MBA1625 Q&A Wednesday: How long should my YouTube videos be?

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Hey O. Welcome to the $100mb business, simplified every single day with our daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the $100 MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net and today's episode is a Q and a Wednesday episode. On our Q and a Wednesday episodes I answer a question from one of you, one of our listeners. If you have a question you want to ask, just email me over@omar mba.net and I'll answer it right here on the PODC. Today's question is from Darren and Darren asks how long should my YouTube videos be? Hey Omar, I just started growing my YouTube channel. I just got started about three months ago and I'm a little bit inconsistent when it comes to the length of my videos. Is there a rule of thumb I should follow when it comes to how long each of my videos should be as a minimum? Any advice, any help is appreciated.

Thanks Darren.

Well Darren, thanks for asking your question. I'll share with you what I've learned from the experts in the field when it comes to your videos on YouTube, what YouTube prefers, how it can help you in terms of your visibility and having the algorithm work for you Growing a YouTube channel is a great way to content market. It's the second largest search engine after Google. And guess who owns YouTube? Google. So you get the point. Super, super powerful. I'll share with you not only my recommended time length for each video, at least for a minimum, as well as some other video marketing strategies on YouTube that might help you grow your channel. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. I've studied a lot when it comes to video marketing, especially when it comes to search engine optimization and optimizing your exposure on YouTube. There are a lot of experts out there but my personal favorite expert on this topic is Brian Dean from from Backlinko.com youm can check out his blog at Backlinko.com There's a ton of resources when it comes to maximizing your exposure on YouTube. He's only an expert when it comes to SEO marketing on Google but also on YouTube. So I want to share with you some things I learned from him as well as others that have confirmed his strategies. And what I like about Brian's approach to YouTube marketing is that he actually tests out his theories and see if they work in the real world in his own YouTube channel, which is huge for this niche of SEO. It's a very dry kind of topic. It's not, you know, anything that's entertaining or funny or makeup tutorials or car reviews which kind of caters to a big market. It's very niche and yet he's got a huge following, 373,000 subscribers on his YouTube channel. Pretty impressive. Let's first address the direct question of how long should your videos be on YouTube in order to give you the right advice, Let me back up a little bit and talk about what does YouTube actually want from you? Well, YouTube really wants people to stay on the platform as long as possible. Their big metric is view time, total view time, how long people watch videos on their channel. Don't confuse this with retention time. Let me tell you the difference. If I have a four minute video and on average people watch it up to the 3 minute mark, my retention time is 75%. Pretty impressive, right? But let's say I have a 10 minute video and people watch only halfway, 5 minute mark, you would think that the first video would be more optimized, would be more preferred by YouTube, would get more exposure because the retention time or percentage is higher at 75% versus 50. But the total watch time on the first video is three minutes versus the second video which is five minutes and and really, that's what YouTube cares about, is that you actually keeping people on the platform for longer, they're watching videos for longer, more minutes is most important to them. And this is why the 10 minute mark is seen as the holy grail in YouTube. Because 10 minutes allows you to get lots of viewing time even if they just watch half the video. And it's also not too long, where it's like a two hour video and no one even attempts to click on it because they don't have two hours. So Brian Dean thinks that your video should be at least 10 minutes long. You should try to aim for that, you know, nine minutes, eight and a half, okay? But 10 is really what you should aim for to maximize your viewing time and also obviously have a concise and valuable video. So your channel will get more juice, will get more preference from YouTube. If you get viewers to watch more video time of your videos, they will suggest your videos as recommended videos at the end of videos or they'll suggest it in the right hand column. And if you get enough momentum, you might even be trending on their homepage. Now, I don't want you to take my word for it. Take a look at some of the best YouTubers out there, the ones that are trending, the ones that maybe you follow, some, maybe that you look up to, even if they're not as active as they used to before, like Casey Neistat. Take a look at the length of their videos. You're gonna see. They're around the 10 minute mark. 10, 12, 15 minutes. Very few of these big time YouTubers are doing, you know, 3 minute, 4 minute videos. Even people that review gadgets, software, cars, they make sure that it's, you know, eight, nine, ten minutes at least. Now I want to give you a couple more pieces of advice that I learned from Brian, but my real, genuine advice is to subscribe to Backlinko. You know, he is not paying me for this. I'm genuinely, genuinely saying he's a great source of knowledge because I've learned so much from him. If he ever offers, I know he has a course on YouTube. If he ever offers it. Sometimes he opens it up for enrollment, then he closes it really quick. Buy that course. It's very, very good if you're serious about growing your YouTube channel, because you're going to learn a ton to maximize your results. It's really going to get you faster results in shorter time. But here are a few things I learned along the way from him. Number one, understand the keywords you're trying to target when you are shooting a video. So when you have a video for your YouTube channel, you have a video idea, a title. What are the keywords you're trying to target? What are kind of things people are going to be searching for that they're going to stumble upon or find your video with? Understand your set keywords and they could be 8 to 10 keywords that you're looking for. And you need to make sure you use these keywords throughout the video, not only in the description, as much as possible in the title, even in your, you know, closed captioning or subtitles, but also say these keywords in the video, actually speak them into the camera. Why? Because YouTube actually can pick up what is being said and it's actually picking up your audio and using it in their search engine algorithm to find people those videos that match the keywords they're typing in. So obviously you just don't want to say these words randomly. You want to put them in context in the video. But be mindful that you need to mention these keywords a few times. Brian recommends at least three times so they're picked up by the algorithm, maximizing your opportunity to rank for those keywords. The other thing it teaches is of course you need to make sure your videos are engaging. If your videos are not good, they're not gonna do well, period. You wanna make sure that they're engaging. You have really crisp cuts, you have different angles. Even if you just change up the framing, even if you just have one video cam like a webcam or your phone in the post production, in the edit, you know, zoom in into your face and then back up to a wide shot and switch these kind of shots every time you're changing the point or moving on to a different part of the video. Use B roll. Use things on your images or video from stock images. You know, one of our sponsors is Storyblocks, which is fantastic. You can get unlimited stock video and images with their all access plan. Go to storyblocks.com mba so change it up to make sure it's engaging and people are going to listen and watch that video for as long as possible. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

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To wrap up today's Q and A question from Darren, how long should his YouTube videos be? Well, the golden rule is a minimum of 10 minutes. Shoot for the 10 minute mark. Aim to keep your viewers as engaged as possible because the longer they watch in terms of minutes, the better. And a last piece of advice, YouTube loves consistency. So if you publish weekly one video every single week like clockwork, YouTube recognizes that you are a consistent publisher, you're a good source of information, and that your channel should be promoted. Don't skip. Stay on schedule. Stay consistent. Thank you so much for listening to the Hunter Ombay Show. If you love today's format Q and A Wednesday, and you have a question you want to ask, go ahead and ask me that question. Just email me over at Omar MBA Net. I'll make sure to answer right here on Q and A Wednesday. Also, while you have your phone handy, while you have your device handy, go ahead and subscribe to our podcast. Subscribe using whatever app you use to listen to podcasts. Whether it's Apple Podcasts, Stitcher Radio, Spotify, Himalaya, we're on them all. Why should you subscribe? Well, subscribing makes things a whole lot easier for you. Number one, it allows you to get the latest episode as soon as it drops. It's right on your device. Nothing to search for. Number two, it gives you access to all our archive episodes so you can go back in our library of episodes and learn a way and get better at business. And number three, it's completely free. So go ahead and smash that subscribe button right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Anytime you're in the content game, you're publishing blog posts, you're publishing podcast episodes, YouTube videos, whatever it is, consistency is super key. One of the big reasons why this podcast has had success is because we consistently publish a new episode every day for over six years, and every system recognized consistency because you're serving their ecosystem and in a consistent way. So that gets rewarded. Thank you so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Gas, snacks, tolls. This trip is draining my wallet.

Yeah, but we'll be with family.

You're in a good mood. What's your deal?

What's my deal? I saved at Metro with no activation fees and I got 1 line of 5G for just $25 per month. Kept the phone, what I love and a five year price guarantee on my top text and data detour to Metro.

Get that more for your money feeling only at Metro by T Mobile Just bring your number. $30 first month and 25 after with autopay not available. If with Metro T Mobile in the past 180 days.