From Guy Kawasaki, Alltop:

Q: I post video for the Valdez Fish Derbies. When a large fish comes in, we often interview the angler standing next to a large fish. The thumbnail pictures are always a headshot of the angler. 

 

However, when you've got a video of a 363.9 pound halibut, you really want the thumbnail to be of the fish. Is there a way to get YouTube to recognize the fish for the thumbnail picture rather than the person?

 

The YouTube video I'm speaking of is below. Appreciate any suggestions you might have. 

 

 

-LP, Valdez Fish Derbies, Alaska

 

A: Holy kaw, that is a lot of sashimi. I think I understand your question: You'd like the thumbnail of the video to show the fish rather than the fisherman. As a first step, YouTube lets you pick from three thumbnails.

 

  • Go to the list of your videos and click on "Edit" next to the video you want to enhance.
  • Then select the thumbnail that is best for the video. (This video is from our family summer vacation in case you're wondering about the pink tutus. You probably don't have many pink tutus in Alaska, huh?)


Most of the time, one of these three choices will show the fish. If not, you could edit the video by removing some of the beginning showing the fisherman, upload it again, and pick a good

thumbnail.

 

And here are few more tips to optimize the enchantment power of your video:

 

  • Make it shorter. Approximately 20 percent of viewers stop after ten seconds and 44 percent by sixty seconds. Your video is over three minutes. So, see if you can shorten your video—doing so might make it even better. For example, you might cut the part where someone is asking George questions and only include the highlights of his answers.
  • Include a juicy description, tags and keywords. Ask yourself what someone interested in fishing, nature or Alaska might be looking for and reel them in—no pun intended. This will help people find your video in search results and “Related Videos.”
  • Pick the right category. You’ve selected Education for this video. I would make the case that Sports or Travel & Events are a better choice and are likely to cause more people to view it.
  • Add some annotations. After clicking on the Annotations tab, you can add explanatory text to the video. This is an easy and powerful way to add information to the video.
  • View other people’s fishing and travel videos and leave some insightful, useful and entertaining comments. The goal is to increase your visibility and credibility in order to attract more viewers.
Anyway, the hard part is catching the fish not the right video frame, and it’s sure clear that George took care of that!

Image credit: sandrablogrecipe