- How long should your YouTube videos be?
Is that the right question to ask?
Is it just a formula of how long should it be
and just do everything you can
to make it eight minutes or 20 minutes?
(gentle music)
It's not about how long your YouTube videos should be.
It's about how much can you retain people
to keep watching them?
YouTube values watch time and retention.
So some of the biggest analytics you wanna be looking at
is yes, of course you wanna grow those subscribers,
but you also wanna see how long
are people actually watching of your content?
'Cause you can have a 10-minute video
and have people watch 90% of it,
which YouTube sees as a great video with authority,
that it's keeping people on their platform.
YouTube is going to reward creators
who keep people on their platform.
So if you have longish or long enough videos
that are keeping people retained,
and people are watching lots of your content,
those videos are gonna get boosted up in the rankings,
and they're gonna put more people in front of your content.
But if you have short videos,
and if people aren't watching as much of them,
even if you have long videos
and people aren't watching very much of them,
YouTube is gonna go (groans) don't like them,
put them on the back burner.
So while I can say videos between eight
to 20 minutes are optimal, it's also about how long
can you keep people watching throughout the whole thing.
So we explored all of the ways
that we can make our videos long,
while keeping people engaged and loving our videos.
The first one is open up your videos with a dramatic hook
or something that really catches their attention
right from the beginning.
You know when you watch, maybe, a soap opera,
and the first scene is this high point of drama
that leaves you guessing and wanting more,
and then even throughout the whole show,
there's always this drama and this open loop,
a cliffhanger before every commercial break
that has you going oh, my God, I have to see what Luke
and Laura did, and what Sunny did, and oh, my God.
I haven't watched soap operas in a while.
I hope those names are still current.
So it leaves you wanting more and thinking what happens next
that you can't take your eyes off this.
(romantic music)
- [Camera Woman] Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry.
(romantic music)
- Are they still watching?
That was dramatic enough right?
That was like a soap opera?
Are you guys still watching?
Hello.
(man laughs)
Another creator who is so good at this is Casey Neistat.
I find myself wanting to watch his videos,
and I just wanna come for what the thumbnail had
or what the title of the video was,
so that I could just see that part.
But next thing you know,
I'm 25 minutes down the rabbit hole,
and all of his content was so good and kept me wanting more.
- From, probably riding in the bike lane.
- Another way is to tease something
that's gonna show up later in the video,
so they know they have to stay
and watch 'til we get to that point
to be able to see and get the payoff of what happened.
You can start the video by saying, "In this video,
"I'm gonna be sharing with you,"
or "I'm gonna show you the behind the scenes,"
or "I'm gonna show you what really happened,"
or even give a little glimpse of what that looked like,
and then cut it, and in your editing go
into a different piece of content while it still leads up
to what's showing up later in the video.
Kinda like how when you're watching TV,
and in the commercials, it shows a preview
of what's coming up in the next episode,
which makes you think, I have to tune in.
I have to watch that episode,
so that I can be relieved when I find out what happened,
what they teased, and what they opened a loop for.
I have to watch the full thing to be able to see.
A common way of keeping people engaged
throughout the whole video is with your editing,
and we do these things called pattern interrupts.
You can also call them attention resets.
And you might notice, and even if you go back
to all of my videos, you'll see how we put this into play,
and it's something that's so subtle
but at the same time, makes a huge difference.
Imagine if you were watching an episode of "Friends,"
and we just had one camera
in the corner of Monica's apartment,
and all you saw was this just bird's-eye view
of the whole conversations and everything happening,
but when you actually watch the show,
you see a closeup of Joey and Chandler,
and then you see a wide view of Joey
and Chandler and Monica sitting at the table,
and then it zooms in and the music heightens
as there's this high point of drama,
and it brings the viewers along a journey.
And because of that, they're more engaged
with what they're watching because the music,
the background, the changes in the patterns,
that's why we call them pattern interrupts,
are keeping them so engaged
with what is happening that they don't want to miss a beat.
Another thing you might notice creators doing is time lapses
and this is another thing that you can do
in Movie Magic and editing
and making things look really cinematic.
And think of even movies, when you see a transition
between scenes, sometimes they have this time lapse.
Casey Neistat is the king of these time lapses,
that he'll show the scenery of New York,
or he'll show him on his run.
You'll see makeup YouTubers, that they do their makeup,
and they put it on time lapse,
or people when they're cooking.
So you don't have to stay and watch the boring stuff
of mixing the eggs or putting on the powder.
Sometimes you can watch through all of that,
especially if there is good commentary,
but if you wanna speed up and go through a time lapse,
which also brings people through the journey
and being able to see each step but in fast motion,
so that we don't lose them, and they're not snoozing
while they're watching your content.
These are all just suggestions, great suggestions,
that we've seen so many YouTube creators do,
but one thing that you wanna do is test.
See what your audience likes,
because my audience may be quite different
from your audience,
and the best way to know is, first of all, by asking them.
If they have a comment about their video,
you can say, "Comment below and let me know
"what you thought of this video,"
or if you even have a very warm audience
that you can specifically ask, "Hey, was there any point
"in my video that you didn't like?"
The other thing is that you should always look
at your YouTube analytics.
You can actually see in every individual video,
the watch time, and you can see,
as it starts with a high engagement
in watch time at the beginning,
and then as it slowly decreases,
and you can see if there is a specific point
where people drop off,
and that's where I want you to learn from experience
by seeing what people are and how they're reacting to it.
Is there a specific part where a whole bunch of people,
it just has a hockey stick, dead, stop?
Or is it something that gradually slows down?
And this is where we wanna look and see,
did I say something at that point
that turned people off?
And it doesn't always have to be turned people off.
It could be, did I turn them off or did I give the solution
to what it is that they came for,
and then they were like, "Awesome, now I don't need
"to watch the rest of the video."
So look at your analytics to find out how your videos
are performing and learn from them.
When you how your watch time is performing
and see how you're performing
in your current videos and any future videos,
you can learn from that to adjust your strategy
to exactly what your audience is responding to.
The big thing to remember is that YouTube rewards creators
who keep people retained.
So if you can make longer videos,
like eight minutes to 20 minutes,
and yes, some videos can still be short.
I still have lots of short videos on my channel
that are just straight and to the point.
They still get good watch time,
but we wanna increase your average view duration.
I've seen creators that have channel
or have videos on their channel that are a minute long,
and even if you have people watching 100%
of that minute-long video,
your average view duration is pretty low,
and YouTube wants creators that are keeping people
on their platform for longer.
So try to make your videos eight minutes to 20 minutes.
There are even creators
who make 45-minute videos, hour-long videos.
The point is if you can keep people retained
and even turn it into maybe a series.
Shane Dawson is great at this,
that he has these 45-minute series,
and it's almost like a back-to-back documentary,
and people are watching the whole way through
because of how he's keeping them engaged
and bringing them along a journey.
So how can you bring your viewers along a journey?
That's the big question to ask
and see how you can keep them retained,
and also, on top of retention,
is how you can convert them to your email list.
How can they now be on your email list,
so you can communicate with them
and potentially sell them into any products
or services that you offer?
So guys, thanks so much for watching.
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(gentle music)