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Podcast Episode 321: Gary Lipovetsky
How to Get 1 Million Followers on YouTube


Today's Guest - Gary Lipovetsky, Manager, Valeria Inc

 

Gary's humble title of 'manager' belies the role he has running his wife's YouTube channel, Valeria - and the extraordinarily sophisticated systems and processes it takes to build a 1 million person YouTube channel.

I met Gary the first time through an introduction of a client while we were looking to establish best practices for video production and distribution.  Gary is a powerhouse of insight  and expertise and you may never look at a YouTube video again without reflecting upon what you hear about in today's podcast.

See below for more links to Gary's online profiles.

What You're Going to Learn

 

Why video is important for real estate developers raising money

How to take real estate syndication online using video

*  Why building relationships online matters 

*  How to be personable without being personal

*  YouTube thumbnails are important.  Here's why.

*  What are thumbnails and how to optimize them.

Quality not quantity matters on YouTube

*  Video production best practices for YouTube

Optimizing video on YouTube for SEO

And much, much more.

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Show Highlights

What Are Thumbnails and How to Optimize Them

Gary: The best practices that we use ... There are multiple things. Data analysis is one thing. We create thumbnails all the time, and we go through these thumbnails, and we look at CTR, which is the click-through rate, which is the percentage of people who see it versus the people who click on it - that comes out as a percentage. We find out which thumbnails index higher than others, and we study the elements of the higher CTR thumbnails, and we try to mimic those elements moving forward. So, it's an iteration process.

But even prior to doing that, before you have this library of content, and if you want to know where to start, a really good way to do it is, let's say, you're putting out a video about renovating a $50 million home, as an example. You want to put that out. You would then go to YouTube and look up high ... Whatever; you would look up a keyword saying, 'expensive property renovations,' or 'high net worth renovations,' or something along those lines.

Then you would find the videos, and you'd sort by the videos that perform the best. You take a look at their thumbnails, and it'll give you an idea, because you know that CTR will likely be higher, because that video performed really well in the platform; it got a lot of views.

You can't copy that thumbnail, because then you're just asking for trouble [inaudible] against YouTube policy, so you definitely can't do that, but you can definitely use it for inspiration and understand what it is that triggered the audiences to want to click on that thumbnail. That's definitely one way you should do it.

The other way that we do it internally - it's like a very old-fashioned thing - is I literally put 10 people in a room to discuss thumbnails - everybody with a difference of opinion. I like to put in people who- one of two things, or both: they're either the target demographic of who I'm trying to get into this piece of content, or they work with the target demographic, and they understand what the hot buttons are, what the mentality is of that person who we're trying to get to consume that content. Those are the people that I want to speak with.

At this point, I literally put 10 of them in a room, and we discuss it. We say, "Okay, this is what the video is about. It's about ..." The example that you gave about that last video of me and my wife, who- at this point, you mentioned it was at 14,000 views, and since we started talking, it's now at 17,000 [cross talk]

Adam: That's incredible.

Gary: Yeah. I'm always looking at numbers. I'm like a numbers fanatic when it comes to this stuff, as well as the qualitative side of it. In that particular video, for example, I literally sat down with ... That was a smaller group. That was like four or five people. But these are people who are part of the target demographic, because I can see the demographic information of the people who view our content. This is my wife's channel. It's her personal brand channel. So, we see who it is. Then I bring those people into a room, and I bring those target demos- people into the room [cross talk]

Adam: These are people that you know, or this is people on your team, or [cross talk]

Gary: -on our team. These are people not only on our team, but these are people who I always work with them, and I'm always ... I have a relationship with them, and I've trained them to be always honest with me. I remove my ego from it. If I think there's a good thumbnail concept, they all know that they can say, "Gary, it's not a good concept." So, you have to remove your ego from it, when it comes to creative decisions like this. That thumbnail, it was presented to us. I had the people come up with some ideas, and they brainstormed some ideas, and we discussed it, and we came up with what we thought was the best thumbnail [cross talk]

Adam: You do that for every video?

Gary: Yeah.

Adam: Really? Then, do you [cross talk]

Gary: -sorry, Adam; not only do we do that for every video, but once we launch a video, and we see that the click-through rate is low, we'll actually go back in a week, recreate the thumbnail based on what we think will work, and then we'll replace it. We won't repost the video, but you can promote the video on the community tab on YouTube. So, we'll drive some more traffic to it, and then we'll see if it made a change. So, we constantly iterate.

Now, there's also some tools that you can use to actually load up multiple thumbnail variations in the beginning. You can load up two or three, and then you can run it for a week, and then you'll actually see what's the winning thumbnail, and there are-.

Adam: Really?

Gary: Yeah.

Adam: You can do that on YouTube?

Gary: Yeah, you can do that. You can do that through third-party applications that are approved by YouTube.

Quality Not Quantity Matters on YouTube

Adam: What about the optimal number of posts that you should be uploading each week? How would you relate to that?

Gary: Let me address that. There's no number. The number is not relevant. What's relevant is the quality of the content. It's not a matter of how much you post. I think you should post as much as possible, but you shouldn't post content for the sake of saying, "Hey, I posted three videos this week, or two, or five or ten." You should post good content. You should make as much good content as you can.

Once you do that, post as much as possible, because producing content at scale is what's important. That's where you're going to win. As an example, for Valeria's channel, we post three videos a week. We have a client who we're developing their personal brand ...

Since you and I met, we've been hired; we've been retained by an entrepreneur who wants to build his personal brand. We're putting three videos a week for him up. I like to start with three videos a week, but you know what? They've got to be good. You can even go to seven videos a week; you can literally post every single day, but it's got to be good.

Video Production Best Practices for YouTube

Adam: What are the basic ways of producing video, and again, what are best practices for doing that?

Gary: I think one of the best investments developers can make - anybody, for that matter, can make - is reallocating marketing budget to human resources and, specifically, to a videographer, and an editor. Among the two of them, somebody should- somebody there. These are just two people. If you have more of a budget, you can go to three people- and a graphic designer.

If you can get those three functions: the videography, the graphic design, and the editing, the video editing, those are really the three skill sets you need. I would try to find an individual for each of them. The graphic design, from a time-consumption perspective, a lot of the times the video editors will have graphic design knowledge, so you could use them. I would definitely hire full-time people and produce this content.

Adam: The editing, and the graphic design, that could be something that is done remotely, actually. But as far as the videography is concerned, that's somebody that has to be there with you in person. So, what ...?

Gary: I would-

Adam: What's their job description, actually?

Gary: For example, the entrepreneur who's hired us to do- really, we manage the whole thing, end-to-end. Our full-time employee is with him pretty much at all times. It's odd hours. This particular entrepreneur, he likes to wake up at 3:30 in the morning and go to the gym. That's how he starts his day.

When it's time for us to, for example, film a 'day in the life of,' and it starts at 3:30 a.m., the videographer's at his house at 3:30 a.m., and that day may have been a long day, because then he would have gone til 10:00 p.m. at night because he had some dinner meetings and then everything in between. That's a particularly long day. Then we would balance that off, and maybe the next day giving the guy a day off or giving him the afternoon off.

Adam: I see.

Gary: Videographers, in general, it's very odd hours and you just plan it ahead of time. But as far as the job description is concerned, it's things like ... Personally, you have to know who to hire; you have to hire the right person, and then, you have to manage that person. You have to form a bond with that person. That person is going to be involved in your life. They're going to be around quite a bit. Certain skills they have to have. You've got to see their work, and you've got to ... You're rolling the dice. Like any other hire, you're rolling the dice to a certain degree.

Adam: Are they filming everything, Gary, that you're doing ...?

Gary: No, they're not filming everything. We're selective. We're selective about what we film. A lot of the times when it comes to business content, like this person that's retained us to promote his personal brand- to create his personal brand, a lot of the times he'll say, "Hey, turn off the camera and go." It's in a meeting; it's proprietary; it's private; you can't be in this meeting. It's not a reality show.

A lot of the times it's monologues. A lot of the times it's [inaudible] stay professional. We'll talk about something. So, even the same way that I'm sitting in from my computer now, speaking with you, there could be a camera, and I could be talking. There could be potentially multiple cameras set up, maybe two cameras on me to get me from different angles. You do what's called pattern interrupters, where you kind of switch from camera to camera [cross talk]

Adam: That's the click that you did with that edit in that vid. It's really good [cross talk]

Gary: -it's just good for attention. It keeps the audience more engaged in the video. Then there's B-roll integration. There's a lot of different things. You develop your own kind of cinematic style over time, and you have to really communicate with that videographer.

Adam: What about if you don't have a videographer or a budget to hire a videographer? What would you recommend somebody to get going?

Gary: You can literally take this phone, put it on video mode, and you can flip it sideways. That gives you actually like a proper horizontal format for YouTube video. Sound is great. You know what? I do it all the time. I do it all the time, and I actually send my clips off to our team here for Valeria's channel, and they integrate it into our vlogs.

There's also some scripting. There's also scripting involved. There's planning. It's like any other business. You just have to start. You have to start iterating.

Optimizing Video on YouTube for SEO

Adam: Now you've got your videos, and you've done the thumbnail, and you've got a good title, and you've uploaded it to YouTube. There it is, sitting there. So, how do you now optimize the video for SEO? Actually, what does that mean? I know what it means, but I don't know what you know.

Gary: Of course, SEO is search engine optimization. You want to make sure that the video is optimized. If you're making a video about flowers over here, right? I'm just looking at whatever I see on my screen ... If you're doing a video about flowers, you want to make sure that people who are looking for content related to flowers, that there's a high likelihood of them finding your content.

That's from really standard practices. That's not super-difficult. You literally just Google it. You can just Google how to do SEO. It's just tagging, and keywords, and the description. It's talking in the video, because YouTube actually transcribes everything, so YouTube will listen for it. They'll actually create a text version of it, which will be searched. It's pretty standardized. You just have to Google it, or again, if you're using a marketing firm, then the marketing firm should be able to do it.

Adam: I see. There is an art to optimizing the post, itself, that goes on YouTube.

Gary: I wouldn't call it as much of an art as I would call it best practices. I just think of it as best practices. At the end of the day, from what I'm seeing- because, at this point, we've made probably. between the channels that I'm involved in ... I'm involved in three channels right now, and of the channels that I'm involved in, if I had to guess, I think we're probably at about maybe 2,000 videos. So, I've put out 2,000 videos in the last two years.

I can tell you that there are certain things that I believe that trigger the algorithm to give you distribution. The foundation- the absolute foundation of it is good content. You can do all the SEO in the world. You can optimize your thumbnails. You can do all of this, but if your content is crap, you're not going to get viewed, because the algorithm won't determine that this is going to provide the best user experience [inaudible] on YouTube. If they don't feel that there's a good user experience, then they're not going to promote your video.

Gary: You have to have good content. You have to work on ... What I tell people who come to me and say, "I want I want to grow my channel faster. I want to grow my personal brand faster. I want to grow everything faster ..." I always tell them that the first optimization that you need to do is this ... This. You need to optimize the human being who sits in front of the camera, because if you're talking like this, and you're all nervous [cross talk] If you don't have that ability to build rapport ... I mean, the people you're talking about, they have the ability to solicit and ask for hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars from investors, so they're obviously not shy [cross talk]

Adam: Right.

Gary: -I'll tell you ... To give you an example, the gentleman who we're building his personal brand for, he has a 400-person company. He does tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue. Great margins. Wealthy guy, young guy. Very proud of him. We've become good friends. We were friends before. The first video that we did, I got the raw footage. I looked at it, and I called him, and I said to him, "Let me ask you something. Somebody who built a 400-person company and who does tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue ... Don't you think that person has to have a certain kind of charisma and a certain ability to communicate to be able to accomplish that?" He goes, "Yeah." I said, "Well, unless you put that person in front of the camera, then I don't want to take anymore videos with you."

Adam: Right.

Gary: Right? Stop hiding behind like who you think you should be in these videos and be who you are, because who you are is the person who accomplished this. That's the person I want to see. Authenticity and the ability to deliver the message, and to deliver your personality, engage the audience - that's the most important.

All this SEO stuff, that's all great. We can talk about that all day long. Cool. I mean, it's very textbook; it's very dry. This ... Work on this; work on being able to communicate with people. If you want to be in better shape, because you'll feel more confident when you're in front of the camera and you're delivering your message, then go to the gym. Get a personal trainer. Invest in that, too. Eat right. Get yourself healthy, so that when you're looking at your own footage, you feel good about it. You're not self-conscious, because that self-consciousness, it will come across in your channel.

Why Video is Important for Real Estate Developers

Adam: What is this about content that is important? Then, why particularly video?

Gary: The old way of selling, the traditional way of selling, where you're saying, "Hey, here's this ... Here's my awesome product. Look at this awesome product!" I'll give you some context as to what this is. It just happened to be on my desk, and it was only the object that I just reached out to.

This is a hand exerciser. I broke my hand back in February, and the doctor told me to buy one of these. Now, if you want to sell this product, you can go, and you can take a picture of it. You can put it somewhere, or you can show somebody in a commercial, saying, "Hey, this is a great product. This is great. You'll have strong hands if you use this. Here's why it's a great product ..." Those days are on the decline. They're dwindling.

What's really important is to create context and to create a story around this product. Rather than selling this product directly, what's the most effective thing that you can do is to create a story. Once you've created that story, and you've built an affinity from an audience who want to watch your story, who want to consume your story, who want to consume your content, that's when you integrate this piece in.

As an example- and again, this is just random. I just picked this up off my desk, but I know the story behind it ... The story of this piece, in particular, is I was involved in a car accident, and I was involved in a pretty bad car accident that resulted in me breaking my hand. I went through some physiotherapy and just different kinds of therapy. The doctor told me I have to get this to strengthen the muscles around the fracture.

Now, the story of the car accident, which, you know, leading up to that is ... There's a bunch of things that happened in the months previous - in my career, in my life, with my family, and whatnot. This is the kind of context you need to create.

Then I was driving home one night, and it was raining, and somebody ran a red light in front of me, and I got into this accident, and then I went through this therapy. As I was going to this therapy, I was told that it's really important to strengthen the muscles around the hand. Therefore, I found this product online, and now, as a storyteller, I can endorse this product. I can say this is the correct product to use, because this is the product that actually makes my hand feel better.

You're providing context; you're providing entertainment. The most important thing is you're providing value. You're providing value with your content that people want to consume. You're giving it away for free. Then you become an authority in that particular field or in that space. Once you become an authority, then you won't have to ask people for their business. You won't have to tell people, "Hey, come and buy my product, or my service." Those people will automatically know that, number one, you're establishing a brand and trust, and, number two, that you're an authority in your space; you're a thought leader in your space. So, they'll gravitate towards you.

Perfect example, you and I have a mutual acquaintance, mutual friend. That mutual friend said to you, "Hey, you know what? We should speak with Gary, because Gary understands marketing; he understands digital marketing." Why did he say that? Because I've established myself as a thought leader, because I work in partnership with my wife to create this channel, and we've achieved this big audience, this huge audience that we have, and we have so many views. I've become an authority in that space, so, our friend, he right away said, "Okay, you need to speak with Gary when it comes to marketing."

To tie it back in with the real estate professionals that you're talking with, the people who want to raise money, they need to become an authority in their space, but they need to tell their personal story. The human connection needs to be made. Once that human connection is made, and these real estate professionals become part of a potential investor's almost like a daily routine of the content they consume, because it's interesting ...

Even if it's outside of the context of that particular field, once you start introducing their knowledge of that particular investment, if you will, that's when you start seeing good conversion. That's why it's important. It's really important that [inaudible] professionals now do take the time and start producing content that scale. It's not enough to put out a YouTube video or an Instagram post every now and then. It's really got to be consistent.

How to Take Real Estate Syndication Online Using Video

Adam: How does somebody who has never even considered creating a video and talking about themselves in that personal way for the world to see, how do they make the step up from in-person meetings to recording a video, like we're recording, and then putting it up online? What is the mindset switch, do you think, that has to be thrown to make that work?

Gary: A couple of things. First of all, you talked about Valeria being a pretty girl, and therefore, it's more of a natural fit to be on the internet and make videos. That's not true at all. There are so many different genres of content; there's so many different types of content. It doesn't really matter who the person is who's presenting. You're presenting your knowledge and your experience, so it doesn't really matter.

In terms of making that transition, I think the real estate professional needs to, first of all, get over their fear of what people think of them. I think that's step one ... Well, no, step one is understanding that there's a massive, massive opportunity here. There's a huge opportunity to have an unlimited amount of investors for the rest of your career and never having to solicit anyone again.

Once you believe that, once you understand, and when you see and you acknowledge the fact that the internet exists at scale now, and that you're not going to ...The traditional way of networking, where it's by word of mouth, and you make one deal with one person and fight really hard to network to get that one person and that one person hopefully tells three other people, and then you network really hard to go after them ... That's really such an inefficient way to gain your investor base.

The more efficient way to do it is to produce content at scale and to release that content onto the world; then, having these platforms with algorithms that will match up what you have to say to the people who are interested in what you have to say. Once that's done, then it's a matter of building that relationship with that audience and building the scale of that audience.

Why Building Relationships Online Matters

Adam: What developers are looking to do is to raise tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars from individual investors. So, the way that you communicate, in order to build a relationship, in order to promote a product that is a $20, $50 product is going to be different, isn't it, question mark, than ultimately saying, "Hey, Gary, will you invest $100,000 in my deal?" How is that relationship going to be different [cross talk].

Gary: It's not different. It's just the scale is a little bit different. But listen, you're qualified people, right? You're getting in front of people who are potentially able to make a $50,000 or a $100,000 investment. Let's say, like myself, for example, I invest in real estate. I invest in the stock market. I do that at a relatively - for me - high level- high frequency. I do it all the time, and I have an understanding of what I'm looking for, in terms of the return that I want. I have an understanding of my risk tolerance on certain deals. I'm in different kinds of deals. For me, I'm a good example of somebody who would invest $50,000, $100,000, sometimes more.

For me, if I've been consuming someone's content on somewhat of a regular basis and that person is branded to me - and I've never met them - but I watch their YouTube videos, or I watch any of their content - Instagram, or Facebook, or wherever it may be - and I've developed almost a personal relationship, or I'm following their lives; I'm following their professional advice; I'm following their personal advice. It's character development, and I know who they are now.

For me, I would far more likely make an investment into that person - this authority, this person who is branded to me, who I'm invested in emotionally. I'm far more likely to make an investment with this person, than I am making an investment with somebody who solicits me, and says, "Hey, Gary, invest $100,000 with me. I'm going to get you these amazing returns, and your money is safe, and what not." Even if that person was referred to me by a good friend, I would be less likely to convert on that investment than I would be if I'd been already consuming this person's content for three years- sorry, for three months, six months, a year. It's very different.

At the end of the day, a sale is a sale in the new media age, meaning you tell a story, you build trust, you establish yourself as a thought leader in any given space, and then you convert onto whatever your action is - your target action. I don't see $100,000 investment any different than me purchasing a $10 item. It may take a little longer for me to consume that person's content for me to believe that they're trustworthy, than I would need to somebody who recommends this product, because my risk is somewhat higher on a $100,000 investment than spending $10 on an exercise product. But the process is the same.

You know what? That trust, it really does need to be established, because, even with me, people come to me ... I'm not even on social media. I have a little bit of a presence, but my wife is really the one. I appear in her content sometimes, but because people see that, they put two and two together. They understand that my wife and I are business partners and that we run this business together. I've already proved out that I'm able to do this.

It's the same thing. If you've got a developer, who ... Let's say, as an example, that developer does a vlog of a tour of a construction site. Prior to going on that construction site, they talk about how they acquired the property. They talk about the deal itself, and they talk about kind of the drama behind the deal. They expose that, whenever they're allowed to. Obviously, they don't want to break any kind of NDAs, or whatnot, but they talk about this deal. It's interesting. It's intriguing. There's a human drama element to it.

Then, they tour the space, itself; they tour this beautiful building that they're developing. They go up, and they see the skyline from the view, and they talk about the building, and they talk about all the different amenities that it'll have. They'll talk about all the hardships of building and maybe getting the permits, whatever - all of the things that are involved in the building of a project like this. For myself, I'm not even in that industry, but I may find that interesting.

If that piece of content was engineered correctly ... By engineered, I mean that - on YouTube, for example - the thumbnail and the title are really cool ... "I'm building a $100 million or $500 million building, and here's what I wish I would have known prior to starting ..." Then you have a thumbnail with a skyscraper and a guy standing like this in front of it ... There's some intrigue created; there's interest. Then I click through, and I consume that content.

If I watch enough of those videos, if that's a series by a professional developer, and then I either am in the market for an investment ... I really want to invest in real estate, because I want to diversify my portfolio, or I get solicited by somebody from that person's team, I am far, far more likely to convert in either of those two scenarios than I would be if I had never heard of this person at all.

How to Be Personable Without Being Personal

Adam: The video that I watched before we went on this podcast was about your personal relationship with your wife; about your marriage. That is very, very intimate, personal conversation. So, for a real estate developer, what do you think is ... You've actually described some really good content ideas for a real estate developer to talk about the product, to about the project, and the history behind the project, how he came to the project, the struggles that he had with it, et cetera. To what extent is the personal side of the individual, do you think - particularly in my field - important to creating the relationship with prospects and with investors that doesn't necessarily directly relate to a deal?

Gary: Look, I think, first of all, we control it. Your statement that the video that my wife and I made, where it's about our relationship, it's very personal; it's very intimate. It's as personal, and as intimate as we want it to be. Not only are we creating the content, but we have the ability to edit the content, and we have the right to not even show certain things if we don't like them. That control is already a big factor.

Then it comes down to personal choice ... For example, our children are in the content. That's a choice that we made, because we're actually building their personal brands, as well, because I strongly believe that the future of all media lies in - the human being - lies in that personal brand. So, I'm going to be giving them this asset, and then they can choose to continue with it or not.

As far as the developers are concerned, if I had to guess, I would guess developers are very serious people. They deal with tens of millions, hundreds of millions, billions of dollars. They want to stay credible. So, it really is about finding your own balance. As a real estate developer, you can make the decision to say, "I'm not including my family - my wife and my children - in this." You can make that decision, or if you feel that there's value to them, you could include them. That's really up to you. So, you do have the ability to decide.

Your question is: do you have to? You don't have to, because if you feel you can create enough of a human connection without doing that, then, by all means, do that. [inaudible] to come up with content ideas, so you can get as personal as you want. It could be more of like a trade channel, where you get into, really, the mechanics of the deal and the builds.

I'll give you a perfect example. There are a lot of renovation channels out there, where, let's say, it's a married couple, or not even a married couple, just two people. They're renovating a home, and they disagree about certain things, so they're constantly having debates about whether this color of brick should be red, or it should be brown, or whatever it may be. It creates intrigue. If there's a banter, it creates engagement. People are interested. So, just that video that you saw with me, and my wife, it's like we have our banter. That's real. That's just us. That's actually how we communicate with each other [cross talk]

With real estate professionals, let's say, for example, there's a developer who's got two partners. Those two partners, they're very different. They're just very different in terms of their personalities. One is more animated and more of the qualitative guy. The other is more of the quantitative guy. He's more of a numbers cruncher. You can make content about how they look at deals differently, and then the debates that they have. That's not personal at all. It's varying opinions. As much as this is a business thing, it's also an art, as well. You have to create that hook that people want to engage with.

Back to your question: do you have to get personal? You don't have to get personal. I wouldn't even say that it's a good practice. You may want to, or you may not want to. It's really up to you. It's really about creating as much content as possible and seeing what sticks.

The really good thing about these platforms, and YouTube, in particular, is you can see on a per-video basis- you can look into it, and you can see what's the click-through rate on these thumbnails as opposed to the other ones that you've made. You can see what the retention numbers are on the video. As an example, you can see what percentage of the videos they consume.

If you do one video, and it's 10-minutes long, and you have a 20-percent retention rate, that means, of all the- 20 percent of the people watched the entire video; whereas maybe the next video you make on a different topic will have a 60-percent retention rate, so you know people are more interested in that. Then you fine tune and iterate.

Your question is do they have to get personal? They don't have to get personal. They have to try different things that they believe the audiences will be interested in, to form a connection, and to position them as a thought leader, and as someone reputable in the industry. If one thing doesn't work, move on to the next, and you just keep iterating as you go.

YouTube Thumbnails Are Important. Here's Why.

Adam: You've mentioned thumbnails and titles a few times. Actually, what are thumbnails ... For the one guy that doesn't know what those are in my audience, what are the thumbnails, and how important are they, and how important are the titles to getting somebody to watch a video?

Gary: Thumbnails are the images that you see on YouTube. So, if you're on your mobile app ... I've got my phone here. Let's say you are on YouTube, and you're scrolling through YouTube. This image, that's the thumbnail. The title is the title right there beneath it.

People typically, visually, when they scroll through, they'll see a thumbnail. They'll read the title, and they'll make a decision if they want to click through and watch this content. That's what a thumbnail is. When you ask how important it is, it's very important. It's actually one of the most crucial things you'll find on the YouTube platform, in terms of what factors into the performance of the video.

What happens is you can literally have the best piece of content on the planet. You can have a 10-minute video that is just an epic, amazing piece of content that every human being will want to watch, and-

Adam: How to find the lottery numbers would certainly be-

Gary: Sure, yeah. How to guess the lottery and win $300 million. So, if you have that video, but your thumbnail, and your title - which I just kind of, internally, for myself, call it the entry point, because it's how a person- it's how a viewer on YouTube will enter into a piece of content, into a video.

That entry point, again, which is a combination of the thumbnail and the [inaudible] ... If that is not enticing, if that does not create excitement to want to click on it, you can have an epic video; you can have an epic piece of content that's just incredible - best piece of content in the world - but if no one is going to click on that thumbnail, then they'll never see that piece of content.

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