One of the highlights of this week was delivering a webinar for the Chartered Insurance Institute – ‘How to get over your video fears’. It was well received and at the end of the webinar, we received some excellent questions. One of those questions has inspired this article – How long should a live video be?

There are a lot of reasons for people to body swerve Live Video, the tech and their confidence being two of the main barriers. One of the other things we come across regularly is working out how to construct the video. What to include or leave out, whether scripted or unscripted. So here are a few thoughts for you on the topic!

How long should a live video be?

To begin with, don’t worry about how many seconds or minutes you go for – just get it done! There’s enough to think about already without adding to the pressure, so relax. The more you do live video, the more seasoned you become, and as your confidence improves, you’ll find that your videos naturally hit optimum length.

That optimum is currently three minutes as a minimum. Each platform has its own ideal run times, and what they recommend is often changing. If you’re doing regular lives throughout the week I’d suggest 15-20 mins each is a good length, or if you are doing lives once a week as part of a regular and ongoing schedule (like the GU Live Lunch, for example) then I’d suggest 45 minutes up to an hour.

Reading that answer, I really want you to focus on the three minutes rather than the 45 minutes! Three minutes is easy when you have the right structure in mind for your video!

Structuring Your Live Video For Optimum Length

To reiterate, when you start out, do NOT worry about how long your live videos are! The content itself is far more important and so you need a framework you can follow easily to keep you on track and on point. Something to help ensure you don’t miss anything out. So here’s the framework I suggest when I’m talking to coaching clients.

1. INTRO yourself!
2. WHAT are you going to talk about today
3. WHY people should listen
4. DELIVER the message
5. WHAT IF people don’t listen or don’t take action
6. ONE THING people should do next or take away
7. THANKS

Admittedly, we take a bit of time talking this through and shaping it, but the following has helped several people in the past to give them that last little push towards creating video content. (Whether that’s live or not!)

Things to Avoid…

There are a few things that we should probably avoid. For example, think about the environment you’re in before you go live. Make sure you’re using a mic, or at least a headset (your viewers will forgive bad video but not bad sound). Remember there’s always a bit of a delay between you hitting the go live button and Facebook letting people know you’re live, then another delay while those people respond to the notification too! So don’t give up too quickly thinking no one is watching. Also, don’t spend too long at the beginning just waiting for people to join!

There are a bunch of more detailed tips I share with our clients and with the team here at Green Umbrella, but I don’t want to overwhelm you with this article! If you need some help with your lives, ping me a specific question via Live Chat or book in with one of the team and we can help you figure out the details so you can smash your live videos!