Last week YouTube hosted a creator workshop and the #1 secret they gave away to increase the performance of your video content is to focus on improving your retention rate.

Aka how long people watch your videos.

Every social media platform is the same in this regard. They want people spending more time on their platform, so they reward content that keeps people watching for longer.

How can you get people to stay watching your content for longer?

#1. A powerful hook at the start of the video to get people to stop their scroll and pay attention to your video.

This hook is more than just what you say, but how you say it, the opening visuals, the idea and the edit.

#2. Use ‘but’ & ‘therefor’ when telling stories in your content rather than ‘then’ to keep people watching for longer.

This came from the creators of South Park who found this small change created more engaging stories with added tension to keep people watching.

#3. End your videos abruptly. Everyone focuses on the hook in a video but not enough people focus on the ending. Which can have an equally large impact.

A 25 second video with a boring 5 second outro can cause people to exit your video 5 seconds early and lose 20% of your watch time.

If you cut that 5 seconds, not only do you regain that 20% of watch time, but you also will have some people rewatch the start of the video leading to a further improvement in your watch time. This can lead to a drastic increase in views.

Hope this helps, if you want more tips connect with me on Linkedin for extra content every week

Best,

Josh