I guessed that you'd have some interesting input, and well, here we are! Great comment, thank you.

I respect your approach of:

"You get what you give so give it everything you got!"

And I operate similarly. It begs the question though, in a noisy world absolutely flooded with headlines... "Am I giving an eye-catching, attention-grabbing first impression with my headline, or am I phoning it in with a lazy one?" and "What am I really 'giving,' when I write?"

Definitely food for thought for me, thanks!

people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care...

Exactly, and in my experience, they're looking for that 'care' in how much effort and energy was put into the headline/thumbnail. That is people's first impression and they're deciding whether we 'care enough' or not based on that alone. If it seems like our headline/thumb has care in it, they stop and click, if not, they keep scrolling.

At least, that's my experience. :)

Yep, we're all learning, myself included, and I felt this was a worthy point to look at, one that may benefit others. Interestingly, not a single person has taken me up on the free offer on this post, so I wonder, how much do people actually want their content read?

Anyway, glad you enjoyed the post / comments, and thanks very much for contributing to the discussion. Wishing you a great day man! 🙏