Effective Videos Are Made Before Production
As you’ve already discovered, there’s more to creating videos than shooting a video on your phone an uploading to YouTube.
You need to create videos with audience retention in mind. The higher your audience retention, the more those metrics let YouTube know that your video is quality content. If you succeed with high audience retention, you will have high total watch time and the other engagement metrics that YouTube is looking.
The easiest way to create videos for audience retention is through planning. The structure of your video can be more important than your actual video content.
Create an Outline of Your Video
You want break your down into sections because you video needs to more than share your information, it also needs to capture and engage your audience, keep you audience watching, and instruct your audience to take action (like subscribe to your channel).
A breakdown of your content could be – Introduction, Middle, and Ending.
1 – Beginning
The beginning (or introduction) is the most important portion of your video. You need to capture your viewers’ attention and give them reason to continue watching your video with the first 15 seconds or risk losing them to another video.
The beginning section should run from 15-30 seconds.
2 – Middle
The middle section is where you provide value and keeps your audience engaged. Some audience retention techniques to employ are:
• On Screen Graphics – Graphics will make a huge impact on your audience retention. Graphics interrupt what your viewer is doing and forces them to pay more attention to what you’re saying and doing on screen.
• B-Rolls – B-Rolls help break up your content from becoming monotonous and those close-up shots provide specific details of what you’re talking about.
• Pattern Interrupts – This is a behavioral psychology or neuro-linguistic programming technique to change a thought, behavior or situation and can be highly effective at keeping your audience engaged.
Example: The camera angles changes from you onscreen folding a balloon animal at a party to an extreme close-up of the actual bends in the balloon or the video switches to onscreen folding balloons to a silly outtake as balloons are popping.
• Open Loops – Another programming technique where you purposefully include information gaps that keep your viewer engaged with your video. Basically, they are a way of informing the viewer that some is about to happen.
Example: “In the next section of this video, I’ll show you how to fold a simple Poodle Balloon in 2 minutes, but first..”
The middle section should run approximately 90% of your total video length. If your video is 10 minutes long, then this section should run about 9 minutes.
3 – Ending
The ending section is your best opportunity to grow your channel and your followers.
1. Ask your viewers to subscribe to your channel.
Example: “If you liked this video, be sure to subscribe to my channel for more amazing content”.
2. Ask your viewers to visit your website or lead magnet page.
Example: “If you want to learn more balloon animal folds, visit my website at JohnsBalloonTips.com. That’s where I share my best balloon folding techniques”.
3. Ask your viewers to leave a comment.
Example: “Which of the balloon folds did you like best, “A” or “B”? Leave your comment below and let me know right now”.
4. Close with an End Screen. The video End Section is very important for generating video views as well as an important ranking signal.The End Screen will require 10-20 seconds of extra footage at the very end of your video. Once you’ve upload the video, use YouTube’s End Card feature and set up a couple of clickable elements – a subscription button and link to watch another video (or playlist) in your channel.
The ending section should run approximately 10-20 sections plus the length of your End Screen.