With short form video now delivering the highest ROI of any social media content, you should be asking, “How short can my video be?”
The key metric for judging the success of your video is the level of engagement.
Engagement is more than the number of people who clicked on your video, it’s about how many watched it all the way through, and if they didn’t, how much of the video they watched.
How much of your business’s message is viewed is what counts.
Keeping the ‘Bounce’ rate down.
The longer the video, the fewer people will watch it all the way through. The more people will bounce.
Run time is a factor in bounce rates outside of content.
In fact, the longer the video’s runtime, the higher percentage of people who will bounce in the first 2% (Or “Nose”) of your video.
You will lose about 2-3% of your viewers in the first 2% of a one minute video…. but you will lose 10% in the “Nose” of a 10 minute video. (According to statistics from Wistia.)
Which is why short form videos are so successful, they have a lower bounce rate, more people see the businesses message, and more people then engage with that business.
And here is another incentive to keep things short, Google has the metrics from videos hosted in YouTube.
If you have a high bounce rate on your YouTube videos, Google will think your content is poor, and potentially this will have a negative impact on the SERP for not just your video but any websites associated with it.
So, minimising bounce rates is really important, and as such keeping runtime down is really important, because not only will people just not see your message, but you will get worse returns on Google as a consequence.
Which means….
With video, less is more.
How much less will be down to your message, but keep keep in mind short form video will always deliver better results for ROI than long form, and lowers the risk of Google using your own content against you!
4 tips for short form video production…
1) Engage quickly.
Don’t bury the lead as we used to say, get to the point right away.
2) Do you need a bunch of titles?
Can you go straight to the content? Do you really need an intro?
Can you put the into over a really cool shot to engage folks with it?
3) If you have multiple or complex messages, break it down into multiple videos.
Don’t try to get everything across in one video, chapterise your content.
4) Always ask yourself, can I make it shorter?
Cut, Cut, Cut again! Make things as simple as possible, don’t use a 100 words when ten will do. Get rid of everything that doesn’t contribute to the core.
One final key point for helping to minimise bounce rates…
Make sure you deliver what you promised when folks found your video.
If you’ve optimised the metadata of your video for widgets, and then don’t deliver widgets PDQ, folks will bounce.
Don’t be tempted to drive traffic to your video which is not directly interested in the content!
Agile video production is the best way to produce a constant stream of short form videos, iterating as you go forward, and maximising ROI.
If your business could benefit from short form video production, contact us!
