Note from Cathy: Although I always enjoy reading Dan’s articles, this one is especially timely. I am in the midst of making a bunch of videos, some based on material I have created in the past, such as speeches and other presentations, and this is good advice.

Whether you are starting with existing material or writing everything from word one, brevity is important. Keep your videos short and sweet. Dan suggests a maximum of 240 words for a video of two minutes. That is a good general rule, but some of us talk faster. To calculate your speed, open a document in Word, set a timer to one minute and start reading out loud at a natural speed. When the timer goes off, select all of the words you read, then check the word count.

Include your introduction and call to action in your word count. Many people use a pre-recorded intro or outro with their videos, usually about 10 seconds long. If you do, you may want to reduce your word count a bit to stay under two minutes for the total video.

The script I wrote for the public speaking video by Professor Puppet is a bit over 300 words for a video that is 1:40. But he talks pretty fast! (The total time for the video is 2:24 because of a long call to action outro, something that will not be used on every video I do but I wanted on this one.)

If you are not sure how many words to put in your script, follow Dan’s guideline of about 240 words or less for two minutes or less.

When in doubt, cut it out!

Now on to Dan’s article: [Read more…]