How to Practically Get 4000 Hours of Watch Time on YouTube
YouTube is the most preferred platform for sharing videos, followed by Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram (Source: Oberlo). It’s quite obvious that such a massive video-sharing platform creates fierce competition for YouTubers. Hence, it becomes easy for newbies and new channels to get lost in such a huge crowd. If you want to thrive and survive as a successful creator, you need to pay attention to the watch time metric on your channel.
Many creators buy YouTube watch hours for their channels. Do you know the reason why they are so keen on increasing watch time? The logic is simple. The more people watch your videos, the more YouTube is likely to promote them in their search or recommendation features and hence more visibility.
Now, meeting the criteria for monetization is not that easy. For new channels, the increment in watch time and subscribers count happens very slowly. Sometimes it can take years to organically reach the threshold.
Ask yourself. Do you have that much time and patience? Can you wait for such an extended period before you start earning money?
Of course NOT! Everybody wants to see the results of their hard work fast. The primary goal of all YouTubers is to create content and earn money.
Get 4000 Hours Of Watch Time: Top 9 Strategies
1. Start With An Intro
The first 15 secs of your videos are crucial. This is the time that convinces your audience to watch the full content. Hence, give the first few seconds your best shot. Make awesome intros to grab the attention of your viewers.
Also, try to make your intros as relevant as possible. Adding intros to every video also helps in building brand recognition so make sure not to upload any content on your channel without them.
2. Make Relevant Content
This is where most of the creators go wrong. You cannot just create eye-catching thumbnails and titles for the sake of getting views. Your viewers should be able to get what they expect from your channel.
If you want your viewers to become loyal subscribers, make sure to upload relevant content. Irrelevance gives rise to mistrust and your channel will get a bad reputation because of that.
3. Use Pattern Interrupts In Your Videos
Pattern interrupts in videos are usually used to make your viewers get rid of boredom. They can be anything that changes the flow of the content so that it doesn’t seem repetitive or boring. For example, a different camera angle, B-roll, or on-screen graphics.
This technique helps your viewers to stick around and helps creators to easily increase YouTube watch hours on their channels.
If you want to decrease the bounce rate on your channel, then you need to implement pattern interruptions in all your videos.
4. Do Keyword Research
Video SEO is extremely important when it comes to building a career on the second largest search engine in the world. More than 500 hours of content is uploaded on YouTube every minute (Source: Statista). Without the usage of proper keywords, you will have difficulty ranking your content on the search results page.
Before creating videos for your channel, head over to Keyword research tools and find keywords related to your topic. You can also use autocomplete suggestions on YouTube to get ideas.
One more trick is to do research on your competitors and see the type of content they upload on their channels, look for tags and keywords and also go through the video descriptions. Use that information as an inspiration for your upcoming videos. DO NOT COPY THEIR CONTENT. Find out what their content is missing and create your videos with more information.
5. Tell Stories
73% of viewers want to see entertaining videos on social media (Source: HubSpot). Conveying stories distinctly and interestingly hooks your audience to your channel for a longer time. Storytelling is an art in itself and if your videos can emotionally connect with your viewers, then I can guarantee that you can take your channel to the next level.
6. Collaborate
Collaborating with other YouTubers will help to drive their traffic to your channel. Working with other creators of your niche will expand your reach and increase YouTube watch hours on your channel.
7. Create Longer Videos
Although people prefer to watch short videos, there is an advantage to having longer videos on your channel. A shorter video needs more viewers to get the same overall watch time similar to a longer video with fewer viewers.
Hence, if you publish longer videos, you can still get sufficient watch time with dedicated subscribers on your channel.
8. Develop A Video Series
If you connect related videos, it will massively increase watch time on your channel. A video series helps to glue your viewers and make them keep watching other content on your channel.
9. Use YouTube Analytics
Consider YouTube Analytics as your best friend and best critic. It gives insight into the performance of your channel. You can also check the data on your videos and find out the cause of the drop-off times. These metrics will help you to find out the flaws and assess the factors that might not be working. With that information, you can modify your content and improve future uploads.
You will get 4000 watch hours on YouTube within a year if you follow the strategies mentioned above. It takes time to implement everything so be patient and work hard.