Long or short, online video needs to be engaging from beginning to end – especially in the beginning.

According to Mary Pedersen’s post on AdAge.com, “[m]arketers have just 10 seconds to capture and engage an audience before they continue to scroll down or click away; and engagement drops off significantly beyond that. If you have not fully engaged your audience after the first 30 seconds, you’ve likely lost 33% of viewers; and after one-minute, 45% of viewers have stopped watching.”

Lectures can certainly be longer than a video of cats on a treadmill (25 seconds) – if the content is interesting.

(Audio: Treadmill motor and cat feet stepping on the machine can be heard.)

Aim to make the length of your video 20 minutes or less. (TED talks are limited to a maximum of 18 minutes. Most are shorter.)

Is there an optimal length of time for a video? Is it 20 minutes? Five minutes? Perhaps the answer is “depends.”

Pedersen provides four questions you need to ask yourself to help determine your video’s length.

Click to Read the Full Blog Post  – Best Practices: What is the Optimal Length for Video Content? →