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Overview


Strategy

Hook your viewers from the start of your video to keep them watching longer.

Why it Works

Videos and channels that retain their viewers create the best viewing experience, and YouTube optimizes search and discovery for videos that increase watch-time on the site.

How to Do it

Capturing watch-time can be accomplished through video production techniques that include effective editing, quality production, and attention to video structure.


Details


Captivating and retaining viewers for the entire length of a video is achieved both by making creative content and by ensuring that the video’s production maintains interest levels throughout. You must hook viewers early, and you must craft a video that keeps their attention.

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Hook the Viewer (Compelling Video Opens)

Many viewers decide whether they are going to keep watching your video within the first few seconds. Attention spans can be short, and viewers are just one click away from abandoning your video. The video’s content - “What am I watching?” – should be made perfectly clear in the first few moments to give them a reason to stick around.

Compelling Content First...

• The first thing the viewer sees should be compelling, whether that is the video’s personality or content.
  
• Personalities should address/welcome the audience, ask a question, spark the viewer’s curiosity, or tease the rest of the video.
  
• Use a ‘teaser’ for the content of the video; start with a quick clip that previews what’s to come.
  

...Branding and Packaging Later

• Branding, flashy intros, and packaging can create a professional quality to your content, but they are not the star of the video.
  
• Let the content or the personality be the star upfront. That way, the viewer has a reason to watch past the intro and continue with the video.
  
• Alternatively, you can make sure the branding is compelling content that entertains the viewer. (See Examples)
  
• Packaging and branding should be minimal and short. We’ve found less than 5 seconds to be an optimal length.
  
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What Am I Watching?

• In many cases of non-fiction programming, it is important to make it clear immediately to your viewers what your video is and what they’ll be watching. If the viewer still doesn’t know exactly what they’re watching in the beginning of the video, they’re gone.
  
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Follow your video’s catchy opening with compelling and engaging content. Whether you create short or long-form videos, the right length for a video on YouTube is exactly as long as the content remains compelling to its audience.

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Keep Them Watching

Strive for Production Value

• Work towards the best possible production value for your videos to ensure viewers don’t click away just because you’ve ignored basic production best practices (lighting, sound quality, shot-framing).
  
• Make sure your video’s audio and sound recordings are clear and balanced.
  
• Properly light your video so it’s easy for viewers to see.
  

Edit and Condense

• Depending on your content, your audience, and your objectives for the video, the right editing style, technique, and execution will vary.
  
• Only include necessary footage in your videos. This is a subjective, creative decision, but assess whether any part of the video can be edited, trimmed, or condensed to improve the overall quality.
  
• Avoid sloppy editing. It can be more distracting and difficult for the viewer to watch than if there were no editing at all.
  

Create a Dynamic and Visual Experience

• Use editing, varying camera angles, cut-aways, and other alternating visuals to make your videos more dynamic. Long static shots can sometimes make a video drag on or feel slow.
  
• Add transitions, overlays, and graphics to help convey your ‘story.’
  

Structure Your Videos

• No matter what type of content you’re making – how-to, comedy, vlog, music – you inevitably tell a story. Having a beginning, middle, and end is fundamental to video structure.
  
• Consider structuring your videos into different ‘segments’ to help break up longer videos into smaller sections.
  
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Long-form Videos

• Develop strategies at the beginning of your long-form videos to tease the best parts of the rest of the video.
  
• Use graphics, in-video messaging, or other creative techniques to pique viewer interest for what is coming up.
  
• For long videos that are not linear narratives, use annotations and graphics to allow viewers to jump to specific sections of the video. Time codes that you include in the video description will automatically link to the video time code.
  
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• Create clips from long-form that pull out the best short-form content to act as stand-alone videos helping you to maximize the content from your production.
  
• Consider creating promotional clips or teasers for your long-form content that will attract more viewers to the long-form video. Annotate and link these clips to the full- length versions.
  
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Serial Content Across Multiple Videos

If you create serial content and narratives that extend across multiple videos, produce your videos to create the right viewing experience for this type of content.

Provide Context in the Video Series for New Viewers

• Provide context about the over-arching series at the beginning of each video so new viewers quickly grasp that they’re viewing one video that’s part of a larger series. Many viewers will discover videos of your series that are ‘mid-story,’ so producing and structuring the content to convey this is important to inform these new, uninitiated viewers.
  
• Find creative ways to include recaps of previous episodes or quick plot point summaries in each video.
  
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• Design and produce the end of your serial or multi-part videos to help viewers watch the next sequential video.
  
• Any non-narrative content that may be broken up across multiple videos should also follow these tips to help get viewers to start in the right place and progress as intended.
  

Optimize for Serial Viewing Experience

• Direct viewers to enter the playlist mode for your serial videos.
  
• Highlight your series playlist with in-video messaging, graphics, and/or annotations.
  
• Use annotations to help viewers navigate to previous and next episodes in a series as well as to help new viewers navigate to begin at Episode 1 or at the trailer for your series.
  
• Use the video description to provide information about the series, its schedule, release dates, and links to the playlist and relevant videos.
  
• Include episode or part numbers at end of your keyword-driven video title.
  
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Examples




Show First, then How-to

• /Threadbanger
  

Recap previous episode of series in beginning of video

• /freddiew
  

Cold-open Before Branding

• /CuteWinFail
  

Graphics to show what's coming up next

• /WhatsTrending
  

Good Post !!