Transcription
No one’s going to click on our video if you don’t write a good title. What if the only reason people weren’t watching your videos was that you were choosing bad titles? The best titles create an emotional response that compels you to click. The three click-worthy emotions I’m identifying are curiosity, fear, and desire. It’s usually a combination of 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 on human psychology. What I love about Jake’s approach is that he’s very data-driven.
I have a database of 408 titles right now. 61 of them have curiosity, 46 have desire, and 40 have fear or negativity. 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 you can tap into.
But now, let’s talk with Jake.
[Music]
A lot of people, when they’re just starting out, try to do some research by looking at other channels that are similar to theirs. But I feel like many people also fall into the trap of saying, “I’m just going to model off the biggest names in the business.” They go and see what Mr. Beast is doing or what Emma Chamberlain is doing, thinking that if it’s working for them, it should work for them too. Is that the right way to think about it? If not, how should I be doing research across different channels for my titles?
I don’t think that’s the right way to do it. If I pulled up Emma Chamberlain’s titles right now, like “Cooking Ugg Season in My Childhood Bedroom,” it would be okay. She has a title that’s literally just “Cooking,” and that’s all it is. Unless you’re Emma Chamberlain, that’s not going to work for you. Unless you have, let’s see, 11.8 million subscribers, it won’t work because it’s just a plain statement. There’s no emotion there.
So, no, I think you should model people a couple of steps ahead of you. If you’re just getting started, maybe you want to model people in the 5,000 to 50,000 subscriber range—someone who’s not a total celebrity and doesn’t have so much influence outside of YouTube that they’re going to be successful no matter what.
Definitely don’t look at people way up high. Try to find people a couple of steps ahead of you and see what they’re doing. That’s definitely the best thing you can do, especially when you’re getting started. If you don’t know anything—like how to write your intros, how to do your lighting, how long your video should be—when you’re getting started, all the answers are there.
Just look at what’s working for your competitors, and as you do that, you’ll slowly develop your own feel and vibe. The best way to do it is to copy first. People do copy work; you know, you handwrite old sales letters to learn how to become a good copywriter. People have been recommending that for, I don’t know, 70 years or something, and it’s been working for them.
Don’t try to be super original. Don’t try to model Emma Chamberlain. No offense to her, but it’s probably not going to work for you. Try to find people a couple of steps ahead of you and do what they’re doing.
I think that’s good advice for creators of any kind, actually. It’s really easy to look at these bigger channels or creators or platforms in general and think, “Well, if they’re doing it, it must work.” But there have been times in my life when I’ve looked at landing pages, home pages, and sales pages of big websites and thought, “Oh, this must be what works,” and then copied that. Within days or weeks, they change it because it probably wasn’t performing.
So, 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 clear public data, you should reach out and say, “Hey, I’m just curious how this is going for you.” Maybe not as the first question in their Twitter DMs, but get to it. I think that’s really smart advice. Sometimes people are succeeding in spite of not doing things in the most effective way.
Yeah, definitely. But also, if you’re just getting started, just do it. Don’t let analysis paralysis stop you from taking action. When I first launched my newsletter, I had a really ugly newsletter title and landing page. It was terrible, and my conversion rate was bad when I got started. Then I asked around and started looking at others, and I eventually figured it out.
Just copying the first landing page I saw worked for me to get up and moving. Someone told me a couple of weeks ago, “You can’t steer a parked car.” I thought, “Oh, this is great!” When you’re just getting started, just move and then figure it out.
How did you get into YouTube titles of all things?
I’ve been in marketing in general for about 10 years. I worked at a Facebook ad agency, and it was terrible. My favorite client said, “Hey, we’re hiring a writer,” so I jumped on board with them. I didn’t have any YouTube experience, but my boss said, “Hey, you’re going to be our editor-in-chief, our media buyer, and our YouTube channel manager.” I thought, “This is great!”
I had no YouTube experience, and my boss was a really good copywriter. He drilled into my head the importance of writing titles. We were a fishing channel, and we spent a lot of money sending our fishing coaches out kayaking or on the boat, spending all day making content. We spent a lot of money on our content, and he said, “If you don’t write a good title, then we wasted all this money filming and creating.”
Also, if you don’t write a good title, we’re not going to get any of the benefits. No one’s going to click on our video if you don’t write a good title. So the pressure was on.
That sounds like a lot of pressure.
Yeah, it was. The only problem was he was great—my favorite boss by far—but he didn’t know how to teach me how to write good YouTube titles, so I was kind of on my own. I almost got fired because I was so bad at first.
Oh no!
I actually talked to him about it a couple of years later, and I said, “Yeah, when I got started, it wasn’t the best.” He said, “Yeah, it wasn’t the best. We weren’t sure if we were going to keep you.” You’re telling me it wasn’t the best? But somehow, I figured it out.
The thing that made it click for me was that we were a fishing channel, and my boss went on a podcast of a hunting channel. They did a podcast about newbie hunting gear, and the guy said that the newbie hunting gear podcast crushed it for them. My boss came back and said, “Hey, we’re going to do a podcast about newbie fishing gear.” I thought, “All right, cool, let’s do it.”
It turns out that was our best podcast for the month, like for the past few months. That’s when it clicked for me. I realized I didn’t need to be original; I just needed to find something that works and model that. It’s not like copying; you know, there was newbie hunting gear and newbie fishing gear. We were just following that same model.
Once I realized that, I got on a roll. I finally understood that it’s not all up to me to be totally original and write these great titles. We turned it around. I didn’t get fired, and our channel tripled our revenue, so everything was good after that.
Once I figured out how to write a good YouTube title as a beginner, I slowly figured it out. I was like, “Oh cool, here are the patterns that all of these successful YouTube titles have.” Now we can get out of that box of just modeling to actually coming up with original content.
How did you go about finding these templates of breakout successes? It seems like YouTube has an endless amount of content. How did you boil that ocean down to specific title structures that worked for you?
I spent a lot of time studying YouTube titles. I went to a bunch of different channels, and YouTube makes it super easy because you can see the publish date and how many views they have. I spent hours every week for over a year, almost two years now, just scanning.
I’d look at a video published a couple of weeks ago that has a hundred thousand views, while all the other videos published around it have ten thousand. There’s something here. Then you take note of that and do that a thousand times, a couple hundred times, and boom, you start to see patterns. It’s really just putting in time, studying, and taking deliberate notes.
How much were you looking at the same industry and channels in that industry versus something that might be a little bit orthogonal to it, like something that’s kind of touching that industry versus something completely out of that industry but doing well?
I really tried to get a broad spectrum of industries. The craziest thing is when I see a hair channel, and one of their best videos uses a model I’ve seen work on all sorts of other channels.
So just really trying to get a broad spectrum of titles, then putting all those notes together and seeing the patterns. It’s like, “Oh, it really doesn’t matter what industry this is in.” 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? If it is structured, how does that look?
It is a little structured. It’s just in Google Sheets. I’ve got the title, the publish date, and the URL. It started as that, and then as I started to recognize patterns, I’d note, “Okay, this one had fear.” Then I’d go through all the other 100 titles I had before. “All right, this one had fear, this one had fear, this one had fear.” Cool, okay, 30 of these titles have fear.
Then I’d start to notice new patterns. It’s really simple, just in Google Sheets. It’s nothing fancy. As I kept learning new things, I’d jot it down and see if I could organize it a little better.
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. I’ve heard you discuss some of these emotions that you think underlie a good title. Is it fair to say that emotions are what make a good title?
Yes. A couple of weeks ago, I was looking at a guy’s channel, and he was struggling with his YouTube channel. He said, “Hey man, I’m putting in all the work. My thumbnails are getting better, my storytelling, my editing is getting better. Why am I not growing?” I looked at his titles, and they were all bland statements. There was no emotion.
The three click-worthy emotions I’m calling them are curiosity, fear, and desire. It’s usually curiosity plus fear or curiosity plus desire. That’s the simplest way to explain what makes a good title: just curiosity, fear, or desire. There are a bunch of different nuances below that, but that’s the high-level version of what makes a good title.
I like that you’re focusing on emotional terms and ideas instead of strictly templated language. I’m sure there are trends within language that work pretty well, but I would imagine they probably get stale too. When you’re looking at curiosity, fear, and desire, and saying, “I want to tie curiosity to fear or curiosity to desire,” how often are you seeing trends go in and out?
So far, I haven’t seen any big trends go in and out yet. The main trend that comes to mind is a 2014 BuzzFeed article: “36 New Podcast Mics You’ll Never Guess Number 17,” or something like that. “Doctors Hate This Guy.” But it’s still using curiosity and a little bit of fear.
Those things still work well; it’s just how you apply them. People kind of catch on, and now it’s like, “All right, that’s too clickbaity for me.” But the same principles that worked back then are still working now. I’ve read a lot of copywriting books from the 30s, 50s, and 60s, and they all say the same thing: it’s all psychology that gets people’s attention and gets them to click.
Do you have any examples of titles that pull on curiosity and fear or curiosity and desire that people can start to map in their minds?
Just to get super nerdy here, I’ve got a database of 408 titles right now. 61 of them have curiosity, 46 have desire, and 40 have fear or negativity.
A couple of examples: “Seven Things Plant Experts Do That You Probably Don’t.” That kind of opens up a loop. It’s like, “Oh, what are these plant experts doing that I’m not?” There’s a lot of curiosity there. Yes, there’s FOMO, which is fear of missing out.
What about a desire example?
“How a Pro YouTuber Actually Makes Thumbnails.” Just the word “actually” is really simple. You feel like you’re getting in on a secret. “How they actually do that.” It’s like, “Okay, I thought I knew how they make titles or how they make thumbnails, but here’s how they really do it.” It feels like you’re getting insider information or pulling back the curtain.
So you feel like you’re getting in on a secret. You’re also speaking to a desire. If you want to make better thumbnails, it’s like, “Oh, here’s how the pros do it.” There’s authority there as well, so you have desire, curiosity by revealing a secret, and you’re talking about authority. That has instant trust and credibility because this is how the pros do it.
When you’re 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. If you have a bad idea, it doesn’t matter how clever you are at wordsmithing good titles or how good of a graphic designer or thumbnail maker you are. If you have a bad idea, then you’re just wasting your time.
It always starts with the idea, and that’s the most important thing. From there, it’s like, “What angle do we want to attack this topic from?” That kind of depends on what we’ve done before. A lot of people say the secret to creating content is just saying the same thing 100 different ways.
There are some ideas or topics that just work well no matter what, so you just have to ride that wave while you can. The secret is just saying that a bunch of different ways.
For example, let’s say we’re a finance channel talking about picking stocks. You could say, “How to Pick Stocks as a Beginner.” Calling out beginners is a great way to get people to click because you’re calling out a specific audience.
If you’re a beginner and you see your name right there in the title, it’s like, “Oh shoot, this video is for me.” They’re the hungriest because they want to learn, and they’re the most insecure.
Right now, I’m learning how to play the piano on YouTube. I went through a channel teaching piano and watched all their videos on how to play the piano. After two hours, I realized I had only watched the videos with the word “beginner” in them. That’s because I was insecure about my piano playing skills.
I felt that all the other videos were too advanced for me. If you’re making your stocks video, you could say, “How to Pick Stocks for Beginners.” You could also talk about “The Best Stocks in November 2022.” Timeliness is another good one.
You could talk about regrets: “I Regret Picking These Stocks Last Year.” People love regrets. Those are just a couple of different ways of saying the same thing over and over again. I’m calling them click triggers. There are about 31 of them, and we’ve already talked about a lot of them: revealing a secret, opening a loop, regrets.
It’s just fear, desire, all that stuff. Those are moves you can make or pitches you have in your arsenal. If you’re a pitcher looking at Aaron Judge, you’re thinking, “How am I going to get him out?” First off, it’s not going to happen. But you’re thinking, “What am I going to throw him? The sinker, the slider, the fastball, the changeup?”
That’s how I look at these click triggers: “What’s the best way to get people to click and get excited about this topic?”
We had to use visual B-roll there so that people watching this know what sports are. Aaron Judge, pitcher—what does that mean?
I’m also thinking 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 about how he researches and chooses titles. Later, we dive into some theories that Jake is still collecting data about, so stick around. We’ll be right back.
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If you’re serious about this, I think it’s a must-read. More than 14,000 creators already subscribe, so if you’re not already subscribed, go to creatorscience.com and subscribe for free. I’ll talk to you on Sunday.
Welcome back to my conversation with Jake Thomas. Before the break, we were talking about his research process. 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 actually have an Evernote document from 2016 or 2015. That was my first obsession with titles and what gets people to click. I realized that when I was learning everything, I didn’t know anything. I was just starting to try to make it online. I noticed that the first five articles that caught my eye were all fear-based. I thought, “Is this just me? What’s going on here?”
Fear works very well on me. I hate that about our psychology. It’s such a bummer, but it’s true. The idea of titling all my videos to prey on people’s fears and insecurities is so antithetical to what I want to do, but I get it.
We have this little tension with our channel where we know that YouTube audiences love to talk about money. They love to hear about money and look at money. Historically, that’s never been what the show is about, but I get it. So we play the game a little bit, but I’m constantly fighting against how much I’m “YouTubing” this show and going too far.
Are you just going to try to find a balance there? Are you going to stick to your guns?
That’s a really good question, 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 aren’t the typical content that does well on YouTube.
Now it seems like there might be some tailwinds where YouTube is saying, “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 the hardest perspective.
Titling comes up sometimes because it feels like we should lean into the name recognition of the guest in the title. That’s probably our best angle. Conor does a really good job of finding some of these trends you’ve talked about. We’ve used “the secret” a couple of times in the title, but it’s hard because that video’s payoff is one part of the interview, and there’s all kinds of stuff that goes into the interview.
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. There’s that balance. I have a dog YouTube channel, a dog email list, and a dog blog. I’m also on Twitter and do some other stuff for clients. On Twitter, one of my best threads was “99% of People Suck at Writing YouTube Titles.” It’s just totally bashing fear and negativity.
Every time I do that, those types of titles just work well. I go back and forth. One way to make that ickiness dial down is to say, “You will regret not titling your YouTube videos like this.” That feels icky.
But if you say, “I regret titling my YouTube video like this,” it’s an experience thing. It’s not an attack; it’s like, “Yeah, this is my experience.”
If you want to use the effective emotion of fear but want to turn the ickiness dial down, share your own story. “This is my biggest mistake; I regret it.” If you want to use the effective emotion of fear but want to turn the ickiness dial down, share your own story or say, “I did this.”
For me, it depends on how my business is going. If I’m growing, I think, “All right, cool, I’m going to be a little less aggressive right now. I don’t need this thread to do super well; I just want to serve my audience.”
If I’m thinking, “Dang, the newsletter is not really growing right now; I really need to step up growth,” then I’ll think, “Okay, let me play this game, not on hard mode. Let me do what I know works,” even though I may feel not the best about it.
But still, I’m not being totally fear-mongering and clickbaity. I don’t know if that’s a good answer, but that’s how I think about it a little bit.
When you have competing ideas for a title, let’s say the idea itself is good, you feel good about it, and you’re looking at different types of titles that all play on curiosity and fear or curiosity and desire, how do you end up making a decision on which one to go with?
One thing I’ll do is search my title and see if it has done well in the past