The clip length nobody tells you about
Ran the numbers on a few hundred podcast/YouTube clips we've cut for clients this year. The pattern that keeps showing up:
35-55 seconds outperforms everything else. Not 15 seconds, not 3 minutes.
Why: short-form platforms need enough runway to build a hook, deliver the payoff, and hit a natural loop point for rewatches. Under 30s, you're often cutting the payoff. Over 60s, you're fighting the algorithm's preference for high completion rates on shorter watch times.
Three things we check on every clip before it ships:
The first 1.5 seconds — if there's no visual or verbal hook, we recut the in-point. Doesn't matter how good the rest is.
A single idea per clip — multi-topic clips test worse. If a 10-minute segment has 3 good ideas, that's 3 clips, not 1.
Captions matching speech rhythm, not sentence structure — word-by-word or short bursts synced to breath pauses, not full sentences dumped on screen.
If you're sitting on long-form content and not repurposing it, you're leaving reach on the table. Happy to answer questions on clip strategy in the comments.