How do I add a custom thumbnail to a YouTube video?
Welcome to this how-to edition of the #STMBlog, where we’ll be showing you how to take control of the custom thumbnails on your YouTube videos.
No need to thank us, we’re just doing our jobs! Simply think of us as a kind of video based team of superheroes. The AV-engers, or something similar.
If video content is central to your digital marketing, you can make it stand out and more relevant to your business with branded and consistent custom thumbnails.
Thumbnails can summarise the tone of your content very quickly and increase interaction on your videos. It’s the first thing users see about your video and can be the difference between clicking on your video and not. In fact, we’ve got a whole blog about it!
If you don’t know how to upload a video to YouTube and the rest of the text seems a little bit alien to you, fear not, we’ve got you covered. Read this other blog post on how to upload to YouTube and you’ll be all set.
Adding a custom thumbnail to a new video
Let’s start this by imagining the hypothetical scenario that you want to upload a new video to YouTube.
You go onto the YouTube homepage click the plus button up in the top right corner and press upload video.
Either dig around your computer files by clicking upload, or simply drag the file from the file explorer on your desktop.
As the video is uploading and it’s processing through YouTube, you’ll be able to see directly underneath the description box, there’s a little thumbnail area.
From here, you can click on upload thumbnail and select the thumbnail you’ve made from your file explorer.
From there, just follow the process you normally would (or have just learnt about in our other blog), save it in the bottom right hand corner and it’s good to go.
Adding/Changing a thumbnail on existing videos
Let’s move to hypothetical situation number two.
You’ve read the top section of this blog, thought to yourself “Oh that does sound important, I should probably add custom thumbnails to all of the YouTube videos that already exist on my channel, but I don’t know how”.
Again, fear not.
Go onto your YouTube channel and select the video you want, then go into details.
Hover over the thumbnail and a little button with 3 vertical dots should appear. Clicking on this means you can change or download the thumbnail.
YouTube will tend to try and use an automatically generated thumbnail by default, but you can tell them Stone’s Throw Media sent you when you change it to the far better custom thumbnail you’ve created.
Hopefully that’s answered your question of how to add your own custom thumbnail to your YouTube video.
If you’ve got any other questions about all things video, animation or live streaming let us know! Contact us here, give us a call on 01902 595100
While you’re here, why not check out these great resources?
How do I download a video from Vimeo?
What are the different video sizes for social media?
How much does a video case study cost?
Take a look at our work...
Found what you're looking for?
Get an instant Quote!