How to Increase the Average Engagement of Your Video Content

Here are some proven tactics for improving average engagement, dashboards to track your progress, and ways to share results as they happen.

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What is average video engagement?

Average video engagement is a measurement that helps you understand how much users are paying attention to your videos.

Engagement is calculated by taking the overall number of plays for an individual video and multiplying it by the length (in time) of that same video. This number represents a 100% engagement (Everyone who viewed the video, watched the entire video).

To measure average engagement, you have to then take the actual hours watched on the videos and divide it by the first number calculated.

Here are some longer-form articles you might find helpful:

There are many proven methods that can help optimize specific metrics, but which methods should you be applying to all of your video efforts? Here are some proven tactics.
List of Tactics
  • Make iterations to the content. It’s important to measure how individual people are engaging with your content, where they are stopping, replaying, and where you are losing people. Use video heat maps to track exactly how people are engaging with your videos. If your video loses 50% of people in the first 5 seconds, review the intro of your video, make an adjustment, and test the results.
  • Limit the length of the video. If you can, try keeping your videos as concise as you can. It’s hard to keep anyone’s attention with content on the internet these days. Keep your video content targeted, concise, and filled with value to keep viewers engaged.
  • Match content with user intent. It’s not just about visual engagement, it’s also important that where the video is located matches the intent of why users are there in the first place. If the video isn’t relevant to the user, they won’t want to stick around to watch it all the way through.
  • Add branding to the player. Some video platforms allow you to customize your video player by adding branding and changing the player color. The research found that videos with a custom player color saw an 18% increase in play rate.
  • Personalize the video content. Put a human in your videos. Faces have been proven to capture attention more than that of any other subject. People have an emotional response to seeing faces and anything helps when you’re trying to keep the user’s attention on your video content.
  • Video A/B Testing. Some video hosting companies allow you to a/b test your videos to prove which tactics work better than others. We recommend taking an a/b testing approach to all of the above tactics by testing one thing at a time. For example: Test your videos with people in them vs. images, then learn how your audience responds to those iterations.
How to Track Average Engagement

When you monitor your impact as you implement your plan, you're also empowered to adapt your approach as needed in order to stay on track.

The following dashboard templates are plug-and-play and will allow you and your team to track progress toward the KPI and goal you've outlined.

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Wistia Performance Overview

Wistia Performance Overview

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Get a detailed overview on the performance of your projects and indivusual videos.

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Share results as they happen

Sharing results - good and bad - as things happen, allows you and your team to celebrate victories, do more of the activities that produce results, and course-correct when things aren't working.

Most importantly, it creates an environment where everyone feels in control of the company's performance next week, month, quarter, and beyond.

Set up a Scorecard and Alert in order to keep you and your team up-to-date on your progress toward the goal you selected earlier.


Track your progress toward these KPIs in real time

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