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C h a p t e r 1 2 Tips for Producing More Effective YouTube Videos 147
Go for the Funny
Remember when I said that your video needs to be entertaining? Well, in many
instances, the best way to be entertaining is to be funny. People like to laugh—and
they remember the funny videos they view on YouTube.
It’s a fact; the majority of top-rated videos on YouTube are funny ones. It’s easier for
a humorous video to go viral than it is for a deadly serious one to get the same
exposure.
That means, of course, that you can’t take yourself, your product, or your company
too seriously. Your company needs a sense of humor and has to be able to laugh at
itself. When you laugh at yourself, your audience will laugh with you, which estab-
lishes an emotional connection with your customer.
Keep It Short
One way to kill your video’s entertainment value is to make it too long. Viewers
today, and especially online, have a very short attention span. The YouTube audi-
ence is the post-MTV generation, which means even a three-minute video has
trouble holding the viewers’ attention.
It’s imperative, then, that you keep your videos short enough so that viewers don’t
tune out mid-way through. How short is short? It depends on who you ask; some
experts say five minutes at the top end, some say one minute or less, some even say
20 seconds is ideal. My recommendation is to keep your video no longer than two
or three minutes—and the shorter, the better. Videos longer than three minutes or
so typically don’t get big viewership.
That doesn’t mean you have to produce a video that’s exactly three minutes long. As
I said, shorter is better. If you can say what you want to say in 60 seconds, great. If
you need the full three minutes, take it. But take into account viewers’ short atten-
tion spans, and present your message quickly and efficiently.
Tip
Some topics might require more than a few minutes to present. That’s
especially the case with some complicated step-by-step how-to videos; you
just can’t get through the steps in a minute or two. If this is the case, you
can produce a longer video (YouTube accepts videos up to 15 minutes
long), or you can break your video into several shorter segments. So instead
of a single 12-minute long how-to, you might do four 3-minute long
videos—Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.
