Writing
Titles that survive the cut
A title is written in a text box that shows you sixty characters and displayed in a feed that shows about forty. Almost every underperforming title is one whose point was in the half that got truncated.
Preview
Not interactive yet
What the video is
testing whether cheap knife sharpeners actually work
- Cheap sharpeners: tested
- I tested 5 sharpeners. One worked.
- Does a $6 sharpener work?
Three steps
How it will work
Front-load the noun
Whatever the video is about goes in the first three words, before any framing or setup.
Cut to forty characters
Write it long, then delete until it fits. What survives is almost always better than what you would have written short.
Match the hook
A title promising one thing over a video opening with another is the fastest way to lose the first three seconds.
What it is for
Why this one is worth having
Truncation is the constraint
Titles are not judged on how they read in the composer. They are judged on the fragment a feed shows, which is shorter than anyone writes for.
Search reads titles
TikTok and YouTube both treat short-form titles as search text. A title with no searchable noun in it is invisible to the half of traffic that arrives by query.
Curiosity with a subject
Pure curiosity gaps underperform now. The ones that work name the subject and withhold the outcome, rather than withholding both.
Available now
What you can already do
Every clip arrives with a caption written for it, and the first line of that caption is the title in practice on TikTok. Editing it before scheduling already works today.
AI StudioFAQ
Video title generator, asked and answered
How long should a Shorts title be?
Under about forty characters if you want it shown whole on a phone. YouTube allows a hundred, and shows far fewer.
Do titles matter as much as hooks?
Not for the feed, where the first frame does the work. They matter enormously for search and for the browse surfaces, which is a growing share of short-form traffic.
Should the title repeat the on-screen text?
No. Duplicating them wastes the second slot. The on-screen text should hook, the title should tell search what this is.
More tools
Others in the same corner
The product is further along than the tools
Ten free videos, no watermark, and no card to start.