Newspapers have a great chance in today’s multimedia newsrooms to use their resources to make quality videos, yet many — who admittedly are just learning about moving pictures — make simple mistakes that are easily correctable.

Having been a part of Yahoo!’s audio/video division for seven years, I learned quickly to use our internal data to keep our partners’ videos singing along, gathering audience and views. In fact, there’s a whole team of producers working with external groups like ABC news on this very thing at Yahoo! (hi, Thomas!).

In any case, we found successful videos often share many of these characteristics:

• Keeping it short. Edit. Shorten it again. You’re almost there. Ok. Average video watching time at Yahoo! — when I was there — was even shorter than this new comScore figure of 2.8 minutes, which takes into consideration full TV shows. Hold that thought for a second… full, 30- and 60-minute shows. Drop shows, and this goes way down to under a minute. Keep your long packaged videos under three minutes for the best success ratio.
• No videos with only talking heads! Ok, sometimes you have to break this rule with a major announcement. Tip: break the 20 minutes of video of the CEO into 10 sound bites of :30. Add b-roll. No one — and I mean no one — enjoys watching 20 minutes of video just to hear the zingers. Edit like you would for print, keeping the quotes that mean something.
• Use music or additional sound. Audio keeps the pace moving, even if it’s loud ambient to set the scene.
• Use newsroom personalities! Many talented writers also have screen presence, too. Find those who can tell a story and establish their brand.
• Make it fun or insightful rather than simply facts. Viral videos make people smile (usually), or at least they’re thought-provoking. Commercials are a great example of :30 stories that people actually seek online.

How do you know if you’re being successful?

Use your data to see how far users are getting into the videos themselves. McClatchy partners would have to rely mostly on the “completed plays” vs. “overall plays” ratio in the VMIX reporting tools. The higher the ratio, the likelier your return on video investment could mean dollars, too. If you’re over 50 percent on a video, I’m betting that video is under 60 seconds (which holds true in Charlotte for our videos that do get full plays). Also, pay attention to categories… you may get more completion on longer videos if the category of content requires more story-telling.  Lesson — in general, spend more time on each video making it shorter but higher quality, and it will pay off in traffic and revenue opportunities.

In closing, here are a few good examples I’ve seen from around our site, sister sites, and news sites:

• Gas Crisis @ CharlotteObserver.com
• Game On @ TheState.com
• The First Google Phone @ NYTimes.com

I could add a ton more, but I think you get the drift… these don’t meet all qualities, but enough that I can definitely say most people watched to completion. I’d love to see more if you have them.

Upcoming: In future posts, we’ll talk about video usability and interfaces as well as technologies.