As our attention spans get smaller and smaller it becomes difficult to focus on anything that is not incredibly short – like a TikTok video. This presents a challenge for YouTubers: How to keep your audience stick around for longer than a few seconds, especially when your video is almost 8 minutes long. Fortunately, as technology progresses, YouTubers and their video editors get more control over their videos. But is more control enough?
Obviously, the more control you have the better the output. Now, what you need to actually make your audience stick are tried and tested techniques. Lucky for you, they are easy enough that almost everyone can implement them. Without further ado, let’s have a look!
1. Reposition
This is the easiest one but you have to be careful as to not do it too much. All you have to do is either reposition yourself or the camera as you speak. Make sure you have completed a thought before you reposition anything. It’s a bit delicate and has to be planned – when and why to shift your position. If you do it on whim, chances are you won’t make much sense to the audience and instead of keeping them engaged, you’ll alienate them.
And if you’re wondering, let me tell you why it works. When you have presented the audience with something, instead of losing them to their thoughts, you jump back in and continue the conversation. This goes on until the end of the video and your audience remains engaged.
2. Jump Cuts
Although you can use jump cuts without repositioning anything, they can be used in a lot of other ways. For example, you can use them in between two completely different shots, and yes like I said earlier, that keeps the audience engaged. In short, you should be friends with jump cuts!
3. Make it Short!
When you think you’re done with your video, try and watch it as if you were watching a random YouTube video. If you feel like some parts are dragging a bit, cut them out. Remember, the shorter the attention span, the lesser the audience will tolerate boring stuff. Try and make your point in 15-20 seconds and then get to the next point. Make sure it’s all coherent and short and you’ll have yourself the most engaged audience possible.
It might not always be possible to do this, and that’s totally fine! Just do it as often as you’re able to.
4. Hook Them Early On
Give your audience a reason to stick around for the next few seconds right in the beginning. If your hook works, they’ll stick around but now you have to work on earning their attention. Every sentence that comes out of your mouth has to be directly related to what you said before that. Do this and not only will your audience stick around for that video, but they might also even click on another one of your videos.
5. Add Subtitles/Captions
Adding subtitles makes it easier for your audience to follow along and understand you better. In fact, on Instagram, more than 80% of the viewers don’t turn the volume on, they simply prefer to follow along with the help of subtitles. So if keeping your audience engaged is what you’re looking to do, adding subtitles is the way to go.
Oh and if doing all of this seems a bit too overwhelming or merely time consuming, you can get our services and we’ll take care of everything. Not to brag, but we’ll probably do a better job at it than most.
