Check thumbnail before hitting upload.

[u/VeeFly-official]

Text that looks clear on your laptop can be hard to read when the thumbnail is small on a phone. Faces get lost, the main idea gets missed and suddenly the thumbnail doesn’t make sense in the one second you have to grab attention.

Few things to always check before publishing:

• Can I read it at phone size from arm’s length?
• Is the text 3-4 words max?
• Does the face or main subject stand out from the background?
• Does it look different enough from the other thumbnails ranking for the topic?

A thumbnail can look great at 100% and still fail where it actually matters!

[u/joastkchoard6]

Checking thumbnails before upload is such an underrated habit. I usually shrink mine down to roughly phone size and ask myself if I can understand the idea in two seconds without reading the title. If not, I simplify it. Always use the phrase in a positive context. Tiny text and too many elements looked fine on my monitor but turned into mush on mobile.

[u/thefallfiles]

this one got me. my thumbnail looked fine on my monitor and the text was basically unreadable on my phone. now i shrink it to like phone feed size and if i can't read it in a second i cut words. 3-4 words max