With video content becoming a must for your online marketing campaign, we often get asked the question, "How long should my video be?" and to be honest, there is no definitive answer, but instead two key points that you should bear in mind when capturing or creating a video for your business.
The first being that your video should be as short as physically possible, without losing context.
The second is that it really depends on what the video will be used for.
Videos can be difficult to judge. Yes they can be fun to watch and easy to share, but your audience has the choice of playing your video or not. Text and images however aren’t so easy to ignore. The idea is to hook your audience into the video from the start and there are several things to think about to encourage your audience to watch it:
Firstly, the first few seconds of your video are key and will most likely be the time that your audience will decide whether to carry on watching it or move on to something else of more interest to them. Use YouTube adverts as an example. When watching videos on YouTube, a lot of them have adverts which will play before the video that you can skip after 5 seconds of them playing. What the advertisers want to do within that first 5 seconds is grab the viewers' attention to encourage them to carry on watching. It is a good idea to use a similar technique when creating your own videos. Keep your opening title or shot as short as possible, and move straight into the content from the start. Think about the first message that you want to get across and make it as engaging as possible. If it is valuable to your audience, they will carry on watching your video. This doesn't necessarily apply to every video that you create, but I will get to that shortly.
Secondly, what is the overall length stated of the video? This is something to think about with all of your videos. Think about the last time you saw videos on Facebook, YouTube or Twitter. Before you click play, you can see how long that video is going to be. If the video is shown as being 10 minutes long, you are far less likely to click play compared to if the video was a minute or maybe less? Attention spans are becoming shorter as we become bombarded more and more with all varieties of content online and people don't want to have to spend a long time finding the content that is relevant to them.
Let's have a think about the optimal lengths of videos in different contexts.
Tutorials and explainer videos (45-90 seconds)
The internet is a fantastic tool for finding free video tutorials and how to's on pretty much anything that you can think of. But the main goal of these tutorials is not only to explain how to do something, but to do it as simply as possible. Simplicity means less time.
Less than 2 minutes for tutorial videos is ideal, but anything longer than this and the viewer will feel that the video will extra concentration and time.
Now there are potentially going to be times when it is impossible to show someone how to do something in under 2 minutes, so why not break the tutorial video up into several parts? That way, the viewer doesn’t have to take everything in at once, but can move to each part when they are comfortable to do so.
Commercial and promotional videos (15-59 seconds)
This is where the first few seconds are most important. These are the videos I imagine most people are familiar with and where creativity is used the most. Most commercials are based on a funny story, intriguing situations or a clever gag and are usually less than 59 seconds. Why 59 seconds? 59 seconds always looks better than 1:00 minutes before someone clicks play.
The key to these videos is to try and get the key message across to your audience in as short a time as possible and as engaging as possible, without losing context. You don't necessarily want to directly sell something with these videos, but you do want people to remember your name. Use your creativity to hook your audience into the content within the first few seconds to keep them there for the duration of your video.
Testimonials/cameos (45 - 120 seconds)
These are the videos that require the least amount of creativity. You want your customers to talk about your products and their personal experiences or journey with your business. In most cases these are the videos your audience will look for to find more information about a company instead, so it is okay to be a bit more flexible with timings on these ones as people will more than likely be listening than watching.
For these types of videos, you can even stretch to 4 or 5 minutes, but if you want to use it for marketing purposes try to use short bites of several customers talking about your product or business instead of one talking for 2 minutes straight.
As I mentioned at the beginning of this blog, there is no definitive rule on how long your online videos should be, but when creating them, put some thought into who your audience is and how likely they are going to stay engaged with the video content that you put out.
If you need any support with your video content requirements, please do not hesitate to contact us.