YouTube Tips 15: What's in a Title?

It took us awhile to nail down any sort of system with the title, and it's a good system, but it also shows some vagueness within the system (which is why it is so accurate; YouTube is a chaotic place when it comes to which titles seem important).

So it started in a conversation on this video from GagaManMusic...

Saw this one again and made me think. To slowly increase the views, put "Flinstones Parody:" at the beginning of this title. =^)

Great job!

- cartoondisneypics

Then Andrei changed his title to "Flinstone parody" and left this comment to respond:

that's a good idea. Thanks :)

Thanks! Yeah, it worked for your Cow and Chicken (and I do stuff like that, such as our Zelda Parody). So you might want to add the "Barney's..." bit back as a subtitle like "FLINSTONES PARODY: Barney's..." or Flinstones parody - Barney's..." or something like that (I forgot what you had after "Barney's"

- TAE

I see what you mean - it was barney's invention

Ah yes. =^)

Cool. I think the idea is that the title (Flinstone Parody) makes people interested in that aspect. For example, our Zelda Parody. Then the subtitle might mention another name for a good keyword in searches like you have now. Or another example is our Zelda Parody: Link's a Moron. So "Link" is also a keyword in searches, and then "Link's a Moron" is interesting or controversial. Interesting to some, and then offensive to others, so they might click to watch it.

Oh, and then I see you also made the "P" in "parody" uppercase. This is also a good move. I did limited research, but I've seen VERY similar videos, and title casing (where the first letter of the word) seems to get better clicks than sentence casing (no caps on the first letters of the word). I'm still trying to decide with all caps. I think All Caps is good to lead with (or to put focus on a word later in a title) if the lead word or words aren't long.

Continuing title topic and using all caps... For example, "ZELDA PARODY: Link's a Moron" is probably good. Overall, I can't prove that this helps any with views (it might help a little, but not a huge amount), but it certainly does seem to catch the viewers attention more on the capitalized words, especially if not all the words are in caps. If all the words are in caps, then it doesn't seem to help any at all.

So here are our FOUR RULES TO TITLES:

1. Begin with the easiest sell to brand it.
EXAMPLE: Flinstones Parody
EXAMPLE: Kiera and Johnny! (this was a short series from LisaNova)

2. Use title case instead of sentence case.

3. Use caps to grab attention on specific words (either at the front or in the title somewhere).

4. Don't use all caps through the whole title, unless the all caps makes the title interesting, because it also makes the title slightly harder to read.

5. Use all lowercase when you have multiple words that are intriguing somehow.

6. Make sure your title is interesting or controversial. (Or includes a reference to something popular, which then becomes interesting or controversial.)

What is "interesting" or "controversial" is VERY subjective. In other words, you can argue about it all day and not make any progress. However, here are examples to paint the picture.