Social media is constantly evolving – and so are the metrics we use to measure our performance. There’s followers, likes, comments, shares, and now watch time. While platforms like YouTube have been looking at watch time for a while, this is a newer metric for short-form apps like Clapper.
Consider this your crash course into the newest, hottest social media metric. We’ll be covering what watch time is, if Clapper uses it, and how you can optimize for it.
What is Watch Time? 🕥
Watch time is a newer social media metric that measures how long users spend watching videos. On some platforms, this is calculated by the total time people have spent watching your video. So if you see a crazy number like ninety minutes on a thirty second video, that’s why! Other platforms will give you an average per user.
Why is this suddenly such a hot metric? First, it’s new, and creators love having new ways to measure their performance. But it’s also a truer test of audience interest and engagement than likes, comments, or shares. People can “like” a video and just scroll past before finishing it. While that’s still engagement – and still important to keep track of – watch time shows how long they actually engage with your video. They can only like it once, but they can watch it as many times as they want!
Does Clapper Calculate It? 🧮
As of right now, Clapper does not use watch time as a metric. We encourage our users to create their video with watch time in mind. How can you get viewers to watch more than once? What can you do to make them watch all (or at least more) of the video? Because, no matter if your platform uses watch time for their analytics, creating videos with the watch time in mind makes them more engaging. It grabs your audience’s attention, holds their interest, and may even have them coming back for more. And even if the platform doesn’t track watch time, you can still work on increasing your content’s watch time.
Increasing Your Watch Time ➕
There’s four mains ways you can increase watch time. It’s less about the length of the video and more about either the formatting or storytelling you do. But we’ll start with video length, since it’s most closely related.
Short Videos 🚀
The easiest way to boost watch time is to create short videos. A trick on other platforms is to create a video only a five or six seconds long with some kind of text on it. Viewers will watch multiple times to be able to read it, a super easy watch time boost. Even without text, viewers are more likely to watch a short video more than once: it’s less commitment and holds their attention longer.
Videos that Loop 🚀
This one is a little tricky, but sometimes creators can make a video with a perfect loop. That includes not only visuals but audio. The goal is to create a transition that’s so smooth people want to watch again, or don’t even realize their first watch has ended. This is best done with short videos, as you’re maximizing the loop! That way viewers don’t have to reach the very end of the video to see it.
You can, of course, create longer videos that loop, but you decrease the chance of it increasing watch time. For longer videos, it just seems more like a fun affect.
Draw Watchers In 🚀
Start the video with some kind of hook. It’s classic social media and storytelling advice, but it works! Whether you start the video by previewing what’s going to happen (“Let’s talk about the scariest thing to ever happen to me.”) or have an attention-grabbing clip from later in the video (like you spitting out something bad during a taste test), we recommend having something at the start to pull the audience in.
Keep Them Waiting! 🚀
Once you’ve grabbed their attention and you have them invested, you can bury the lead or punchline a little. Don’t put it in the last few seconds, but do hold off on revealing it! Building up to a reveal will keep your audience invested and will increase their watch time.
Optimizing for Watch Time 📈
There are some tactics and research you can employ to boost your watch time. We don’t recommend doing every single one of these, but we do suggest finding the one that works best for you.
Know Your Audience ✅
You should be familiar with your audience and what they like, which can guide your watch time optimization. Are they more interested in a long video where you show the process of creating something? Do they enjoy story time videos, or quicker lip-syncing videos? Figure out their preferences and gear your videos there. Appealing to their interests will increase their watch time.
Start with a Strong Hook ✅
We won’t rephrase this, but you want to draw users in. Start with a good hook!
Clear and Concise Messaging ✅
Unless it’s your style and your followers know you for rambling a little, keep your content clear and concise. Get to the point, focus on what your video is about, and have a clear topic. If viewers can’t follow along with your video, they’ll scroll away.
Create High Quality Content ✅
We’ve talked about this before, but the basics are to make sure we can clearly see you and hear you. Have your camera on a stable place, make sure your voice is loud and easy to hear, and avoid having any grainy video quality. You can read more here.
Understand Platform Preferences ✅
Spend some time studying videos that perform well on your chosen platform. You may find that longer videos are actually more popular! Or that the best performing content is only about five to six seconds long. Figure out what performs the best and try it out for yourself.
Break Long Content into Sections/Parts ✅
If you want to make a video that’s going to be longer than most of your other content, try to break it up. Find spots to create a part one, two, or three. That doesn’t mean a one minute video suddenly needs multiple parts – in fact, don’t do that! But if you create a three minute video, see if you can split it into two parts.
An added benefit is that this will keep viewers coming back for more. If you have a really exciting part one, then they’ll be dying to see part two!
Create Like Normal, Then Edit ✅
One very easy thing to do is create your regular content and review it. You can edit it down so it meets the requirements or see about splitting it up then. If you don’t see a clear place to edit, that’s fine! This will help you clearly see what you need to do to shorten your videos and take advantage of watch time.
They key to improving your watch time is knowing your audience, creating what they love, and making your videos shorter. If you do nothing else in this guide, these three changes will near instantly boost your watch time. Here’s to your success in maximizing watch time!
To learn more about content creation, read up on our Ultimate Creator Guide and Followers vs Supporters series.