Have You Got My Attention? You Have 5 Seconds.

Statistics show that we have about 5 seconds to engage our viewers at the beginning of our videos or they will move on to other competing demands on their time. In this week’s blogpost I share some ideas of how you can use those few upfront moments to grab the attention of your students or viewers.

Have I Got Your Attention?

Make Sure You Know Your Purpose

Start out by thinking about your purpose for the video. A video’s purpose will generally fall into one of four categories according to Dale Carnegie:

• To make something clear
• To impress and convince
• To get action
• To entertain

Once you know why you are creating the video it will be easier to determine what makes the most sense to use to grab the viewer’s attention.

Below are the four main types of screencasts

and some tips for gaining the viewer’s attention in the first few seconds

For a marketing or sales video you can do this through:

• Stories and examples: You could start with an example of how to effectively understand a customer’s needs through open questioning – the ‘Let’s show you how it’s done’ technique. Or take the opposite approach and start with an example of a missed opportunity where a customer service assistant didn’t make the sale.
• Challenging current perceptions: Lead with a statement about your product – for example ‘The monthly fees are expensive’, ‘It’s complex to use’, ‘It’s for business use’ – then go on to dispel the myth.

If it’s a software demo you could start with telling and showing

• The best benefit of the software
• The final report or output that they will have created when they use it
• The coolest feature of your program

For a full e-learning training course

• One effective technique is to use quizzes or scenarios at the very beginning.  For example, you might start off your course with a question that they have to answer which, based on their reply, takes them to a different path in your course.
  

  Create a Scenario

• Or try getting stories from customers and lead with those. A story that shows what can happen when things go wrong has been found to be very useful. You can get the learner wondering if they could make a similar mistake and then what they would do about it.

When I create a Tutorial

Often the only thing that is needed at the beginning of a software tutorial is a statement of the goal of the video such as

• In this video you will learn how to create a table in Microsoft Word or
• A title screen with the goal or a descriptive name for the video

Not a lot of work has to be put into a snazzy opening for a software tutorial because the viewer usually has a problem to be solved and is already highly motivated to learn when they choose to watch it.

If you make sure the first few seconds of your video gets the viewer focused and attentive to your content you are much more likely to fulfill the main purpose of your video, whatever that may be for you or your company.