Everyone wants their videos to be stunning and go viral. Not an easy feat when you consider how many videos are posted every day on YouTube. YouTube users now upload more than 400 hours of video to the site every minute. That’s the equivalent of 1000 days worth of video every hour. So to be as competitive as possible you need to follow a few rules of thumb and follow some best practices.
Video Content: Best Practices
There are a few rules of thumbs you should follow for creating your videos:
- Shoot as much video as you can. Do multiple takes if possible. Then cut relentlessly.
- You should have no more than eight minutes of video when you’re finished. Even if you shoot two hours of video, in the end, most people’s attention span simply doesn’t go more than eight minutes. Sad, but true! Cut out everything but the best takes and use eight minutes or less of video.
- Consider several shorter videos rather than one longer video.
- If your video is funny in nature, often times the best way to go is to simply use the best 30 seconds to two minutes of the video. Shorter videos tend to go viral more often than longer videos, because it’s much easier to ask a friend to watch a one minute video than a 10-minute video.
- Make sure the beginning of your video is attention catching. If the first 15 seconds of your video are boring, chances are you’ll lose your viewers before they ever get to the best parts of your video. Cut anything boring!
- After editing, let your video sit for a day or two and come back to it before publishing. You’ll see things with new eyes.
- You might also consider showing it to a friend or two before launching your video to thousands of people.
Keep your videos short, put an attention catching segment up front and make sure that all the content in the video is top notch and you will increase your chances of success.
Remember: Be liberal when shooting video, be ruthless when cutting video.
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