Episode 882 – Tips To Increase Video Watch Time
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute, the entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multi-millionaire Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody! It's Tom here with episode 882 of Screw the Commute podcast. Today, we're going to talk about video watch time and why it's so darn important to your success. You kill yourself to make high content videos and then nobody watches them. Why? Well, you have to play the game properly or nobody's going to watch them. This watch time is sometimes called audience retention. So we'll, uh, we'll get into that and give you a bunch. I think I got 16 tips or more for you on what to do about this. And speaking of this, uh, I hope you didn't miss episode 880. This is 882 880 was why you should end your videos abruptly. Uh, you should go make sure you listen to that one, because there's two reasons in there that are critical to your success with your videos. All right. So, um, make sure you pick up a copy of our automation e-book at screwthecommute.com/automatefree and check out my, uh, longest running, most unique, most successful ever mentor program in the field of internet and digital marketing at GreatInternetMarketingtraining.com. All right, so first thing is, is you get rewarded, your videos get rewarded if they have more watch time, not more views. Everybody wants to talk about views views views. Yeah that's great. But you get rewarded more for what we call watch time. And there's two things you got to realize here about watch time. And actually they call it average view duration average view duration.

[00:02:07] So in other words how long do you keep people interested in your video before they leave average average view duration. And then the other really important thing is percentage of watch time or average percentage per view. And did you even realize that you can get more than 100%? Uh, percentage of watch time. Well, yeah. If people rewind and watch something, watch it again. Or more than, um, you know, go back to an important place and play it again. You can get more than 100%. And so YouTube loves you. I mean, all of the social media, their whole deal is they want you to keep people on longer so they can sell more advertising. That's the bottom line of all social media. So. But anyway, we're talking about YouTube mostly now, but it applies to Instagram and TikTok and, you know, stories and reels and all this stuff. Okay. Now, one of the most important things is. The first few seconds is called the hook, and it's doubly important with a change that YouTube has made called the in-line player. So you may have noticed that you can hold your mouse over a video and it'll start playing underneath your mouse before you even clicked on it. All right. So this is, uh, it considered watch time for that video, but your hook needs to be in there so that people click on it and want to watch the whole thing. Now, what do I mean by hook? Well, it's something that causes a questions in the mind of the, the viewer or creates a mystery or uh, shows there's going to be a big controversy or a fight.

[00:04:14] All right. Um. So I'm just going to give you a couple examples of hooks. But you can you know I'll probably do a whole video on that for you later. But but uh, here here's one example. Three big mistakes people make when doing X. Well, people are wondering, oh, what are the mistakes am I making them? You know, you're creating a question in their mind. Uh, same with this one. This trick will save you hundreds of dollars, set hours of time, save your marriage, you know, whatever. And again, people are wondering, um, how what is the trick? I got to know. I got to find out, uh, one of my hooks that got me, I don't know, 650,000 views on TikTok was I couldn't stop the money coming to my checking account if I tried. And then I go explain how it happened. Now, you do have to come through. You can't just make a big hook and then not finish it and explain what you promised. Because people won't trust you. They'll leave. They'll never come back to your stuff because they don't trust you. Uh, here's another one. Watch what happens when, and then you can say something that's unrealistic. That's crazy. It sounds wild. Uh, and people have to see what? What happened? You know what? What's going to happen? So those are just.

[00:05:42] I mean, there's hundreds and hundreds of hooks. Uh, but anyway, this inline player function means that it's even more important to, uh, you know, to grab somebody before they even click, say, okay, now, uh, give you some examples of these. Oh, and another, uh, let me give you another, uh, thing of why it's important here. Well, a high watch time. You know, if you keep people on for long amounts of time, you're tricking. You're not tricking. You're tweaking the algorithm to show your stuff to more people that don't know you. And show you in more recommended videos and so forth. So this is a really, really important to you to keep people on longer. So the what I'm going to give you is a bunch of ways to do that right now. All right. So one thing, uh, especially in your hook area is a flash forward. So it's basically you're showing them, whoa, what's going to happen. And then they figure, well, how did you get to that point. So it's usually fast paced. Uh, another thing. And remember I told you you could have more than 100% watch time is you put something on the screen, but you flash it so quick people have to stop and rewind to watch it again. It maybe it's a chart, maybe it's a checklist for something and, uh, but it flashes and they, they want to go back and see and stop and look and then other all of that time is adding up say so those are that's one trick uh or technique.

[00:07:22] You could have a bet with somebody, and there's going to be consequences if you lose the bet. This is another very common one that you see. Another thing that's just something you need to do is talk faster. Now, if you're into meditation and your videos are about one, you know, very calm things, well, no, this wouldn't make sense for you. But for most people, for most videos, you drone on to slow slowly. And in fact, they do studies on the words per minute. And they found that words per minute, higher words per minute usually do better on the videos. Talk faster. And again, people will want to go back because they couldn't catch everything. And that's adds to your watch time. Okay. Uh, another really uh, I don't want to call these tricks. They're techniques that if you just somebody taught them to you, you could use them. Here's one. You use the pinned comment function to recommend some other of your videos. So the first comment underneath your video is you commenting and say, hey, if you really liked X, Y, and Z, check this video out and put the link to it. Even better is and I'm probably going to do a whole video on on playlists linked to a playlist of your stuff, and then people watch 5 or 10 of your videos instead of just one and just you. I a lot of times I say Google instead of YouTube because Google owns YouTube, but YouTube loves you if you do this and they will show your stuff to more people that never heard of you and increase, you know, give you all kinds of ways to make money with this.

[00:09:11] That's what we talked about monetization in other episodes. But if you really want your videos to take off and potentially go viral, you do these kinds of things. All right. There's a thing called a jump cut. And it used to be taboo in video editing. And in fact, if you saw jump cuts, you'd say, oh my God, that's a horrendous, pitiful kid in his basement. You know, it's terrible now. It's so it's commonplace if you don't have jump cuts, people think something's wrong with you. What this is, is you're cutting out the space in between your sentences or any kind of pauses, and it makes things go faster, faster, faster, and keeps people's attention so that they don't leave your video and you get more watch time. Okay, so jump cuts cards are another thing. It used to be, I think called annotations. But cards now is where people say, hey, if you like this thing, go look up here. And this is the other video I got on so and so people can click on it and watch that video. Now it's best if you can script or at least outline your video so that you're not fumbling around. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, given the information fast. So script or an outline but don't read it because you'll, you know, you'll look people can tell that's, uh, unless you're very accomplished with reading teleprompters.

[00:10:43] Now your end screen. Now again I'm going to reiterate go back and listen to episode 880. Anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go screwthecommute.com, slash, and the episode number 880. Critical of what you do at the end of your video. Just as important as the beginning. Uh, for this purpose of high watch time. So you want to make sure people get to see your end screen so you can't use language that tells them the video's over. Everybody listening to this has watched a video or thousands of videos. And when somebody says, okay, well, great. Now if you like what I just talked about, well, you just told them the video is over, the content's over, and they they click and leave. You don't want that. You want to scoot right into the benefits of the next video that you're going to recommend on your end screen and or playlist. Remember, playlists, uh, will get them watching 4 or 5 or 6 or 10 of your videos. And then there's another function called best for viewer. And um, that's something you can put on your end screen too. I have not done or used that one yet. Okay. Now. When you're doing these videos. I told you to edit out the dead air, but I want you to think about trimming the fluff out of it.

[00:12:06] In other words, I want you to stop and think, how can I make this video shorter and still get the message across? If you could take a ten minute video and make it seven minutes, you're ahead of the game. If you can take a seven minute and make it a three minute, you're ahead of the game, okay? Because your percentage of watch time is going to go through the roof and you're still keeping people on long time. And if you do these other things, they're going to keep watching more and more and more of your videos, which adds up to your your watch time or your average view duration. You can get all this stuff in your analytics and your YouTube studio, and it'll tell you how for the whole channel, what your average view duration and your percentage of watch time. And then you can dig down to individual videos and find which ones hit big and you can analyze them and do more of those. Okay. Another thing is, uh, add some visuals. Now, if you're doing live like my live I use StreamYard. I can pop in visuals, but if you are editing or even taking the live and editing it to to replay, you can add all kinds of things, you know, animated things and Scribd. Now just don't go crazy with it and make it look like a circus tent. You can also add B-roll, which is, you know, you're talking about something, but then the video shifts to some other thing that's all keeps people interested.

[00:13:40] So, um, so those are some tips I think I give you. I counted them up to maybe 16 tips, but who cares if you do part of these, you're going to really, really up your watch. Time up your success, up your views, up your potential for making money. Because you'll have being a YouTube partner program, which I covered that in the previous episode, or selling your own stuff, or selling affiliate stuff or getting brand deals. I mean, there's all kinds of ways to monetize this, but if you concentrated on this one to make your videos better, and I'm not talking about the content, I'm assuming you're putting great content content out. Well, maybe that's a bad assumption, but if your content is great and you don't hook people to watch it, guess what? It's you know, it doesn't matter how great your content was. You have to play the internet game. You they're not going to change to suit you. So you have to do these things if you want success. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Check out my mentor program. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com where you get one on one attention and a very unique, uh, uh, mentor program where you get, uh, immersion weekend at this state here in Virginia Beach and a year long training, one on one, the whole bit. All right, check it out. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and I will catch you on the next episode. See you later.