There are so many contradicting opinions about how long your videos should be.
Some people say longer content wins; other’s say it has to be a minute or less.
Overall, the commonly held belief is:
“Your video has to be under two minutes long to be successful.”
But, it’s a complete lie.
It’s a myth. Here’s a hint why:
38.7 million people watched Simon Sinek’s TED talk about “starting with why,” which is 18:04 minutes.
Plus dozens of other TED talks have also garnered a million or more views, but each video is also at least 14 minutes long.
This is 700% longer than the apparent rule that “videos must be under 2 minutes to be successful”.
Btw, TEDs long content strategy seems to be doing ok…
Seeing as they have over 1,000,000,000 (yes Billion) views.
That already shows that if your content is useful and entertaining, people will stay to watch.
In fact, people will keep coming back to their favorite long-form videos, to soak up the knowledge over and over again.
Think that it’s just for TED?
Well…
According to a study of 1 million YouTube videos done by Backlinko.com, most of the highest ranking videos on YouTube are over 15 minutes in length.
That proves the point:
If something is boring, you’ll click away within seconds. But, if it’s good, you could binge watch an hour’s worth of content in an afternoon. That’s why the 2 minute ( or 1 minute) rule is a myth. It’s never about 2 vs. 1 vs. 20 minutes.
It’s about the content.
Talking about content, remember, we’re not trying to shoot a 30 sec – 1 min commercial. Nobody wants to watch an ad. That’s the opposite of what we want to create. People zip through the commercials to get to what they want.
Don’t shoot a commercial.
Even if a video marketer comes to you saying they will shoot a beautiful commercial with you. Resist the temptation. It’s a terrible waste of money on an outdated format.