A video lives two lives. In the feed it plays. On your profile, in search results and in lists of suggestions it is a still image — the cover — and for anyone deciding whether to watch, that still is the video. Most people never choose it; the app picks one for them.
What makes a cover work
- A face or a clear subject, large and in focus. A blurred, mid-movement frame tells nobody anything.
- Few words, big. If you add text, make it three or four words that name the video, not a sentence.
- Contrast with the grid around it. A cover that looks like its neighbours disappears.
- A promise the video keeps. A cover that misleads wins a view and loses a viewer.
Keep it inside the safe middle
Profile grids crop covers, and the shape of the crop has changed more than once. A vertical video can be shown as a rectangle, a square or a tall crop depending on where it appears. Keep the important part — the face, the words — in the middle of the frame and away from the edges, so it survives whichever crop is used.
A trick that works everywhere
Make the first frame of the video the cover. Edit a still — the subject, the title — into the first fraction of a second, so that whichever frame a network chooses by default, it is a good one. It costs nothing, and it does not depend on a setting that one tool offers and another does not.
Check it small
Look at the cover at the size of a thumbnail on your phone, from arm’s length. If you cannot tell what the video is about at a glance, change it.
A cover is a headline. If you would not write that headline, do not use that frame.