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PSA: a guy at Best Buy in Sacramento told me my captions should have 30 words max, and now I'm stuck in a loop
So last week I'm at the Best Buy in Sacramento picking up a charger, and this guy in line behind me sees my phone screen and says my video captions were too long. He said 30 words max or people scroll right past. I cut my captions to 20 words and my saves went up 40 percent in 4 days. But my watch time on the first 3 seconds dropped and my comments got shorter and way less interesting. Now half of me thinks short captions are the whole game and the other half thinks I just trained my audience to skim. Are short captions actually helping your reach or just making your videos dumber?
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the_piper1mo ago
Man, that would drive me nuts too, because the numbers went up but the thing you actually liked making got worse. That is such a weird trade off and I get why you feel stuck in a loop over it. Honestly the part that bugs me is the comments getting shorter, because that means the people who used to actually talk to you are just tapping now. Short captions pull in more people but they pull in the scroll crowd, not the ones who show up for your takes. Maybe split the difference, keep the hook tight but let the back half breathe so the folks who want to read still get something.
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drewr151mo ago
The comments getting shorter is just how things work now, people lurk way more than they post.
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