A guide to audience retention
“Success” on social media depends on a variety of factors. Tailoring content to your audience, ensuring your content is clickable, and generally providing the highest quality content are essential if you want to go viral. When creating content, algorithms are king, and one of the algorithms' favourite things is audience retention. Every creator will say the same: As long as your retention is good, your views will follow.
So what is retention? How is it measured? And how can you improve it?
To put it simply: Audience retention is a measure of how long your viewer watches your video. The longer the retention, the better. High audience retention is an indicator of the fact your viewer is enjoying themselves. And as we know, algorithms are a sucker for that!
Audience retention works the same across all video formats, the scale just changes! We usually measure audience retention in a percentage. Having 100% retention is great, 25%, maybe not so much. There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to how good a certain percentage is! Short-form content usually averages a higher retention rate than long-form content. And even in their respective formats, genres can differ in retention!
A few benchmarks for the platforms:
YouTube: 45-80%
TikTok: 65-90%
Instagram reels: 45-65%
So how do you improve retention? Well, this is something creators don’t all agree on. This is also something that might differ from creator to creator. A key thing is diving into the stats of your content. Almost every platform offers advanced analytics and this can help you find the parts in your video that could improve.
The most common mistake made by new creators is not filling their content enough. Getting high retention is all about keeping the viewer’s attention.
This means no dead space, no quiet parts, and most important of all, making sure they have something to keep watching. Keep your videos snappy and keep the viewer interested by letting them know what's next!
There is no magic formula to increase your retention. It’s a bummer, we know. One thing that is great about retention is the fact that it’s super easy to see results! Analyzing your analytics and using the data to improve your video can yield instant results!
Take the time to analyze the ins and outs of your content and upload videos that are better than the last, and you will see the results!