The number of views your video receives is a good metric to know, but engagement is even more important. It’s the metric that shows search engines how much people truly enjoy your videos. Anyone can watch a video, but it takes a good video to prompt people to comment, like or share. These metrics show search engines, such as Youtube, that the video is worth putting in front of more people.
A strong engagement rate shows that people are more likely to keep watching your videos and more likely to buy any products that you may be selling.
What is a good engagement rate?
YouTube measures engagement rate as the percentage of people watching your videos who interact with your channel and content. An interaction from a viewer can include a comment, like, dislike, subscribe, share, etc. This engagement rate is important for search engines because it shows how much viewers are enjoying your content. It’s also important for brands who want to work with video creators as it shows how likely a viewer is to purchase a product or service from that person and how likely new people are going to find your video content.
On average, an engagement rate between 2-5% is considered good. Engagement rates vary between video genre and platform. On YouTube, for example, music videos get more views than gaming videos, but the average engagement rate for music videos is 2.28% and 5.47% for gaming videos.
How to calculate your video’s engagement rate
Tips to improve your video’s engagement rate
- Integrate “calls to action” into the content of your video
Many people add their call to action as a side comment in their video. It’s not incorporated into the content of the actual video, but rather an extra comment at the end that says, “leave a comment!” or, “make sure you share this with your friends!”. A better way to encourage engagement is to incorporate the reason for engaging into the content of the video. Telling your viewers exactly what to comment, who to share with, or why to like is a great way to boost the amount of people who actually engage with your content.
- Keep things short
The human attention span is short, 8.25 seconds to be specific. That means that your viewers are constantly getting distracted while watching your video. The longer the video, the more your viewers are likely to get distracted. Keeping your videos short and your talking to a minimum is the best way to ensure that your viewers stay until the end and engage in your content.
- Make the main point clear
It’s easy to get excited about the video you’re creating and make it longer than it needs to be. It’s important to remember to keep things concise in a video and keep the main point clear. This helps viewers to better understand the purpose of the video, post their comments, and share the topic with a friend who they might think is interested.
- Add professional subtitles
Professional subtitles improve the SEO of your video as well as the engagement rate. You can improve video engagement by 80% simply by adding subtitles. Subtitles help individuals to stay focused, comprehend more, and stick around until the end. All this leads to more engagement and a better video performance.
- Interact with the viewers
Don’t forget that you can talk to your viewers directly through your videos. It may sound strange, but speaking directly to your viewers helps to break the barrier that a screen can create and encourage them to interact more with your videos. Speak as if you’re right in front of the people watching your video and encourage them to interact with your videos in order to talk to you as well.
- Organize contests or competitions
One great way to encourage engagement is to use engagement as a way to enter a competition. Consider creating a competition and to enter, viewers must share, comment, or like your video. In doing so, you can interact with your viewers while also boosting the video’s performance.
SubCaptioner – Boost your video’s engagement rates with captions and transcripts
SubCaptioner is an online captioning tool that provides accurate captions and transcriptions for videos at just $0.25/minute. By adding our professional caption files to their videos, customers can improve the engagement rates on their videos and the overall performance. It’s easy, affordable and incredibly fast, with captions produced by our automatic captioning system in just minutes. Upload a file to see how it works!
