Waching daily Nov 28 2017

In today's video I'm going to talk to you about how long your video should be.

Now, this is a question I get asked almost daily so I thought that it was about time

I created a video on that subject matter for you and to help me out with this I'm bringing

in a little bit of a case study that was done by Wistia which is a video hosting company

similar to that of vimeo and they have taken data from over half a million videos and over

1.3 billion plays, so you know that this data is going to bring the goods.

Now, spoiler alert: the human race has a ridiculously short attention span but I think we all knew that

But in this study Wistia found that essentially we had a pretty good attention span up until

the two minute mark.

Then after that things seemed to drop off pretty drastically.

Now, the next minute mark that's important to note is the six minute mark.

So between six and twelve minutes attention seemed to hold as well at that point, which

is good for anyone who makes tutorials or anything of that kind.

But essentially, if you are going to make a video and you haven't done it before and

you don't know what your audience can tolerate or enjoys, I would suggest looking at that

two minute and under mark.

All that being said, I think we need to apply some critical thinking otherwise I could have

just given you the study for you to read and make up your own mind.

So I have three questions for you to determine how long your video should be.

My first question to you is what type of content are you creating?

Is it a tutorial?

Is it talking head, information style? is it entertaining?

Is it inspiring or moving or motivational?

And the reason that that is an important question is because all of those things lend themselves

naturally to a certain type of cadence and a certain type of time stamp that they can

withhold.

So for example, if I'm teaching you how to do something and it's a 15 step process, you're

probably going to sit with me for 12 or 18 minutes or even longer depending on how intricate

that tutorial is.

However, if I'm just standing here talking to you like this you may have a much lower

tolerance because maybe my voice gets annoying, I'm not showing you anything super practical

that you need to copy or write down it's just information for you to remember and apply

to yourself.

But also if you decide to create something inspiring or something motivational, perhaps

there's more of a storytelling element to that and therefore we're willing to sit through

something a little bit longer again because a story has a narrative and once we're hooked

we're willing to go through the ups and downs of that story to get to the end and know the

outcome.

And then there's entertainment and really, as someone being entertaining how long can

you actually be entertaining before you turn boring?

So maybe that ends itself to say a shorter attention span.

So think about what type of content you're creating and think about whether or not you

need an 18 minute video or maybe a 2 or 3 minute video.

My second question for you is what platform are you creating video for?

And the reason I ask that is because it's super important that you know how your video

is being received and what do I mean by that?

I put a lot of my video out on Facebook as you know, in fact the reason you're probably

watching this today is because it popped up algorithmically, you may have engaged with

something before, maybe you even turn on the notifications to see this first but I am interrupting

your day.

You didn't hop on Facebook to watch me and if you did, thank you!

But I do know that the reality is is that you didn't hope on here to watch me.

You hopped on here to see what was going on, to see if anyone had liked your status, commented

on your status, maybe you even came on to check your business page but I am essentially

interrupting what you're doing and therefore your willingness to commit to me and my video

is not that great.

because you didn't seek me out.

Now, think about something like YouTube where videos are found traditionally via search.

Now I know that you go down a rabbit hole and there's suggestions and all those things

but generally speaking we go on to YouTube, we type in what we want to know and we search

it and therefore we have a higher tolerance for what we find because we're actually looking

for it.

We want that knowledge.

We sought that out.

By considering the platform you're creating for, you're able to best determine how long

you should actually go for.

And my final question to you is what is your audience responding to?

Now, if you're not already making video, this question is a little bit redundant but bear

with me.

By creating video again and again, over time you begin to see how long people's attention

spans are.

There's a whole bunch of other factors that come into play as well like maybe your topic,

maybe your information, maybe what you do with the video in order to keep it engaging

but for the most part you can start to see what people respond to and cater your videos

accordingly.

So they're my three questions that I wanted to leave you with but for everyone, no matter

whether you're a veteran with video or you're just starting out or you're somewhere in between,

I encourage you to experiment.

You never truly know what your audience needs or wants until you give it to them and they

respond with their attention or their inattention.

So, to recap - what type of content are you creating?

What platform are you creating it for?

And what is your audience already responding to?

But my one overarching piece of advice is to experiment.

Just do it.

See the response you get, iterate and do it again.

Thanks for tuning in guys and I will see you next week.

Bye!