Use This Metric To Get More Views on Your TikTok Videos
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TikTok, like other social media platforms, wants one thing — for you to spend more time on the platform. They have various tools to analyze this and subsequently, the algorithms adjust the content they show us. TikTok has a metric available to us that correlates with time spent on the platform. That metric is Watch Time. Here’s how it works, how to find it, and how to use it to increase views…
How It Works
As mentioned, TikTok wants to retain people on the platform. The way they achieve this is through serving users the best content to fit their tastes. Advertising, word-of-mouth, and influencers bring people onto the platform. Once on the platform, it’s up to their users’ own videos to keep other users entertained. The only control TikTok has is curation of those videos. (And it’s DAMN good at it)
Watch Time is a per video metric. As the name implies, it shows the average amount of time people spend watching your video.
The higher the Watch Time on your video, the more time users are spending on the platform; TikTok likes that your video is keeping users on its platform and therefore shows your video to more people, increasing your view count; and if your video is receiving high engagement (likes and comments), the algorithm will continue to show your video to more people.
How to Find It
Here’s how to find Watch Time:
- Click on one of your videos
- Click on the three dots in the bottom right hand corner
- Click Analytics
- See Average Watch Time
This Analytics page also gives some other great insights such as how people are discovering the video (Traffic Source Types) and the distribution of viewers by territory (Audience Territories).
How To Use It To Increase Views
So how do you actually use Watch Time to create better videos? Well, take a look at the videos you have posted that have received the most views versus the ones that have received fewer views. Analyze what you perhaps did well versus what you did not do well. If your Watch Time is only 5s for a 20s video that means users getting bored 25% into your video. I like to call that moment the “break point.”
The Break Point
The break point is the time at which people swipe to see the next video. It’s essentially just looking at Watch Time another way: instead of seeing it as a way to measure how long people are watching your video, the idea of the breakpoint uses Watch Time to measure the moment at which the average viewer has swiped out of your video. The question is flipped from “For how long are people watching my video?” to “When are people actively swiping out of my video?” Thinking about Watch Time in this manner can help revamp your content. For example, if you see your break point is consistently around 5s, you know you have to re-hook the user at that point in your videos. You may want to try adding text, switching up the “scene”, or adding an effect. The idea here is to use Watch Time to figure out your break point and determine something you can do to grab users’ attention at that point.
Why It Is Important
Simply put, Watch Time impacts the TikTok algorithm. The algorithm ranks videos by their ability to keep users on the platform. While yes, engagement is very important and does impact the algorithm as well, I think Watch Time is a more undervalued metric. As with every social platform, TikTok wants people to stay on their platform for as long as possible. Therefore if your video is able to retain users’ attention, TikTok will show it to more users. Attention is the first step of great content but retention, in the form of longer Watch Time, is key to increasing your views.
Originally published at https://joshdviner.com on April 6, 2021.
