From the course: Strategies for Creating Viral Short Form Content

How the short-form algorithms work

From the course: Strategies for Creating Viral Short Form Content

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How the short-form algorithms work

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- So what exactly makes videos get views? Well, whether it's YouTube shorts or TikTok or Instagram the algorithms on these platforms run very similarly. They all focus on one metric and that is audience retention. Audience retention is how long a viewer spends watching a video. By relying on this metric these platforms know that a viewer is satisfied with a video and then recommends that video out to more people. The algorithm will also start to recommend for that viewer more content related to that video. Things like likes, comments and shares can help contribute to the success of a video. But people usually like, comment and share after they've watched a video through till the end. So our goal needs to be audience retention. The length of your short can also play a role in how successful your short form content is. A study done by Patty Galloway and Chris Giletta found that on YouTube shorts if a video had an average view duration above 50 seconds that video averaged 4.1 million views. Now, that's not to say that you can't have a high performing short if your video is not long in length, but that these algorithms just really want the most audience retention as possible. So long as people watch your video till the end or even watch it twice, your video is going to perform.

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