Video Length: Short or Long?

Video length is often an afterthought for many organizations looking to communicate their message. Clients often call and say they need a video and when I ask how long the video will be they say something like "three to five minutes." Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with a three minute video or a five minute video. But to say three to five as a range means they have not fully thought it through. 

And yet when it comes to audience retention and production cost, there are few variables as important as duration. Below I outline reasons to go short and long with your video content. 

Why You Should Go Short

1. Non-Captive Audience Retention

If your target viewer will see your content in a social media feed, you're only a thumb swipe away from being turned off. So keep things snappy. Catch their attention in the first half second or less of your video. Lead with your best. Show your most stunning visual, say something counter intuitive or controversial, whatever it takes to get their thumb to stop the muscle memory of moving on to the next ignorable piece of content.

Once you've done this, keep it short. If you are selling a product or service you are not the reason they opened up Facebook or Instagram. So keep this in mind when crafting your message. Don't expect them to stick around for 2 minutes to hear about your latest features or corporate value statement. They're here to decompress, not learn about your USPs or company history. Keep it concise and entertaining. 

2. Get to the Point

Often when we edit a corporate video our first draft will be dramatically longer than the second. We usually don't even show clients this true first draft. That's because they are always unnecessarily long. That script that went through 5 drafts before we filmed still seems overly redundant when watched back in video. After the initial cut we step away for a few minutes and then revisit the video with fresh eyes. It quickly becomes clear where fat can be trimmed. 

3. New Audience / First Time Viewers

If you are wanting to reach someone for the first time, go short. Tease them with who you are and what you do. Wow them with the shortest piece of amazing content you can put out and then give them some space. The first impression often isn't for closing the sale, so trust in your short message and make sure they can easily dive deeper on your website or social media pages when they want to take the next step.

Why You Should Go Long

Before we get started here, a quick preliminary note. My default recommendation is to go as short as possible - even when going long! So even though your video may end up being 5, 10, or 25 minutes long it should still be as short as possible to convey the information you need to get across. 

1. Captive Audience

If your audience is captive you have the privilege of going long. Hopefully your audience is captive because they opted into some program of yours. You may be giving a continuing education class, recruiting presentation, or other development seminar. In any case, they have raised their hand and said, "I'm interested in what you have to say and you have my attention."

I call this a privilege because it needs to be respected. Don't bore your audience just because you sponsored their lunch and locked them in a room for 45 minutes. Your content should always be some mix of informative, helpful, and entertaining. 

2. Dedicated Audience

Dedicated audiences come in many flavors. One type is a true fan that will read, watch, or listen to anything you put out. This type of viewer has likely become used to your style and content and knows what they are in for every time you publish something. In this case, they likely will watch for an extended period of time simply because they already built this relationship with you. This is why top YouTube creators are going longer and longer. Their audiences expect and enjoy watching their longer videos.

Another dedicated viewer is the one whose problem needs to be fixed and they know it takes time. I often watch long videos that walk through complex camera topics that simply require 20 minutes to fully cover. In this case I know what I'm getting into. I also know that there is no fluff here - it just takes this long to accomplish this task. If you are tackling a complex video topic, I like to keep in mind this quote from Albert Einstein: "If you can't explain it simply, you don't know it well enough."

3. The Odd Case of YouTube Monetization

This doesn't apply to many clients I work with since YouTube is generally for folks doing in-house production. But it still pops up as a reason to go long and provides an interesting insight into what metrics you value - view count vs watch time.

Back in the day (2014 or so), YouTube rewarded view counts. Getting a million views on your cat video meant you were a viral video hit. But YouTube realized those clicks were a bad way to gauge audience engagement. They found that people were often being tricked into watching a video with a misleading thumbnail image. They would start watching a video (view count goes up by 1) and then quickly leave when they realize they were fooled. So YouTube decided to switch it's focus from view count to watch time. This move was controversial to say the least. Creators had been trained for years to cultivate view counts and hadn't spent much time growing a viewership that would be accustomed to watching a 10 minute video start to finish.

Long story short - this change means that if you monetize your YouTube channel then going long means more money. But at what cost? I find that this has incentivized YouTube instructional videos to go unnecessarily long. A tutorial that could be communicated in 60 seconds is now fluffed up to 5 minutes simply to garner more Watch Time minutes. I don't recommend following this trend. I believe in time these tactics will backfire and the channels who put out concise, informative, and entertaining content will win the race.

So what can a company learn from YouTube's experience? Think about what truly matters. Yes, it looks great when your Facebook video post gets 10k views. But when you dive into the insights how many of those views last longer than 3 seconds or 10 seconds? Did you know that Facebook tells you that information? If you have 10k views but less than 1k of them lasted more than 3 seconds, would you call that a success?

So, What's the Best Choice?

It depends on a variety of variables touched on in each of the points above. Where will you share it? What is the interest level of the viewer when they encounter your viewer? Are they choosing to watch it or have you paid your way to be in front of their eyes? Is the topic of the video so complex it requires more time to cover?

If you're going to make a video, whether it's for a product launch, company anniversary, or anything else, I highly encourage you to spend time thinking about how long the video should be. This time will be well spent now will save you time and money when it comes time for production.

If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to me at chris@christopherthornberry.com

Cheers!

Chris