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A viewer left a comment saying my captions were doing nothing, so I tested it for 2 weeks
Someone commented on one of my reels last month saying my captions were just decoration because I put them at the very bottom where the app covers them up. I checked on my phone and sure enough, the like and share buttons were sitting right on top of my text the whole time. I moved them up to the middle of the screen and made them bigger, and my average watch time went from 8 seconds to 14 seconds in about 2 weeks. Not huge numbers I know, but it was free to fix. Has anyone else gotten a random comment that actually helped more than all the algorithm advice videos combined?
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victor22014d ago
Man, I gotta say I see it the other way. Watch time going from 8 to 14 seconds is not a small thing, that is almost double, and that is a huge jump for just moving some text around. Most people mess with their captions for months and get nothing close to that kind of change. The real lesson here is that the comment was worth more than any algorithm video because it was about your actual video, not some general tip that may not even apply to you. I would stop calling it "not huge" and start asking what else your viewers are seeing that you are not.
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owens.cameron14d ago
The part everyone is skipping is that the fix probably worked twice. Captions at the bottom do not just get covered, they pull your eyes down to the buttons and the caption bar, which is where people tap away or swipe off. Moving text to the middle keeps eyes on the middle of the screen, so the viewer never looks at the exit doors. Same words, same video, different path for the eyeballs. That is why 8 to 14 happened so fast, it was not the text getting better, it was the viewer staying in a spot where nothing else is fighting for the tap. Check your own last few reels on a small phone, not the preview screen, and see where your eyes land first. Bet it is not the video.
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