'm a big fan of is uh just previewing like how does a title and thumbnail like actually look together. So we have a little studio tool where you can preview what it'll look like on YouTube. You can um you can share it with friends. So I have a Discord group of of three other guys and that's probably like the highest investment like the the most ROI thing that I do um when it comes to growing my YouTube is that they're all like really smart guys and all three of us we're all three um pretty successful on YouTube and we all think we know what we're talking about but almost every single one of us when we suggest a title like hey I'm gonna make a video about this almost every single time one somebody else in the group says well haven't you thought about this and it's a just a such such a better idea even though we're all really good at YouTube the ideas that we come with like somebody always has a better idea for us. So that's just a a that's a huge a huge value add and I feel like if I could tell like anybody who is starting a channel like go and find a group of two three four other people who are doing something kind of similar to you and get in a group chat get a discord slack whatever it is and just like meet every week and and share ideas share what you're learning um and I mean it's been crazy valuable for me. So anyway uh in my new tool you can take a screenshot of all the different titles and thumbnail combos uh or you can um you can just like download a JPEG and then you can share it. So to try to make that a little bit easier um you know because oftentimes I'll send my buddies like a bunch of screenshots like hey like what do you think about this or this or this or this and this kind of does that all in one place. So I really just said all right what is my process and how can I use software to just make that easier.

SPEAKER_00 39:28

Awesome. Now I definitely want to send people to the right place to to go and check that out but before we do this one last thing I want to ask you uh Jake and because you mentioned the thumbnail thing I know thumbnails is not really a big thing with YouTube shorts in particular but I my gut feeling is my prediction is that they're gonna bring back thumbnails for YouTube uh eventually so when they do uh and and I know there's a hack as well for adding your own thumbnails and YouTube shorts in particular other platforms like Instagram that do allow you to have thumbnails and stuff like that but um for the day when they do bring it back or for those who are using the you know a little bit of a hack to to get their thumbnail in there what's your advice for uh you know titles and thumbnails and and I know you're again you're long form but if you could put your head on for short form I I think the psychology is probably still the same but what what sort of things is important for you to look at when you're developing both a title and the thumbnail for your videos yeah I mean I I think of them as complimentary.

SPEAKER_01 40:26

It's like a kind of one-two punch um you know the how I view it is that like the the thumbnail grabs the audience's attention and then the title kind of confirms you know someone's like oh what is I see this interesting thumbnail now let me read the title uh and then the title then once they read the title they're like oh yes I this does sound interesting I do want to watch this video so I believe like you know we we look at a ton of thumbnails and we and we read a ton of titles so they're they're both very important I've heard I've heard mixed things on which is more important. I've heard people that I respect greatly argue for for both sides personally as a YouTube title guy uh I think titles are more important but um uh and also you know it also depends on your your niche I think in general generally speaking educational channels the the title is more important uh for entertainment channels where you're doing something crazy the thumbnail is more important um that's a little little title versus thumbnail uh tangent rant there um but really just how how can I grab the right audience's attention and then build curiosity or excitement or fear and desire so that they are like oh my gosh what is this video? I have to read this title I have to decide if I want to click on this video.

SPEAKER_00 41:46

I had a quick look at your software the the previous version of it and I think it it um I'm not sure if I saw it there or maybe heard you talk about it but you know the difference between uh one big big difference between the your title of your video and the text that you use on your video for your for your uh thumbnail in general it's it's a lot shorter right so you try and do it like in three maybe five max words on your on your thumbnail and I think with short form where you've got a vertical sort of uh thing and it's often smaller on people's mobile uh screens and you probably want to go even shorter maybe two words maybe three words um any thoughts on that I think that it's very hard for me to say to give you a hard line and that's I mean I the first the first thing that comes to my mind is um Diary of the CEO's uh channel that their their uh YouTube channel I don't I haven't looked at their channel in a while but they were doing like five six seven eight words and I've heard so many people say oh you should never have more than four words or never have more than three words so I mean things kind of come and go I you know I think what's almost more important is the psychology like if you have some you know in an insane insane copy or an insane thumbnail text and people read it like oh my gosh what in the world is this um I have to watch this video uh then yeah you could probably get away with more um but I mean just thinking about all right what mode is my audience in who is my audience uh you know typically older and older people are have more patience and they're they read more whereas younger people just seem to scroll a little bit faster um you know so that's just a couple of different things to consider so you know if your audience is in scroll mode then yeah you probably want to be as short and concise but also you know as powerful as possible um so yeah I mean that's that's a I that's a that's a huge a huge topic that's up for debate but and it and it really just kind of um it depends however if you were asking me that question I would say hey go look at your dream 10 and your model 10 how many words do they have in their thumbnails go follow that I think that's that's a goal Framework or strategies. Just to me, it's like a shortcut. Just look at the Dream 10 and the Model 10, and that almost gives you all the answers.

SPEAKER_01 44:08

You know, as it's uh it's kind of like my my cop out for right.

SPEAKER_00 44:15

Jake, this has been uh amazing. Uh thank you so much for all your incredible insights when it comes to titles and also for your uh generosity to talk about how that might apply to short form video as well. I think the you know pretty much 99% of the advice applies to short form video uh as well, which is really cool. I'm really intrigued about uh your software. I can't wait to see the next version of it coming out. Uh, where's the best place for people to learn more about you and your software that you're developing right now? And where shall we send them?

SPEAKER_01 44:45

Uh yeah, so you can search social uh Jake Thomas, uh LinkedIn, YouTube, or uh or Twitter. Um and then yeah, creatorhooks.com uh is the newsletter, and then um app dot creatorhooks.com right now is uh is for the software. But that will be that will be changing. Like I said, we are we haven't launched yet, so gonna clean that up a little bit.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

But uh this is a place they can go to to see the uh the the well actually I think I'm logged in here maybe I don't know. There's a software. Okay, very cool. Um so people could go there. Um and once this goes out, that'll probably be ready for launch, I'd I'd imagine.

SPEAKER_01 45:26

Uh, but otherwise I mean technically it's it's ready today.

SPEAKER_00 45:30

Okay, right. Um I I do recommend people go to creatorhooks.com as well. I had a quick look at your uh your past editions here, and uh you know, you you practice what you preach when you look at the uh the titles you have written there. Really, really cool. Definitely check it out. Um, and this was interesting to me as well. I know that you don't have a ton of subscribers here on YouTube, but I actually started watching some of your videos here, and I think it's just a matter of time for these to take off because you go through all these really amazing frameworks and things for for writing titles. Definitely recommend that as well. So uh creatorhooks.com and Jake's uh YouTube channel, just uh Jack Thomas or Jake Thomas YouTube uh is the handle. Uh also uh the if you go to X, if you just search for Jake Thomas, because it's actually at J Thomas double underscore, right? Or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 46:21

But if you just think that I was gonna create content when I was like, oh, I'm just gonna you know just kind of lurk on you on Twitter, and then one day I was like, I should probably try to grow my business on Twitter, and then by that time it was too late. I already was stuck with the double underscore. So I think I got a handsome dog in there.

unknown 46:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:41

I I did notice if I just searched for uh Jake Thomas, you come up as the first result for me. So yeah, get the one with a dog, um then you're on the right place. Um that's awesome, Jake. Thank you so much. Uh I I know we could probably talk about this for many more hours, especially when it comes to you know honing in and talking about the interaction between your thumbnails and the titles. And then I'd be interested if you're um if if you'd you'd ever get down to researching titles and thumbnails specifically for short form. And uh, if you do, do let me know. I'd love to get you back on the show uh and and find out if you found anything different to report on. But uh I will, I will. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, and wish you all the best for your launch.

SPEAKER_01 47:24

Yeah, thank you, Gideon.

SPEAKER_00 47:26

Take care. Thanks for tuning in. If you want to grow your influence with daily short form videos, Vubli makes it effortless. Post everywhere, be seen everywhere. Try it free at Vubli.ai. I'll see you in the next episode.