Do you want to increase watch time on YouTube? Well here are five easy tips to help you increase YouTube watch time. If you’re new that means you’re going to get to your 4,000 hours faster. So that you can unlock that sweet partner program. Hey, it’s Uneeb khan here.
We help you amplify your business and brand with video. if you’re new here make sure you click to subscribe to my blog and all the links to everything. I mentioned in this article you can find linked below so let’s jump into it YouTube watch time is absolutely critical.
When it comes to YouTube channel growth and audience engagement whether you’re a new channel or a seasoned one. Fortunately, there are ways that you can improve your content to boost audience retention and maximize your views. So in this video, we’re going to run through my top five that you can start implementing right now. And make sure you stick around because my favorite tip number five is one that really changed the game for us not only boosting watch time but making our content creation much easier and faster as well.
Alright so first up let’s get real for a second here no one is going to stick around watching just your talking head videos you’re going to put people to sleep. How do I know? Because that’s exactly where we started. And trust me, our watch time was terrible.
So, how do you fix this? How do you make your videos more engaging? Well, it comes down to changing up the visuals, keeping things fresh, keeping things interesting, and changing as you progress so that people keep watching.
Tip #1 Use Jump Cuts
How then do you actually do that? Well, that leads us right into tip number one, which is to use jump cuts. Jump cuts are one of the easiest ways to break up your content and to make it more appealing. Or at least change up the shot a little bit so that it’s something different for your viewers to watch and they’re super simple to do. All you have to do is where you have an edit in your timeline or a break between a sentence, you add a cut at that point and then you zoom in on that clip.
Now, wouldn’t suggest zooming in too far here the idea here is that you’re zooming in enough just to break up the shot to make it look a little bit different. The look here can almost be similar to if you were using two cameras, one to shoot a wide-angle shot of you and one for a zoomed-in or a tighter shot.
So, you’re essentially breaking up your static shot, you’re zooming in or jumping into a closer shot and then, you’re zooming back out for the next sentence, the next paragraph.
You can constantly be jumping in and out just to break up your content and to make this shot look a little bit different. Now depending on your camera and your editing setup you definitely don’t want to go overboard here and zoom in too much because it’s likely you’re going to be losing some quality.
What I would suggest is that you’re zooming in to 10%, 12% but I probably wouldn’t be going over the 15% mark because that’s where you start to notice a drop in your quality.
So for me filming here I normally shoot with these curtains open and the light coming through but the light can be constantly changing. So I might start a sentence and it could be really bright in here and the next sentence could be really dark. Having that zoom in or that jump in will break up that and help mask that change in light, so that your viewers aren’t aware that that’s even happening.
Now a really quick pro tip on this one is if you were going to do this, try to keep your eyes in almost the same position, so not just zoom in you may need to reposition your shot, the zoomed-in one so that the eyes are in the same or very close to the same position on that zoomed-in shot.
This will make this effect less jarring for people watching with the zooming in and out because our brains and our eyes are focused on other people’s eyes. So, if the eyes are in a similar position, it’s much easier for you to focus on and concentrate on the presenter while you’re watching the videos than noticing that it’s actually zooming in and out.
Tip #2 is to Use Music in Your Videos
Tip number two is to use music in your videos this will give some emotion or some feeling about what you’re talking about, and again, pass that feeling on to the viewers that are watching your content.
Now, obviously here, picking the right music to match the feeling or to match your video is super important. And we do have a video that I’ll link up in the cards showing you how you can select the right music for your videos.
You want to make sure that you’re not going to upbeat for the content that you’re producing we’re going the other way and have your music really sad or depressing while you’re trying to pump people up. I would say if you’re creating a piece-to-camera video like this, where someone is presenting to the camera, the best music is something that is barely noticeable.
So it’s enough there to invoke that feeling and to keep people more interested in your videos because there’s something else happening, something else that is adding to the video but there’s not enough for it to be annoying or too loud or distracting to take away from the content and what it is that you’re sharing with them.
Tip #3 Use Motion Titles or Animated Titles
The third one then is to use motion titles or animated titles in your videos as well. So, it could be as simple as bringing up some text on the screen, even just saying the words that you’re saying in your video just to help add some visual elements and to break up your shot or to really help you hit home on a key point that you are trying to cover.
Now, lots of video editing software and apps out there these days usually have quite a few presets of animated titles anything’s that you can use in your videos but where I like to start is with videohive or storyblocks, both of those have motion graphic templates and title templates that you can purchase and use in your videos and customized up to match your brand.
And for the most part, those look a lot better than the ones that come built-in with your editing software. If you’re interested in checking those out. So, motion titles like these are ones that you’ll see us use all the time in our videos, whether it is just to break up the shot or whether it is to help get the message across with whatever is we’re talking about.
This is a really useful and really powerful technique that you can add into your videos, especially when you’re pairing that with tip number five, which we’re going to get to really shortly.
Tips #4 Using B-Roll or Overlay Footage
The fourth one then is using b-roll or overlay footage. So, this is where you’ve got your standard talking headpiece like this and you are overlaying other footage on top of it to really help the viewer understand what it is you’re talking about. So, this could be things like if you’re mentioning a specific website like VideoHive, we were talking about the website, you could be showing that on-screen instead of just having your face talking about it.
If you’re mentioning a specific product, this is where you’re showing shots of that product so that people can actually see and understand what it is you’re talking about to a deeper level than you’re just talking about it.
So, with b-roll, this is something that you can usually shoot yourself, especially if it’s to show off a product or something that you’re talking about in your videos. Or in some cases, depending on the types of videos you’re creating, it can be much easier to jump onto stock footage sites, like storyblocks or Artgrid, which basically give you an all-you-can-eat subscription to all the stock footage that you could need in your videos.
If you’re looking for things like a nice drone shot, at time-lapse a sunrise, a sunset, a beach shot, all of these things that you might be mentioned in your videos, you can then quickly find those using services like that.
Tips #5 Use A Video Structure
So, that brings us then to tip number five which is to use a video structure, that is designed to keep viewers engaged and to maximize value. The structure itself is going to keep your viewers interested in the content for the duration of your video, whereas tips one to four are going to help people stay interested within each section of your overall content structure.
Now a big part of a solid video structure is creating what we call open loops. Now, this is essentially where you are hooking your viewer to stick around towards the end of your video or to stick around longer in your content.
You might be teasing a piece of content or teasing a tip that you might share with your viewers towards the end of your video. The idea here is that you are structuring your video up to keep people watching until later in the video. Another way that you can create open loops in your video is by changing up the way that you are presenting your content and structuring the actual content piece of your video as well.
So, take this video for example. At the start of the article, I said that I would be sharing my top 5 tips to help you increase your watch time on YouTube. Now, inherently, in structuring your video with a top 5, top 10, people are going to want to stick around for those later numbers to watch longer in your video just in case those later ones were the ones that really change the game for them, even if they knew the previous tips, 1, 2, 3, 4, and tip 5 might be the one absolutely changes the game for them.
So, creating videos that include some sort of lists, or even things like top three, top five, top ten videos is going to help you with your watch time and engagement as well.
Now if you’re interested in taking this further and finding out more about video structure, and how to structure your videos, we have a full video already up on our YouTube channel, which I will link in the cards and below in the description as well.
Bottom Line
so now that you know how to increase the watch time on your videos and your YouTube channel, it’s now time to increase all of that traffic that you’re getting.
So to do that check out the free YouTube ranking guide that is linked on screen now, which features three of the most powerful tools and ranking strategies to help you 10x your traffic on YouTube.
