01
How long should a social video be?
As long as the idea needs and not a second longer. There is no single ideal length that holds across platforms or topics; what holds is that viewers on a mobile feed decide in the first few seconds and leave the moment a video stops giving them something new. A fifteen-second clip that drags loses people faster than a ninety-second clip where every few seconds something changes or a new point lands.
A practical way to set length is to write the message as a list of beats — the hook, each point, the call to action — and give each beat only the time it needs to be understood. If a beat can be cut without the viewer missing anything, cut it. Short vertical feeds reward single ideas; a longer explanation usually belongs on YouTube or a website, with a short clip pointing to it rather than trying to contain it.
02
How can you tell whether a video is too long?
Check where people stop watching. Instagram, TikTok and YouTube all show a retention graph for each video in their analytics, and the shape is more useful than the average: a steep drop in the first seconds means the opening did not earn attention, while a sudden fall later points to the exact moment the video lost its way.
Compare a few of your own videos rather than an industry rule. If people consistently leave at the same kind of moment — a long introduction, a pause while the speaker thinks, a repeated point — that is what to cut next time. Before publishing, watch the edit once on a phone at normal speed without skipping; anything you are tempted to skip, a viewer will skip too, usually by leaving. Keep the important information early, so even viewers who leave before the end have the main point.
