Short-form isn't going away. The question is how to make Shorts work for you without burning hours. We've been watching what performs and what flops. These five things keep showing up.

1. Hook in the first second

If the first frame is a talking head and the first line is "Hey, so today I want to talk about…", a lot of people are already gone. Shorts move fast. Lead with the result, the takeaway, or a strong visual. One creator we talked to tests two versions of every short—same content, different first second—and the difference in retention is real. No intro. Get to the point.

2. Captions aren't optional

A big chunk of Shorts are watched with the sound off. If there are no captions, or they're out of sync, you're losing people. Burned-in captions (or at least accurate auto-captions) keep attention and make the short usable in more contexts. When we built MakeShorts, we made captions part of the default export for this reason.

3. End with a clear ask

"Subscribe for more" is fine. So is "Save this" or "Follow for part 2." The shorts that drift off into nothing tend to get fewer subs and fewer saves. One sentence at the end that tells people what to do next is enough.

4. Consistency over one-off bangers

Creators who post Shorts on a schedule (e.g. 2–3 per week from one long video) tend to see better results than those who drop a single viral short and go quiet. The algorithm rewards consistency. Find a length and style that works, then stick with it for a few weeks before you tweak.

5. Mine your long-form first

Your best long videos already have moments that resonated—watch-time spikes, comments, shares. Those are your short candidates. Clip the 30–60 seconds around those moments, add a hook and captions, and push them out. MakeShorts is built for this: paste the link, pick the moments, download. No need to re-edit from scratch.

None of this is magic. It's just what we see working. Try one or two of these on your next batch and see what changes.

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