Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you five things that are going to make your viewers watch your videos for a longer period of time, and we're starting right now. This video is brought to you by Videoleap. Videoleap is a free mobile video editor that's super intuitive and easy to learn. With Videoleap, you can do anything from cutting and connecting clips to adding filters and key frames and even editing in multiple layers, allowing you to do your video editing on the go. You can use Videoleap free, but with a pro subscription, you get access to even more pro functionality and access to extra filters, animations, text effects, and more. Personally, I use Videoleap on the go to quickly put together YouTube and Instagram stories because I love how easy and fun it is to use. You can even make full-length YouTube videos with this. To try Videoleap for yourself, click the link below this video. Okay, so our question today comes from TheBri2Bri channel, and TheBri2Bri channel asks, I would like to know how I can improve my watch time. Do you think I should get rid of my introduction and go straight into the content? Bri, that is a fantastic question, and I am so glad that you asked this because I see tons of people on YouTube making a huge mistake that is costing them watch time. Actually, there's a handful of them, and I'm gonna tell you five that you can fix with your very next video, starting with, of course, removing your intro. So of course, using an intro is a pretty common thing on YouTube because you see a lot of these other big creators using intros, and because of that, as a new content creator or somebody that's trying to get that ball rolling, you might think, hey, they have intros in their stuff. It's probably a good idea if I put intros in my stuff, but you're wrong. The reason that you're wrong can be displayed in your audience retention. If you go into your audience retention reports inside of your YouTube studio, you're actually going to be able to see exactly how people react to your intro. So when it comes to your intro, there's a few very humongous mistakes that you can make with your intro. The first being that you make your intro the very first thing that people see when they first start your video, and what you're doing in that situation is you're creating this block between when they actually click on the video and when they actually get the content that they came into the video that they were expecting to see. Think of it like this. When you have an intro at the very beginning of your video, like before you get any content at all, before you even have a chance to hook the viewer or anything like that, basically what you are doing in that situation is you are just throwing an advertisement for your channel when they haven't even had a chance to even have any type of experience with your content yet. Not even like a hello, not even an introduction, not anything that has to do with your actual content. And another thing that I want you to think about is how many times have you went onto YouTube and you've said to yourself while you're looking around YouTube and you're clicking on videos and all that, how many times have you said to yourself, man, I really cannot wait until I see a good intro, right? It doesn't happen because when you're on YouTube, you're actually on YouTube for the content, not for the intro to that YouTube channel. And look, I know what you might be thinking. You might be thinking, hey Nick, I've been subscribed to you for a while, man. I've been watching your videos for a while and you have this intro that you do in your videos, which is true, but you're also going to notice if you've been watching my content for a while that I'm phasing that intro out. I'm actually phasing it out so much that I've taken it out of my last handful of videos completely and instead I'm actually just putting a sponsor spot there just because I'm in a fortunate position where I can do that sort of thing. But what I was doing before is I would actually have my intro and then I would have the sponsor spot. So what I'm doing right now is I'm saving you time by not adding my intro. And of course the sponsor spots, that's stuff that's going to bring value to you anyway, so that's going to keep happening. But anyway, if we back this whole thing up just a little bit, one of the things that you just have to consider when it comes to using an intro is it doesn't really add anything to a viewer. So when you're putting an intro in your videos, one thing to think about is, yeah, it might be a great segue between your hook and then the actual content itself, but what you want to do with your specific type of content is you want to actually sit back and think for a second and think, does my intro actually add anything to the production value of the content that I'm releasing? Or would I be better off just to have whatever hook it is that I'm going to use in my videos and then lead people into the video and start the actual video instead of interrupting the entire thing for a three, five, or 10, or 15, or 20 second intro? Unless you're using your intro as a segue or a bridge of some kind, it doesn't really hold any value, really, and what I mean by that is unless you have an intro and it's awkward to jump right into the content and you can't figure out a good way to transition or anything like that, toss in a quick three second intro in there might do the trick. However, you want to just sit back and you want to think, is this completely 1,000% necessary? If the answer's yes, keep using it, but if the answer's like, well, you know what? It looks cool. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel like my content is higher level content, then that's more about you and less about the viewer, so in that situation you should consider taking the intro out. But Nick, how am I going to let people know what channel they're watching? If you want to have a logo or something like that pop up while you're talking or while your content is playing, that's perfectly okay. You can see in my content where I'll use little graphics to remind people to subscribe, to remind people that there's links in the description of the video that are going to be beneficial to them and things like that. You can do the same exact thing with your logos, so if you feel that, hey, I want to make sure that people see my logo because it's important for my branding, especially if you're a business or something, then in that particular case, just have it pop up on screen or be a part of the lower third that pops up with your name on it, letting people see the logo, your name, your actual website, that kind of thing. By doing it that way, what you're doing is you're giving yourself the opportunity to not interrupt the viewer experience with the intro that you're using in your videos. But you do want to make sure that you are looking in your audience retention reports, though, because you do definitely want to make sure that when people are interacting with your intro, you want to make sure that you're not taking any loss in viewership during that time. Because if your intro is solid and for whatever reason, people are not skipping past it or they're not leaving the video because of it, then you don't have to take it out. But in most cases that I've ever seen, the intro is hurting you in some way, even if it's by a few percent of your viewership. Okay, so let's talk about the next thing, audio. So if you want to keep people watching your videos for a longer period of time, it's really important to make sure that you're putting some focus on how your audio sounds. And by audio, I mean if you're using your voice, how does your voice sound? Do you sound like you're really far away? Or do you sound like you're up close and that you're actually talking to them maybe in person, like that good of an audio experience for them? One thing you can do in this situation to easily compare your audio is simply open up another video on YouTube and listen how it sounds when it first starts, and then open up your video on YouTube and see how it sounds when it first starts. Does your voice sound like it's really close in the frame or do you sound like you're really far away? And if you're using music in your videos, is the volume really loud on yours compared to other people? Or is the other people's videos, is the volume on their videos sound a lot louder than yours? But just do the comparison because audio is half of the video experience. You have the stuff that you're seeing, but you also have the stuff that you're hearing as well. So you want to make sure that you're being mindful of it. Now, there's free software that you can use to actually make your voice sound better if you do a lot of talking head videos like this or any voiceover type stuff. A great piece of software for editing your voice and making it sound better that's free is called Audacity. And another one that's actually paid, the stuff that we use is called Adobe Audition. I'll put a link to both of those down in the description below so that you can start using those to take those steps forward on making your audio sound better. The next thing that you can do to keep people watching your videos for a longer period of time is to actually edit your videos. Now I know most of you do edit your videos, but when I'm in my comment section and I'm opening up channels and I'm looking to see what people are doing that are watching my content and how much of the information they're actually applying, one of the things that I'll see is that people are doing one-take videos. And what I mean by that is that they'll just set up a camera or they'll set up a phone or webcam or something like that, and they'll just sit down and they'll talk. And when they sit down and they talk, they leave in a lot of ums and ahs, and there's a lot of just empty space in between thoughts and things like that. And it's not like a really tight packaged experience to where it's easy to consume when you're sitting there watching it because it typically in that situation looks like you're just sitting there watching somebody waiting for them to come up with what it is that they're going to say, which creates a horrible viewer experience. Another thing when it comes to editing as well is you can make your colors look better. So for example, this right here is what my videos look like straight out of the camera compared to this, which is what my videos look like after Vigard puts really awesome treatments in order to make my color look fantastic. But the idea is you just want to spend time learning how you can edit because the better that you can edit, the cooler you can make your videos and the cooler that you make your videos, the cooler the experiences for the people that are watching your videos, which you ultimately win from. The next thing to keep your viewers watching for a longer period of time is to simply make your videos as long as they need to be. So a lot of content creators will try to cram a bunch of stuff into the videos so that they can make a longer video for the idea of getting people to watch for a longer period of time. However, if your video only needs to be five minutes, don't try to make it 10. If your video only needs to be three minutes, don't try to make it eight. So you just need to make sure that when you're putting your content together, that you're making your videos as long as they need to be. Because as soon as you start cramming stuff in there just for the sake of getting a little bit more watch time, then what happens in that situation is the value isn't really there. It's just a bunch of fluff, so to speak. And as soon as your videos start getting fluffy, then in that situation, people start leaving. And if they're leaving after five minutes and you have a 10 minute video, then it doesn't really make sense to have a 10 minute video, right? That one will save you time too, because if you're not making your videos longer just for the sake of making them longer, then it'll also save you time editing and all that stuff. So it'll save you time and it'll create a better experience for your viewers as well. The next thing that you want to make sure that you're doing is ending your videos properly. So a lot of people will actually cost themselves a decent amount of audience retention because they say the wrong things or they do the wrong things at the end of their videos. I'm going to put a video on the screen right now that you can watch that's going to show you how that you can end your videos the right way so that you can keep people watching and so that you can get people to watch more of your content easier. So you can go ahead and click on that now. Thank you so much for watching. I'll see you next time.