I BLEW UP This Videos Watch Time As Fast As I Could

hi there spicers i'm ed and alan's invited me on his most excellent channel to fill in the gap whilst he's on baby daddy duty today i want to help you guys increase your audience retention the most critical step for growing your youtube channel but i'm not going to talk about strategies and algorithms i'm going to talk about five little production tips you can do to keep your viewers watching for longer they are tried and tested and they do work a lot but quickly who am i well i met i run a video production company in the uk called business film booth with my business partner dave we also have a youtube channel that teaches people how to grow a youtube channel and make videos and it has tips like i'm going to show you today on top of that i have a little graphics business that makes call to access animations like these alan actually uses them on his channel you can check them out in the link in the description if you like anyway enough about me i'm boring let's get stuck in with the first way you can boost your attention rates that don't have anything to do with algorithms firstly let there be light now do you ever see your video stats do this people come in and then leave fast it's depressing right now there can be many reasons that this happens but one is simply that first impressions count you can dress up your thumbnail to high heaven but if the experience your viewers are met with after they click on it looks like this the moment they land then well us humans love to make assumptions and we just switch off so you need to switch them off and you can see straight away how different that looks right and that is just one light to the side of the camera just above my head and it makes this cool look where my shadow spreads across my face now i can make the video look moody if i wanted just by bringing this light here around more to the side of me you see that so this works great if your topping is dark or moody or intense bring it round a bit more to the front like i had and now you've got a bit more of a youtuber look and then flat on you've got a very clean and bright look and it's often used for sort of beauty shots because you get this cool ring effect obviously you wouldn't have the light in shot one light is really all you need to make a better first impression just make sure you turn off all of the other lights that are above you because when you have overhead lights unlike these it looks a bit yucky so the good news is the simple ring light i'm using right now was about 30 pounds on amazon actually you can get kits from 30-100 pounds which might be all you need but it's still a little bit dark which brings me on to point two get some colored lights let there be more light boom now we're talking so these lights are actually lights that you can put outside your home they have this little remote and you can change the colors from the lights too if you like that doesn't quite work that one now they come as a pair for 30 pounds and they're small and they're portable which means you can go anywhere in the world with them and make a colored background that pops you can just put them on the floor pointing up change the color of each one on the remote or keep them the same and then using the one light trick from earlier you've tons of customization options i'll get alan to link to these in the description of the video now the cool thing about this is if you're shooting on a camera like i am and you have the ability to play with your depth which basically means things go blurry you can throw these lights in on a messy background and then the camera just blurs the background out and it still looks good now you know this you're gonna start to notice how untidy your favorite youtubers backgrounds actually are but the blur and the color just makes it look sweet i'm gonna make more videos about these lights on our business film blues channel soon so if you like the sound of that head on over and subscribe to alan too i guarantee you'll learn a lot so we've touched on making a good first impression with your setup now what about yourself to boost that retention let's look at making you as beautiful as possible with these two little tricks number three the angle and the pillow so check this out the lights right now are quite hard that means the light gets into all the cracks on my face and makes me look a bit older so instead of me looking 21 like i am makes me look about 34 which i am not there's a really easy solution for this to solve it get a pillow case a clean one and just pop it on your light hopefully the light won't fall down what you've noticed here is it's got a bit dimmer so just get it nice and close to your face and then what happens is the colors in the background go brighter because you're not blasting as much white light onto them so they can pop you see that i'm a little bit softer a little more like the 21 yard i definitely am so then the next thing i want you to do is take your camera and make sure it's just above your eye line this makes you lift your chin a little bit up like this and produces a more flattering jawline if you put it below your face it could give you a double chin and then when you pop it up your 90s brad pitt or for the ladies 90s gen water combo so i know these things are shallow and really youtube should be about what comes out of your mouth but people will give you more time if they like what they see before you open it but how do you boost your attention after you've opened your mouth is that possible with production too well yes and actually it's super simple that moves us on to number four better audio people really don't like shoddy audio so this is always a good place to spend some money but actually even then buying a mic doesn't always sound the best a lot comes down to your environment you're filming it too now our production company we've got mics that cost crazy amounts of money if i use them in this room here they don't sound very good because of the echo that the room produces so this little mic here is the rode wireless go and it still picks up some echo so you need to put some blankets around your room to stop that which is annoying still and takes time but one really easy fix especially if you film on your camera or phone don't use any external mics is just to get a lot closer to the mic so check this out i'm filming on my samsung and it still sounds pretty good right and that's because phone cameras have quite wide lenses you can get in quite close without being too intrusive and still showing some more of the seat now i'm a bit further back and as you can probably hear straight away the sound quality really suffers so a quick audio tip for you that's going to help maintain retention is just to get closer to your camera or phone if you don't have any other kit and number five and this is a really really powerful retention tool probably the most powerful tool we have in our armory and it's called panto mode so panto mode is to do with presenting so right now i'm pretty flipping excited right but there's no chance in real life i would talk to you like this imagine how weird it would be if i was just all up in your face with this amount of energy excited about making videos you'd be like oh what is wrong with you so in real life i'd probably talk to you more like this right a little bit more normal a little less excited and on camera pretty boring and that's the thing that people struggle with a lot you need to accept that being on camera you're putting on a performance and that energy is infectious but also holds attention a lot better look at your favorite youtubers who present to camera they will have tons of energy and we'll do this so i want you to try this out present one sentence to your camera film it how you normally would then another when you have 25 percent energy then another one you have 50 orange then another one where you have 100 more energy it's not just showing though when you do this i then want you to put more emphasis on important words in the sentence and also don't be afraid to use your hands more be over the top with them to the same percentage level then i want you to watch it back somewhere in there you will see a new presenter bursting out that's confident and energetic if they all feel a bit too over the top or still don't have enough energy just dial it up or tone it down and try again note down the percentage level that works for you and then go and do it a few more times at that level experimenting with different hand movements and emphasis bring it over to your videos and man what a difference it's going to make the moment you hit play and met with a great presenter you make a decision without knowing it that you're going to pay more attention now we call this panto mode because in the uk we have these things called pantomimes they're really for kids but the actors are always way over the top in them and that's what you need to try to do here so i hope that helped retention and watch times are the keys to success on youtube you don't need perfect production but implementing these five things will have an immediate impact on your content thank you for watching come join us on business film booth to learn more about making videos and growing a channel and if you try these out and they make a difference do let us know we love to see creators getting results of our content and thank you for letting me on your channel alan it's been a blast