Free Webinar Creation & Management on Youtube

How to Host a Webinar on YouTube for Free

Max Wales

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Promoting products, offering educational content or in-depth tutorials on virtually any subject through webinars will enable you to reach new audiences and offer your services on a worldwide market. There are thousands of webinar software products and online platforms, but most of them are quite expensive and they require you to have a considerable amount of experience with the process of setting up and recording webinars.

An alternative solution is available if your budget is tight, but you’d still like to produce a great webinar. We are going to take you through all the steps you’ll need to take if you’d like to host a webinar for free and help you spread the word about the products and services you’re offering.

The All-in-One Screen Recorder & Video Editor

• Record desktop screen, voiceover, and webcam simultaneously
• Edit recorded clips quickly with a wide range of professional tools
• Built-in plentiful templates and effects
• Export to MP4, MOV, MKV, GIF and multiple formats

Try It Free

For Win 7 or later (64-bit)

Try It Free

For macOS 10.12 or later

Secure Download

Hosting a Webinar for Free

The world’s largest video sharing platform also features broadcasting options that enable its users to schedule events and thus host webinars free of charge. Previously known as the Google Hangouts on Air, the YouTube Live feature is fairly simple to set up, but before you start your first webinar you will need to choose a landing page and a chatbox. If you already have a website you can simply copy and paste the embed link and create a landing page for your webinar, or you can use landing pages software products such as LeadPages or Unbounce if you don’t have your own online domain. For setting up chatboxes for your webinars we recommend using Chatroll or RumbleTalk platforms, although you’ll have to pay a fee if you choose to chat with your audience using these computer programs. So here’s how you can host your first webinar on YouTube for free.

Step 1. Create a YouTube Event

If you don’t already have an account on YouTube, you’ll have to create one before you can schedule your first live event. After making sure that you are logged in to your YouTube account head over to the Creator Studio, and click on the Live Streaming tab. Select the New Live Event option and proceed to insert the basic information about the event such as the title, date when the event should take place, tags or a short description of the webinar you’re planning.

The Advanced Settings tab will enable you the access to options that will allow you to assign the license and the owner of the webinar. You can also choose the language, set the location or select the category of the event.

Step 2. Copy the Embed Code and Paste it To Your Webinar’s Landing Page

When you adjust all the settings for your upcoming event, you should click on the Share button. This action will grant you access to the video’s embed link, so you can just copy it to your website, or to the landing page you’ve created with the appropriate software.

Step 3. Add the Chatbox to The Webinar’s Landing Page

Communicating with the audience during the webinar is important, and for that reason, embedding the chatbox link on the webinar’s landing page is a crucial step that will allow you to interact with the participants of your webinar. Chatbox platforms for live events such as Chatroll or RumbleTalk offer amazing features, but they cannot be used for free, which means that you’ll have to invest a certain amount of money in order to include a chatbox in your webinar.

Step 4. Publish the Webinar’s Landing Page and Get the URL

Making the event public a week or a few days before it takes place will provide you with enough time to promote it. Include the webinar’s landing page URL in the promotional social media posts and make sure to send out invites for your webinar to your friends and colleagues. Email marketing methods can help you get a larger number of attendees, which is the reason why investing time in the promotion of your webinar can prove to be extremely beneficial.

Step 5. Start your Webinar

Hit the Go Live Now button, when you are ready to start your first webinar and enjoy sharing your skills and knowledge with your audience. Even though YouTube offers a simple way to host webinars for free, it lacks the advanced options that enable you to use the prerecorded footage, keep track of the webinar’s analytics or create virtual whiteboards and polls.

Read More to Get : 10 Best Free Video Hosting Sites for Private/Business Online

Max Wales

Max Wales is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Max Wales

Max Wales

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Promoting products, offering educational content or in-depth tutorials on virtually any subject through webinars will enable you to reach new audiences and offer your services on a worldwide market. There are thousands of webinar software products and online platforms, but most of them are quite expensive and they require you to have a considerable amount of experience with the process of setting up and recording webinars.

An alternative solution is available if your budget is tight, but you’d still like to produce a great webinar. We are going to take you through all the steps you’ll need to take if you’d like to host a webinar for free and help you spread the word about the products and services you’re offering.

The All-in-One Screen Recorder & Video Editor

• Record desktop screen, voiceover, and webcam simultaneously
• Edit recorded clips quickly with a wide range of professional tools
• Built-in plentiful templates and effects
• Export to MP4, MOV, MKV, GIF and multiple formats

Try It Free

For Win 7 or later (64-bit)

Try It Free

For macOS 10.12 or later

Secure Download

Hosting a Webinar for Free

The world’s largest video sharing platform also features broadcasting options that enable its users to schedule events and thus host webinars free of charge. Previously known as the Google Hangouts on Air, the YouTube Live feature is fairly simple to set up, but before you start your first webinar you will need to choose a landing page and a chatbox. If you already have a website you can simply copy and paste the embed link and create a landing page for your webinar, or you can use landing pages software products such as LeadPages or Unbounce if you don’t have your own online domain. For setting up chatboxes for your webinars we recommend using Chatroll or RumbleTalk platforms, although you’ll have to pay a fee if you choose to chat with your audience using these computer programs. So here’s how you can host your first webinar on YouTube for free.

Step 1. Create a YouTube Event

If you don’t already have an account on YouTube, you’ll have to create one before you can schedule your first live event. After making sure that you are logged in to your YouTube account head over to the Creator Studio, and click on the Live Streaming tab. Select the New Live Event option and proceed to insert the basic information about the event such as the title, date when the event should take place, tags or a short description of the webinar you’re planning.

The Advanced Settings tab will enable you the access to options that will allow you to assign the license and the owner of the webinar. You can also choose the language, set the location or select the category of the event.

Step 2. Copy the Embed Code and Paste it To Your Webinar’s Landing Page

When you adjust all the settings for your upcoming event, you should click on the Share button. This action will grant you access to the video’s embed link, so you can just copy it to your website, or to the landing page you’ve created with the appropriate software.

Step 3. Add the Chatbox to The Webinar’s Landing Page

Communicating with the audience during the webinar is important, and for that reason, embedding the chatbox link on the webinar’s landing page is a crucial step that will allow you to interact with the participants of your webinar. Chatbox platforms for live events such as Chatroll or RumbleTalk offer amazing features, but they cannot be used for free, which means that you’ll have to invest a certain amount of money in order to include a chatbox in your webinar.

Step 4. Publish the Webinar’s Landing Page and Get the URL

Making the event public a week or a few days before it takes place will provide you with enough time to promote it. Include the webinar’s landing page URL in the promotional social media posts and make sure to send out invites for your webinar to your friends and colleagues. Email marketing methods can help you get a larger number of attendees, which is the reason why investing time in the promotion of your webinar can prove to be extremely beneficial.

Step 5. Start your Webinar

Hit the Go Live Now button, when you are ready to start your first webinar and enjoy sharing your skills and knowledge with your audience. Even though YouTube offers a simple way to host webinars for free, it lacks the advanced options that enable you to use the prerecorded footage, keep track of the webinar’s analytics or create virtual whiteboards and polls.

Read More to Get : 10 Best Free Video Hosting Sites for Private/Business Online

Max Wales

Max Wales is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Max Wales

Max Wales

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Promoting products, offering educational content or in-depth tutorials on virtually any subject through webinars will enable you to reach new audiences and offer your services on a worldwide market. There are thousands of webinar software products and online platforms, but most of them are quite expensive and they require you to have a considerable amount of experience with the process of setting up and recording webinars.

An alternative solution is available if your budget is tight, but you’d still like to produce a great webinar. We are going to take you through all the steps you’ll need to take if you’d like to host a webinar for free and help you spread the word about the products and services you’re offering.

The All-in-One Screen Recorder & Video Editor

• Record desktop screen, voiceover, and webcam simultaneously
• Edit recorded clips quickly with a wide range of professional tools
• Built-in plentiful templates and effects
• Export to MP4, MOV, MKV, GIF and multiple formats

Try It Free

For Win 7 or later (64-bit)

Try It Free

For macOS 10.12 or later

Secure Download

Hosting a Webinar for Free

The world’s largest video sharing platform also features broadcasting options that enable its users to schedule events and thus host webinars free of charge. Previously known as the Google Hangouts on Air, the YouTube Live feature is fairly simple to set up, but before you start your first webinar you will need to choose a landing page and a chatbox. If you already have a website you can simply copy and paste the embed link and create a landing page for your webinar, or you can use landing pages software products such as LeadPages or Unbounce if you don’t have your own online domain. For setting up chatboxes for your webinars we recommend using Chatroll or RumbleTalk platforms, although you’ll have to pay a fee if you choose to chat with your audience using these computer programs. So here’s how you can host your first webinar on YouTube for free.

Step 1. Create a YouTube Event

If you don’t already have an account on YouTube, you’ll have to create one before you can schedule your first live event. After making sure that you are logged in to your YouTube account head over to the Creator Studio, and click on the Live Streaming tab. Select the New Live Event option and proceed to insert the basic information about the event such as the title, date when the event should take place, tags or a short description of the webinar you’re planning.

The Advanced Settings tab will enable you the access to options that will allow you to assign the license and the owner of the webinar. You can also choose the language, set the location or select the category of the event.

Step 2. Copy the Embed Code and Paste it To Your Webinar’s Landing Page

When you adjust all the settings for your upcoming event, you should click on the Share button. This action will grant you access to the video’s embed link, so you can just copy it to your website, or to the landing page you’ve created with the appropriate software.

Step 3. Add the Chatbox to The Webinar’s Landing Page

Communicating with the audience during the webinar is important, and for that reason, embedding the chatbox link on the webinar’s landing page is a crucial step that will allow you to interact with the participants of your webinar. Chatbox platforms for live events such as Chatroll or RumbleTalk offer amazing features, but they cannot be used for free, which means that you’ll have to invest a certain amount of money in order to include a chatbox in your webinar.

Step 4. Publish the Webinar’s Landing Page and Get the URL

Making the event public a week or a few days before it takes place will provide you with enough time to promote it. Include the webinar’s landing page URL in the promotional social media posts and make sure to send out invites for your webinar to your friends and colleagues. Email marketing methods can help you get a larger number of attendees, which is the reason why investing time in the promotion of your webinar can prove to be extremely beneficial.

Step 5. Start your Webinar

Hit the Go Live Now button, when you are ready to start your first webinar and enjoy sharing your skills and knowledge with your audience. Even though YouTube offers a simple way to host webinars for free, it lacks the advanced options that enable you to use the prerecorded footage, keep track of the webinar’s analytics or create virtual whiteboards and polls.

Read More to Get : 10 Best Free Video Hosting Sites for Private/Business Online

Max Wales

Max Wales is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Max Wales

Max Wales

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Promoting products, offering educational content or in-depth tutorials on virtually any subject through webinars will enable you to reach new audiences and offer your services on a worldwide market. There are thousands of webinar software products and online platforms, but most of them are quite expensive and they require you to have a considerable amount of experience with the process of setting up and recording webinars.

An alternative solution is available if your budget is tight, but you’d still like to produce a great webinar. We are going to take you through all the steps you’ll need to take if you’d like to host a webinar for free and help you spread the word about the products and services you’re offering.

The All-in-One Screen Recorder & Video Editor

• Record desktop screen, voiceover, and webcam simultaneously
• Edit recorded clips quickly with a wide range of professional tools
• Built-in plentiful templates and effects
• Export to MP4, MOV, MKV, GIF and multiple formats

Try It Free

For Win 7 or later (64-bit)

Try It Free

For macOS 10.12 or later

Secure Download

Hosting a Webinar for Free

The world’s largest video sharing platform also features broadcasting options that enable its users to schedule events and thus host webinars free of charge. Previously known as the Google Hangouts on Air, the YouTube Live feature is fairly simple to set up, but before you start your first webinar you will need to choose a landing page and a chatbox. If you already have a website you can simply copy and paste the embed link and create a landing page for your webinar, or you can use landing pages software products such as LeadPages or Unbounce if you don’t have your own online domain. For setting up chatboxes for your webinars we recommend using Chatroll or RumbleTalk platforms, although you’ll have to pay a fee if you choose to chat with your audience using these computer programs. So here’s how you can host your first webinar on YouTube for free.

Step 1. Create a YouTube Event

If you don’t already have an account on YouTube, you’ll have to create one before you can schedule your first live event. After making sure that you are logged in to your YouTube account head over to the Creator Studio, and click on the Live Streaming tab. Select the New Live Event option and proceed to insert the basic information about the event such as the title, date when the event should take place, tags or a short description of the webinar you’re planning.

The Advanced Settings tab will enable you the access to options that will allow you to assign the license and the owner of the webinar. You can also choose the language, set the location or select the category of the event.

Step 2. Copy the Embed Code and Paste it To Your Webinar’s Landing Page

When you adjust all the settings for your upcoming event, you should click on the Share button. This action will grant you access to the video’s embed link, so you can just copy it to your website, or to the landing page you’ve created with the appropriate software.

Step 3. Add the Chatbox to The Webinar’s Landing Page

Communicating with the audience during the webinar is important, and for that reason, embedding the chatbox link on the webinar’s landing page is a crucial step that will allow you to interact with the participants of your webinar. Chatbox platforms for live events such as Chatroll or RumbleTalk offer amazing features, but they cannot be used for free, which means that you’ll have to invest a certain amount of money in order to include a chatbox in your webinar.

Step 4. Publish the Webinar’s Landing Page and Get the URL

Making the event public a week or a few days before it takes place will provide you with enough time to promote it. Include the webinar’s landing page URL in the promotional social media posts and make sure to send out invites for your webinar to your friends and colleagues. Email marketing methods can help you get a larger number of attendees, which is the reason why investing time in the promotion of your webinar can prove to be extremely beneficial.

Step 5. Start your Webinar

Hit the Go Live Now button, when you are ready to start your first webinar and enjoy sharing your skills and knowledge with your audience. Even though YouTube offers a simple way to host webinars for free, it lacks the advanced options that enable you to use the prerecorded footage, keep track of the webinar’s analytics or create virtual whiteboards and polls.

Read More to Get : 10 Best Free Video Hosting Sites for Private/Business Online

Max Wales

Max Wales is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Max Wales

Master the Art of Attraction & Retention on YouTube with Our Top 6 Tips

6 Ways To Increase Audience Retention on YouTube

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Audience retention is one of your most important stats on YouTube. It is even more important than your view count. Your view count really only tells you how many people are finding and clicking on your videos, not whether they are actually watching them. Audience retention refers to how much of a video a viewer watches before clicking away, which is very useful information to have. If you know when people are leaving your videos then you know what you need to work on.

You May Also Like: How to analyse your and your competitors’ YouTube Channel >>
How to structure a YouTube video >>

• Part 1: What is Audience Retention?
• Part 2: How to See Your Audience Retention Report in YouTube?
• Part 3: What is a Good Audience Retention Rate on YouTube?
• Part 4: 6 Ways to Increase YouTube Audience Retention

Part 1: What is Audience Retention?

To put it in simple terms, YouTube audience retention is about how much of each video your viewers watch. It’s usually expressed as a percentage, so if your viewer gets half way through, they will have a retention of 50 per cent.

For YouTube analytics, audience retention is taken as a mean of the retention figures for each of your viewers. For example, if you post a ten-minute video and half your viewers get to the five-minute mark, that’s a retention of 50 per cent. If the other half watch it right to the end, that’s a retention of 100 per cent. The mean of these two figures is 75 per cent, and that’s what YouTube will use as your audience retention figure.

This retention rate affects how highly your video is ranked on YouTube, with videos boasting higher audience retention rates appearing higher in the search results than those which do not. This is because both YouTube and Google are highly focussed on customer satisfaction, and a long watch time means a very happy customer was watching that video. For this reason, it’s well worth considering how to increase YouTube audience retention as it demonstrates that you’re making great content as well as helping you get more viewers.

Part 2: How to See Your Audience Retention Report in YouTube?

YouTube will produce reports to help you keep track of your audience retention. There are two types of audience retention reports; absolute and relative. Absolute allows you to view a graph of your video’s retention and see when people might be clicking away, or if they are skipping to later parts of your video. If you lose a lot of viewers in the first 15 seconds of your videos then that is a clear indication that your content is not what the viewers who find your videos really want. The relative report is where your video is compared to the average retention of similar videos.

Note that by ‘similar videos’, YouTube means videos of a similar length. There is no way to compare your videos only to other videos in your genre. The relative report will always be somewhat skewed because your videos will be measured against very different content.

To see an audience retention report log into your YouTube account and go to yourCreator Studio. There, selectAudience RetentionunderAnalytics.

Part 3: What is a Good Audience Retention Rate on YouTube?

When you’re considering how to increase YouTube audience retention, it can be good to have a goal in mind. Obviously 100 per cent is going to be the Holy Grail of retention rates, but how many videos are actually going to achieve that? It only takes for one person to ‘accidentally’ click on your video and rapidly click away, or for someone to have to stop for outside reasons, to drag your average down.

According to the YouTube community, a good goal to aim for is around 50 per cent, but as there is a lot which can affect your retention rate, that number may be different for you. Low view numbers sometimes get higher retention rates because it’s mainly subscribers watching, whereas channels with millions of views may suffer due to more people abandoning. Rather than setting yourself a golden number, focus instead on increasing your retention rate from wherever it is now, and celebrate your own success instead of measuring yourself against others.

Part 4: 6 Ways to Increase YouTube Audience Retention

If you’re serious about learning how to increase YouTube audience retention, here are five of the best ideas for you:

1. Compare your videos

Investigating your audience retention report will highlight the videos where you achieved maximum success. Think about what you did here, and work to replicate that technique. Perhaps you were talking about a product, or maybe your structured your video slightly differently. It’s up to you to dissect your video and find out what it was that kept people watching for longer, so that you can repeat this success in the future. You can also use some influencer marketing platform such as InflueNex to take a look at the videos in your similar channels, and learn the popular videos on their channels.

2. Get on with it

Research shows that YouTube viewers have an incredibly short attention span. Depending on who you believe, you could have as much as six seconds or as little as just three to grab their attention and compel them to carry on watching. If you want to improve your audience retention, coming in with an engaging, attention grabbing statement right at the start is crucial to your success. Nobody wants to waste their time watching someone waffle on for ages about their granny or their favorite hobbies, so get right down to it straight away, by telling them what’s in store.

3. Make it visually engaging

Perhaps all you’ve got is a presentation to make. You’re not a gamer, you’re not showing clips of your cat and you’re not doing a makeup tutorial, so surely all you need is a camera, good lighting and your face, right? Wrong. Viewers like to see the visual content changing, and videos which have a range of scenes are usually far more successful than those where it’s just a person talking to camera. Think about how you can insert cutaways, pop up text, different footage and other graphics to keep it interesting for your viewers.

4. Make it shorter

This one is a no brainer really. If you make a one-minute video, how hard is it going to be to keep viewers watching to the end compared to a 20-minute marathon. However, going too short can be negative too, unless you really do have something very quick and simple to showcase. Long videos work well for YouTubers in the gaming niche, in particular, because viewers want to know the end result, but for most of us, these sorts of viewing statistics are hard to reach.

If you consider a viewer who watches three minutes of your content, would you rather they watched three minutes of a ten-minute video and then clicked away bored, or would you rather they finished an entire video that was only three minutes long? Both in terms of audience retention and of your own reputation, having a viewer finish a short video is much more valuable to you than losing someone half way through a long one. That person probably enjoyed your content to the end and will more than likely watch another one of your videos. Conversely, the one you lost half way through was bored enough to stop watching and will probably not bother viewing any other videos of yours in future.

5. Keep them hooked

Think carefully about your YouTube video structure. Ideally, you will tell them at the very start that you’ve got something amazing to share with them later on. This could be a tip, a tutorial, a new product reveal or even something funny. Whatever it is, tell them they’re going to love it from the start, and keep reminding them to watch from the end to get this gift. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them great content all the way through, just that you should save a carrot for the end of the ride to reward those loyal viewers.

So, now you know how to increase YouTube audience retention, what are you going to do about it? Have a go at modifying your videos to boost the numbers who will watch to the end and let us know how you got on.

6. Use an Excellent Video Editor

Content is the king. It is necessary to use a powerful video editor to help you edit videos. With an excellent video editor like Filmora, you can custom stunning videos effortlessly.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Audience retention is one of your most important stats on YouTube. It is even more important than your view count. Your view count really only tells you how many people are finding and clicking on your videos, not whether they are actually watching them. Audience retention refers to how much of a video a viewer watches before clicking away, which is very useful information to have. If you know when people are leaving your videos then you know what you need to work on.

You May Also Like: How to analyse your and your competitors’ YouTube Channel >>
How to structure a YouTube video >>

• Part 1: What is Audience Retention?
• Part 2: How to See Your Audience Retention Report in YouTube?
• Part 3: What is a Good Audience Retention Rate on YouTube?
• Part 4: 6 Ways to Increase YouTube Audience Retention

Part 1: What is Audience Retention?

To put it in simple terms, YouTube audience retention is about how much of each video your viewers watch. It’s usually expressed as a percentage, so if your viewer gets half way through, they will have a retention of 50 per cent.

For YouTube analytics, audience retention is taken as a mean of the retention figures for each of your viewers. For example, if you post a ten-minute video and half your viewers get to the five-minute mark, that’s a retention of 50 per cent. If the other half watch it right to the end, that’s a retention of 100 per cent. The mean of these two figures is 75 per cent, and that’s what YouTube will use as your audience retention figure.

This retention rate affects how highly your video is ranked on YouTube, with videos boasting higher audience retention rates appearing higher in the search results than those which do not. This is because both YouTube and Google are highly focussed on customer satisfaction, and a long watch time means a very happy customer was watching that video. For this reason, it’s well worth considering how to increase YouTube audience retention as it demonstrates that you’re making great content as well as helping you get more viewers.

Part 2: How to See Your Audience Retention Report in YouTube?

YouTube will produce reports to help you keep track of your audience retention. There are two types of audience retention reports; absolute and relative. Absolute allows you to view a graph of your video’s retention and see when people might be clicking away, or if they are skipping to later parts of your video. If you lose a lot of viewers in the first 15 seconds of your videos then that is a clear indication that your content is not what the viewers who find your videos really want. The relative report is where your video is compared to the average retention of similar videos.

Note that by ‘similar videos’, YouTube means videos of a similar length. There is no way to compare your videos only to other videos in your genre. The relative report will always be somewhat skewed because your videos will be measured against very different content.

To see an audience retention report log into your YouTube account and go to yourCreator Studio. There, selectAudience RetentionunderAnalytics.

Part 3: What is a Good Audience Retention Rate on YouTube?

When you’re considering how to increase YouTube audience retention, it can be good to have a goal in mind. Obviously 100 per cent is going to be the Holy Grail of retention rates, but how many videos are actually going to achieve that? It only takes for one person to ‘accidentally’ click on your video and rapidly click away, or for someone to have to stop for outside reasons, to drag your average down.

According to the YouTube community, a good goal to aim for is around 50 per cent, but as there is a lot which can affect your retention rate, that number may be different for you. Low view numbers sometimes get higher retention rates because it’s mainly subscribers watching, whereas channels with millions of views may suffer due to more people abandoning. Rather than setting yourself a golden number, focus instead on increasing your retention rate from wherever it is now, and celebrate your own success instead of measuring yourself against others.

Part 4: 6 Ways to Increase YouTube Audience Retention

If you’re serious about learning how to increase YouTube audience retention, here are five of the best ideas for you:

1. Compare your videos

Investigating your audience retention report will highlight the videos where you achieved maximum success. Think about what you did here, and work to replicate that technique. Perhaps you were talking about a product, or maybe your structured your video slightly differently. It’s up to you to dissect your video and find out what it was that kept people watching for longer, so that you can repeat this success in the future. You can also use some influencer marketing platform such as InflueNex to take a look at the videos in your similar channels, and learn the popular videos on their channels.

2. Get on with it

Research shows that YouTube viewers have an incredibly short attention span. Depending on who you believe, you could have as much as six seconds or as little as just three to grab their attention and compel them to carry on watching. If you want to improve your audience retention, coming in with an engaging, attention grabbing statement right at the start is crucial to your success. Nobody wants to waste their time watching someone waffle on for ages about their granny or their favorite hobbies, so get right down to it straight away, by telling them what’s in store.

3. Make it visually engaging

Perhaps all you’ve got is a presentation to make. You’re not a gamer, you’re not showing clips of your cat and you’re not doing a makeup tutorial, so surely all you need is a camera, good lighting and your face, right? Wrong. Viewers like to see the visual content changing, and videos which have a range of scenes are usually far more successful than those where it’s just a person talking to camera. Think about how you can insert cutaways, pop up text, different footage and other graphics to keep it interesting for your viewers.

4. Make it shorter

This one is a no brainer really. If you make a one-minute video, how hard is it going to be to keep viewers watching to the end compared to a 20-minute marathon. However, going too short can be negative too, unless you really do have something very quick and simple to showcase. Long videos work well for YouTubers in the gaming niche, in particular, because viewers want to know the end result, but for most of us, these sorts of viewing statistics are hard to reach.

If you consider a viewer who watches three minutes of your content, would you rather they watched three minutes of a ten-minute video and then clicked away bored, or would you rather they finished an entire video that was only three minutes long? Both in terms of audience retention and of your own reputation, having a viewer finish a short video is much more valuable to you than losing someone half way through a long one. That person probably enjoyed your content to the end and will more than likely watch another one of your videos. Conversely, the one you lost half way through was bored enough to stop watching and will probably not bother viewing any other videos of yours in future.

5. Keep them hooked

Think carefully about your YouTube video structure. Ideally, you will tell them at the very start that you’ve got something amazing to share with them later on. This could be a tip, a tutorial, a new product reveal or even something funny. Whatever it is, tell them they’re going to love it from the start, and keep reminding them to watch from the end to get this gift. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them great content all the way through, just that you should save a carrot for the end of the ride to reward those loyal viewers.

So, now you know how to increase YouTube audience retention, what are you going to do about it? Have a go at modifying your videos to boost the numbers who will watch to the end and let us know how you got on.

6. Use an Excellent Video Editor

Content is the king. It is necessary to use a powerful video editor to help you edit videos. With an excellent video editor like Filmora, you can custom stunning videos effortlessly.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Audience retention is one of your most important stats on YouTube. It is even more important than your view count. Your view count really only tells you how many people are finding and clicking on your videos, not whether they are actually watching them. Audience retention refers to how much of a video a viewer watches before clicking away, which is very useful information to have. If you know when people are leaving your videos then you know what you need to work on.

You May Also Like: How to analyse your and your competitors’ YouTube Channel >>
How to structure a YouTube video >>

• Part 1: What is Audience Retention?
• Part 2: How to See Your Audience Retention Report in YouTube?
• Part 3: What is a Good Audience Retention Rate on YouTube?
• Part 4: 6 Ways to Increase YouTube Audience Retention

Part 1: What is Audience Retention?

To put it in simple terms, YouTube audience retention is about how much of each video your viewers watch. It’s usually expressed as a percentage, so if your viewer gets half way through, they will have a retention of 50 per cent.

For YouTube analytics, audience retention is taken as a mean of the retention figures for each of your viewers. For example, if you post a ten-minute video and half your viewers get to the five-minute mark, that’s a retention of 50 per cent. If the other half watch it right to the end, that’s a retention of 100 per cent. The mean of these two figures is 75 per cent, and that’s what YouTube will use as your audience retention figure.

This retention rate affects how highly your video is ranked on YouTube, with videos boasting higher audience retention rates appearing higher in the search results than those which do not. This is because both YouTube and Google are highly focussed on customer satisfaction, and a long watch time means a very happy customer was watching that video. For this reason, it’s well worth considering how to increase YouTube audience retention as it demonstrates that you’re making great content as well as helping you get more viewers.

Part 2: How to See Your Audience Retention Report in YouTube?

YouTube will produce reports to help you keep track of your audience retention. There are two types of audience retention reports; absolute and relative. Absolute allows you to view a graph of your video’s retention and see when people might be clicking away, or if they are skipping to later parts of your video. If you lose a lot of viewers in the first 15 seconds of your videos then that is a clear indication that your content is not what the viewers who find your videos really want. The relative report is where your video is compared to the average retention of similar videos.

Note that by ‘similar videos’, YouTube means videos of a similar length. There is no way to compare your videos only to other videos in your genre. The relative report will always be somewhat skewed because your videos will be measured against very different content.

To see an audience retention report log into your YouTube account and go to yourCreator Studio. There, selectAudience RetentionunderAnalytics.

Part 3: What is a Good Audience Retention Rate on YouTube?

When you’re considering how to increase YouTube audience retention, it can be good to have a goal in mind. Obviously 100 per cent is going to be the Holy Grail of retention rates, but how many videos are actually going to achieve that? It only takes for one person to ‘accidentally’ click on your video and rapidly click away, or for someone to have to stop for outside reasons, to drag your average down.

According to the YouTube community, a good goal to aim for is around 50 per cent, but as there is a lot which can affect your retention rate, that number may be different for you. Low view numbers sometimes get higher retention rates because it’s mainly subscribers watching, whereas channels with millions of views may suffer due to more people abandoning. Rather than setting yourself a golden number, focus instead on increasing your retention rate from wherever it is now, and celebrate your own success instead of measuring yourself against others.

Part 4: 6 Ways to Increase YouTube Audience Retention

If you’re serious about learning how to increase YouTube audience retention, here are five of the best ideas for you:

1. Compare your videos

Investigating your audience retention report will highlight the videos where you achieved maximum success. Think about what you did here, and work to replicate that technique. Perhaps you were talking about a product, or maybe your structured your video slightly differently. It’s up to you to dissect your video and find out what it was that kept people watching for longer, so that you can repeat this success in the future. You can also use some influencer marketing platform such as InflueNex to take a look at the videos in your similar channels, and learn the popular videos on their channels.

2. Get on with it

Research shows that YouTube viewers have an incredibly short attention span. Depending on who you believe, you could have as much as six seconds or as little as just three to grab their attention and compel them to carry on watching. If you want to improve your audience retention, coming in with an engaging, attention grabbing statement right at the start is crucial to your success. Nobody wants to waste their time watching someone waffle on for ages about their granny or their favorite hobbies, so get right down to it straight away, by telling them what’s in store.

3. Make it visually engaging

Perhaps all you’ve got is a presentation to make. You’re not a gamer, you’re not showing clips of your cat and you’re not doing a makeup tutorial, so surely all you need is a camera, good lighting and your face, right? Wrong. Viewers like to see the visual content changing, and videos which have a range of scenes are usually far more successful than those where it’s just a person talking to camera. Think about how you can insert cutaways, pop up text, different footage and other graphics to keep it interesting for your viewers.

4. Make it shorter

This one is a no brainer really. If you make a one-minute video, how hard is it going to be to keep viewers watching to the end compared to a 20-minute marathon. However, going too short can be negative too, unless you really do have something very quick and simple to showcase. Long videos work well for YouTubers in the gaming niche, in particular, because viewers want to know the end result, but for most of us, these sorts of viewing statistics are hard to reach.

If you consider a viewer who watches three minutes of your content, would you rather they watched three minutes of a ten-minute video and then clicked away bored, or would you rather they finished an entire video that was only three minutes long? Both in terms of audience retention and of your own reputation, having a viewer finish a short video is much more valuable to you than losing someone half way through a long one. That person probably enjoyed your content to the end and will more than likely watch another one of your videos. Conversely, the one you lost half way through was bored enough to stop watching and will probably not bother viewing any other videos of yours in future.

5. Keep them hooked

Think carefully about your YouTube video structure. Ideally, you will tell them at the very start that you’ve got something amazing to share with them later on. This could be a tip, a tutorial, a new product reveal or even something funny. Whatever it is, tell them they’re going to love it from the start, and keep reminding them to watch from the end to get this gift. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them great content all the way through, just that you should save a carrot for the end of the ride to reward those loyal viewers.

So, now you know how to increase YouTube audience retention, what are you going to do about it? Have a go at modifying your videos to boost the numbers who will watch to the end and let us know how you got on.

6. Use an Excellent Video Editor

Content is the king. It is necessary to use a powerful video editor to help you edit videos. With an excellent video editor like Filmora, you can custom stunning videos effortlessly.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

Audience retention is one of your most important stats on YouTube. It is even more important than your view count. Your view count really only tells you how many people are finding and clicking on your videos, not whether they are actually watching them. Audience retention refers to how much of a video a viewer watches before clicking away, which is very useful information to have. If you know when people are leaving your videos then you know what you need to work on.

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How to structure a YouTube video >>

• Part 1: What is Audience Retention?
• Part 2: How to See Your Audience Retention Report in YouTube?
• Part 3: What is a Good Audience Retention Rate on YouTube?
• Part 4: 6 Ways to Increase YouTube Audience Retention

Part 1: What is Audience Retention?

To put it in simple terms, YouTube audience retention is about how much of each video your viewers watch. It’s usually expressed as a percentage, so if your viewer gets half way through, they will have a retention of 50 per cent.

For YouTube analytics, audience retention is taken as a mean of the retention figures for each of your viewers. For example, if you post a ten-minute video and half your viewers get to the five-minute mark, that’s a retention of 50 per cent. If the other half watch it right to the end, that’s a retention of 100 per cent. The mean of these two figures is 75 per cent, and that’s what YouTube will use as your audience retention figure.

This retention rate affects how highly your video is ranked on YouTube, with videos boasting higher audience retention rates appearing higher in the search results than those which do not. This is because both YouTube and Google are highly focussed on customer satisfaction, and a long watch time means a very happy customer was watching that video. For this reason, it’s well worth considering how to increase YouTube audience retention as it demonstrates that you’re making great content as well as helping you get more viewers.

Part 2: How to See Your Audience Retention Report in YouTube?

YouTube will produce reports to help you keep track of your audience retention. There are two types of audience retention reports; absolute and relative. Absolute allows you to view a graph of your video’s retention and see when people might be clicking away, or if they are skipping to later parts of your video. If you lose a lot of viewers in the first 15 seconds of your videos then that is a clear indication that your content is not what the viewers who find your videos really want. The relative report is where your video is compared to the average retention of similar videos.

Note that by ‘similar videos’, YouTube means videos of a similar length. There is no way to compare your videos only to other videos in your genre. The relative report will always be somewhat skewed because your videos will be measured against very different content.

To see an audience retention report log into your YouTube account and go to yourCreator Studio. There, selectAudience RetentionunderAnalytics.

Part 3: What is a Good Audience Retention Rate on YouTube?

When you’re considering how to increase YouTube audience retention, it can be good to have a goal in mind. Obviously 100 per cent is going to be the Holy Grail of retention rates, but how many videos are actually going to achieve that? It only takes for one person to ‘accidentally’ click on your video and rapidly click away, or for someone to have to stop for outside reasons, to drag your average down.

According to the YouTube community, a good goal to aim for is around 50 per cent, but as there is a lot which can affect your retention rate, that number may be different for you. Low view numbers sometimes get higher retention rates because it’s mainly subscribers watching, whereas channels with millions of views may suffer due to more people abandoning. Rather than setting yourself a golden number, focus instead on increasing your retention rate from wherever it is now, and celebrate your own success instead of measuring yourself against others.

Part 4: 6 Ways to Increase YouTube Audience Retention

If you’re serious about learning how to increase YouTube audience retention, here are five of the best ideas for you:

1. Compare your videos

Investigating your audience retention report will highlight the videos where you achieved maximum success. Think about what you did here, and work to replicate that technique. Perhaps you were talking about a product, or maybe your structured your video slightly differently. It’s up to you to dissect your video and find out what it was that kept people watching for longer, so that you can repeat this success in the future. You can also use some influencer marketing platform such as InflueNex to take a look at the videos in your similar channels, and learn the popular videos on their channels.

2. Get on with it

Research shows that YouTube viewers have an incredibly short attention span. Depending on who you believe, you could have as much as six seconds or as little as just three to grab their attention and compel them to carry on watching. If you want to improve your audience retention, coming in with an engaging, attention grabbing statement right at the start is crucial to your success. Nobody wants to waste their time watching someone waffle on for ages about their granny or their favorite hobbies, so get right down to it straight away, by telling them what’s in store.

3. Make it visually engaging

Perhaps all you’ve got is a presentation to make. You’re not a gamer, you’re not showing clips of your cat and you’re not doing a makeup tutorial, so surely all you need is a camera, good lighting and your face, right? Wrong. Viewers like to see the visual content changing, and videos which have a range of scenes are usually far more successful than those where it’s just a person talking to camera. Think about how you can insert cutaways, pop up text, different footage and other graphics to keep it interesting for your viewers.

4. Make it shorter

This one is a no brainer really. If you make a one-minute video, how hard is it going to be to keep viewers watching to the end compared to a 20-minute marathon. However, going too short can be negative too, unless you really do have something very quick and simple to showcase. Long videos work well for YouTubers in the gaming niche, in particular, because viewers want to know the end result, but for most of us, these sorts of viewing statistics are hard to reach.

If you consider a viewer who watches three minutes of your content, would you rather they watched three minutes of a ten-minute video and then clicked away bored, or would you rather they finished an entire video that was only three minutes long? Both in terms of audience retention and of your own reputation, having a viewer finish a short video is much more valuable to you than losing someone half way through a long one. That person probably enjoyed your content to the end and will more than likely watch another one of your videos. Conversely, the one you lost half way through was bored enough to stop watching and will probably not bother viewing any other videos of yours in future.

5. Keep them hooked

Think carefully about your YouTube video structure. Ideally, you will tell them at the very start that you’ve got something amazing to share with them later on. This could be a tip, a tutorial, a new product reveal or even something funny. Whatever it is, tell them they’re going to love it from the start, and keep reminding them to watch from the end to get this gift. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t give them great content all the way through, just that you should save a carrot for the end of the ride to reward those loyal viewers.

So, now you know how to increase YouTube audience retention, what are you going to do about it? Have a go at modifying your videos to boost the numbers who will watch to the end and let us know how you got on.

6. Use an Excellent Video Editor

Content is the king. It is necessary to use a powerful video editor to help you edit videos. With an excellent video editor like Filmora, you can custom stunning videos effortlessly.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

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