Key Strategies: 1/ Challenge Assumptions If everyone assumes something is true, when you write a title that challenges those assumptions you’ll stop them in their tracks. “STOP Chasing Money -- Chase WEALTH. | How To get RICH” 2/ Ride The Wave Trending Topic + Your Content = Great Video Here’s a video about Halloween Candy published a week before Halloween: “20 Halloween Candies You Should Never Eat” 3/ Move Away From Pain Yeah, videos about benefits and goals can do well, but videos about fear can really blow up. Notice this title is about *escaping the rat race* rather than living his dream life. “This Biblical Principle Helped Me Escape the Rat Race” 4/ Open a Loop Opening a loop is telling half a story with your title that makes the audience need to click to finish the tale. Here’s an example: “Why THIS Was One Of The Most Terrifying Scenes In Film History” 5/ Personal Accomplishment If you’ve accomplished something impressive — share it with your audience. They probably want to accomplish the same thing and your story can be both inspiring and educational. “How I Changed My Body A Lot In 6 Months (what I did differently)” 6/ Refute An Objection If you’re trying to teach something, your audience will inevitably have objections. But if you refute those objections right in the title then they’ve got no excuse to not watch your video. “How to Grow Booty Faster! (WITHOUT STRENGTH EXERCISES)” 7/ Authority If you don’t have an inspiring personal accomplishment, this trick is your best friend. Just tell someone else’s story or reveal how they accomplish the goals your audience is trying to reach. “How U.S. Military Linguists Learn Languages Fast” 8/ Expose The Truth “The Truth About…” is one of the easiest title frameworks you can use. It opens a loop and builds lots of curiosity, plus you can easily mix in fear for more spiciness, like this title did: “the UGLY truth about entrepreneurship most people don’t see…” 9/ Hit the extremes An average topic makes for an average video. But if you can make a video about something extreme, it makes for an interesting story. “INSIDE the SMALLEST Apartment in NEW YORK CITY” 10/ Make It Weird Weirdness builds curiosity, and curiosity is the #1 factor to get more views. Make a video about something weird and watch the views roll in. “How Zack Greinke Became the Weirdest Player in Sports” A/B Testing Insights: 1/ “How To” vs. List In 3 tests of “how to” vs. list titles, list titles had a higher CTR in all 3. Ex: “How To Make YOUR Videos Look CINEMATIC” (1.90% CTR) “5 Tips To Make YOUR videos Cinematic” (2.51% CTR) 2/ Labels Instead of talking about specific subjects, giving subjects a broad label often (but not always) helped increase the CTR. Ex: “What Happened to Shabazz Muhammad?” (4.52%) “The Most Overhyped NBA Prospect” (5.68%) 3/ Short Titles The average character length in titles that lost the A/B test (had a lower CTR) was 48.26 The average character length in titles that won the A/B test (had a higher CTR) was 44.82 Obviously not a big difference, but interesting to note. 4/ Question vs. Statement Statements did better than questions in 4 out of 5 tests. They didn’t win by a lot though — an average of 8%. Ex: “Is This Brooklyn's Best KEPT FOOD SECRET?🤐” (6.25% CTR) “Brooklyn's Best KEPT FOOD SECRET (6.8% CTR) 5/ “Habit” I’ve seen the word “habit” do well on YouTube often, and it won in two A/B tests here. Definitely something worth exploring more. Ex: “THIS Is Killing Your Golf Swing” (4.66% CTR) “THIS Habit Is Killing Your Golf Swing” (5.13% CTR) 7/ “Change __ Forever” The phrase “Change __ Forever” actually worked 3 different times in titles here. Ex: “It's The KEY To Awesome Photos” (3.69% CTR) “This Will Change The Way You Take Photos Forever” (4.04% CTR) 8/ “Do THIS” The phrase “Do THIS” builds curiosity by opening a loop. Adding it to titles worked several times in this project to increase the CTR. Ex: “The Secret To Great Portrait Photography” (4.87% CTR) “The Best Portrait Photographers All Do THIS” (5.32% CTR) 9/ Negativity You might not like it, but making your titles more negative might be one of the easiest ways to increase your CTR. Ex: “How Billionaire Jeff Bezos Spends All His Money” (2.30% CTR) “Dumb Things Jeff Bezos Wastes His Billions On” (3.13% CTR) This has gotta be the easiest way to spice up your title: 10 / Adding the video length. It makes the video feel more tangible and less intimidating/easier to commit to. Ex: "20 Thru Hiking Tips in 6 Minutes for Your FIRST Thru Hike" "Genius YouTube Advice for 15 Minutes Straight"