How long should your video content be?

Each second counts with video content, make it short and sweet

How long should your video be?

In this blog we’ll talk about the length of online videos and a little about content. "A video should be as long as it needs to be, but not too long", what's too long then? A study from wistia in 2016 found that if viewers saw a video was 2 minutes or more, it made them switch off in large numbers.Viewers chose not to commit to viewing the content as a result. It’s shocking, but your audience’s attention span is getting shorter. Probably no surprise already.

ATTENTION DROPS

Our attention spans have come down since 2016, because of longer videos and generally the fast paced, information ready lifestyles we all live. Unless it’s an explainer video, it needs to be a minute or less to cut down on viewers staying for two minutes then leaving to find other interesting videos. We as viewers already know this is the case, as we look for if videos are:

1. Longer than we expected

2. If the video is engaging enough to keep our attentions to prevent us from moving on.

PRO TIP

If you have a lot of engaging information to give, break it down into several videos to overcome the attention span issue. And most importantly, work on your content – and what you are going to say. We script all our videos, working out our language and content before we press record. This will lead to more focused content and greater engagement with your viewers.Its key to interact with your viewers so you know if you are doing anything wrong or to give feedback in general.

YOUTUBE ADVICE

The average video length should be 4 minutes and 20 seconds. ComScore reported that in January the duration of the average online content video was about 4 minutes 40 seconds which was 20 seconds off. Basically, it seems like short video still rules the day on YouTube, but that there is a range of lengths. In fact, YouTube has seen to acknowledge these different lengths, especially those at the edges of the spectrum by offering viewers the chance to change of the length their video search by duration. You can search on whether the video is “short” (less than 4 minutes) or “long” (greater than 20 minutes)

To wrap this up, if your experienced you should start doing longer video like five minutes plus, but if you’re starting off you should trying and shift yourself to four minutes.