The length of your video plays a much larger part in your #CorporateVideoProduction than you just might think.

Lengthy videos may be packed full of useful information and resources, but are the viewers even getting to it? Audiences have shorter and shorter attention spans, resulting in a decline in viewership of lengthy videos. As a result of these #ShortAttentionSpans, it is imperative to keep videos short in order to ensure that your audiences are receiving all of the content. What kind of attention spans are we talking about? We suggest that an ideal length for your video is approximately one to two minutes, depending on your content of course. Check out what Wistia has to say about video lengths, including a video on the topic, here.

This graph tells us that shorter videos are better for getting people to watch the whole thing. After all, most #BusinessVideo is created to serve up a pre-packaged message, so the longer the video, the less people will watch. It’s also noticeable that after a certain point the engagement average flattens out — so there’s not a major difference in engagement for a 4-minute versus a 10-minute video.

There are a few general rules when it comes to the length of your corporate video. First, if possible, keep your video under two minutes so that you may convey all of the necessary information and still stand a chance of having your audience watch the entire length of the video. Next, it’s important to put the message at the very beginning so that even if your audience does not watch the entire video, at least they were able to receive the main idea at the very start. And finally, be engaging. The only way that you can guarantee a viewer watches the entire length of your video is to keep them interested. If the audience is genuinely captivated, then they will be more likely to watch your video until the very end.

At Keywest, we suggest that if you’ve got a great deal of content to showcase, it’s best that you break it up into #VideoModules. Although we know that shorter videos are the best for maximizing your audience viewership, we also understand that some instances require longer videos in order to showcase a great deal of content. In these cases, mainly when it comes to #training or #InstructionalVideos, we highly recommend that you break up the long video into shorter, more digestible #modules that are more likely to maintain your viewer’s attention.

Take a look at the example below. This module was initially part of a much longer video; however, shorter modules were created in order to maintain viewer attention.