How to Add Chapters to YouTube Videos to Increase Engagement

Since 2005, YouTube has been consistently growing as a video-sharing platform and is also a great site for video marketing.

18:24 27 February 2021

With new features being included regularly, Chapters is now one of the latest.

 

This new feature allows you to divide long videos into chapters that can help your audience to choose the parts they want to watch. This helps you to increase engagement on YouTube by encouraging your viewers to watch longer videos.

 

Viewers will be able to view the chapter titles on the video’s progress bar and easily choose the topic of their interest. Adding chapters to your videos also increases its exposure and it appears at the top of search result pages.

 

These benefits to adding chapters will help you to get more views on videos. The feature makes it easier for you to gain popularity and engagement on this platform. In this article, we will be sharing the steps to adding chapters as well as discussing the use of this feature to increase engagement.

 

How to Add Chapters on YouTube Videos

 

Adding chapters to YouTube videos is quite straightforward. First, you need to identify the different chapters. To do this, note down the timestamps on your video when the topic changes.

 

Timestamps are written with hour, minute, and second, each divided by a colon in between. For example, 1:04:25 is the right format for a timestamp. If your video is shorter than an hour, then it can be written like 15:54. Remember to add a colon without any space on either side of it.

 

Also, for chapters to appear on the progress bar, you need to add a timestamp for 00:00. If your video is less than 10 minutes, you can use 0:00 as the format, otherwise, you must use 00:00 as the format.

 

The next step is that you need to add these timestamps with the chapter title to the description of your video. This should be written in the following way:

 

Timestamps

 

00:00 – Introduction
02:30 – First Chapter
05:24 – Second Chapter
10:45 – Third Chapter… and so on

 

This also acts as an index for your viewers. Once you have added your timestamps to the description, you are good to go. The progress bar is automatically divided according to the timestamps you have provided.

 

Now that you know how to add chapters to your videos, let us look at how you can use this feature to increase audience engagement.

 

1. Label Your Chapters Correctly

 

Your chapters will act as a guide for your viewers so make them as brief yet descriptive as possible. Avoid adding too many or too little topics, and choose accurate titles. It is advisable to add chapters at points where there is a definite shift from the previous topic.

 

Since YouTube also functions as a search engine, you must apply SEO strategies to all your videos to increase their exposure and visibility. You can also inculcate such techniques when naming the chapters. Use high-ranking keywords in your chapter titles.

Make sure the keywords are relevant to the topic being discussed as well. Keep the titles at a length of a few words so that the viewer can view the whole title on the progress bar and it doesn’t get cut off.

 

2. Choose the Right Videos

 

It is important that you use the right videos to add chapters. If your video is just 3 minutes long, there is no need to add chapters. However, if your video is around 10 or more minutes long, adding chapters can do wonders for its engagement.

 

Chapters work best for educational and instructional videos. For example, if you are compiling a few recipes into a single video, you could divide the video into one chapter per recipe. The same idea could be used for a how-to video, where each chapter is a step.

 

Other videos where you could add chapters are speeches and video listicles. For a video listicle, each list item can be a chapter.

 

3. Try it Out on Existing Videos

 

Before you add chapters to new videos, you might want to try it out on older videos first. Choose a video that seems appropriate for adding chapters and create timestamps in the description.

 

Now, wait a few days and analyse the video’s performance before and after you added chapters to it. If you see an increase in audience engagement and views on the video, it is a great sign. It means that you are adding the right chapters to the right type of video.

 

On the other hand, if you do not see any significant increase in views or engagement, you might want to edit the chapter titles or timestamps. You may even consider trying this out on different videos.

 

Once you get the hang of this process, you can even create videos in a way in which you can easily accommodate chapters. This can be done by adding in a small pause or a musical interval to make the switch between chapters clean when there is any significant change in topic.

 

Using these tips, you can rank higher in YouTube algorithms and thereby boost your popularity on this platform. For more information on YouTube Chapters, check out this link! This is a fairly easy feature to use and you have nothing to lose but a lot to gain with it.