I’m not going to criticise any business which has made sales and support videos, because those businesses are already working harder than competitors who haven’t bothered. However, some videos do outstay their welcome. As much as anything else online, they need to be brief. Look at how much more attractive these videos seem, because they tell you from the outset that they’re going to get to the point. Some studies suggest that business videos should be about 2 minutes long, others that they should end before the recognised attention drop-off points of 2, 6 and 12 minutes. The important thing however is not to sacrifice quality for quantity.
Sales demo videos can probably be the longest, because the prospect has already shown an interest, but even so, make them as snappy as possible. A good format for the story might be similar to the news story which I described a couple of days ago. Tutorials are often the worst offenders in terms of length: there’s a reason those sped-up cookery videos are so popular. Sure, it might take 10 minutes of complex fiddling about to replace the batteries in your widget threader, and that’s why a video is useful, but it doesn’t need to be shown in real time.