These Tips Will Make Your Videos Better (5 Video Editing Tricks)

VIDEO EDITING TIPS – Make better videos on YouTube with these Youtube Video tips. Make your videos more engaging, remove all your mistakes, get people to see you as an expert in your field… by simply focusing on these 5 simple tips.

1 – Know What You Are Talking About

This could mean that you write your video out in bullet points or a full script before you start the video. Alternatively you may already know the topic from your own personal experience and can riff on the topic at hand. However, if you try and wing it but you do not know the topic fully this could affect the quality of your content.

I make videos for clients on a regular basis and sometimes I will need to research the video topic. This gives me a chance to learn the source material, gives me context to the topic and gives me a little more wiggle room when I want to adlib when recording. You don’t have to be an expert in the niche the video is for but a good 10-20 minutes of reading, taking notes and giving yourself guiding notes can make you look, feel and perform better on video.

2 – Are you recording in clips?

Often when people start making videos they will do one of two things. They will either record it in one sitting and forget to clip out the mistakes, or they will record in clips and rely too much on the camera to top and tail the videos. This can lead to large gaps in your video that can be very distracting for your audience. Some people can talk non stop and this can be easier to edit the files together but large gaps in a video can lead to people getting bored with you and living. Remember to trim a video down to flow – it’s better to have a 6 minute video that is polished to look good than a 12 minute videos with gaps and weird jumps.

3 – Ers, Ums & Breathing

If you are doing all the hard work to make the video, trim the clips, add overlays, lower thirds, b-roll, jump cuts then take your time to take out the mistakes that could be distracting your audience from your message. We all do it, we stumble and make mistakes. You fumble over your words, it takes you a couple of seconds to find the right word and you… erm… or you um… your way to a solution. This can make you look less profession and make people think you are guess rather than truly understand your topic. Deep breathes can also detract from a video as you struggle for air in the middle of a sentence – take your time, structure your sentences and when in doubt, remove them with your editing software.

4. Avoid Rambling

This is the bane of many youtubers and it can be a symptom of many things. Maybe you just got really excited and ranted about a topic out of sheer love… but waffled on too long. Alternatively, you had a great idea for a video but you didn’t plan it out with a script of bullet points and the lack of structure led to you repeating yourself or talking to much on the topic.

Long videos can do well on YouTube and I personally have made a few longer videos myself recently on How To Start Your Own Business and How I Made YouTube My Full Time Job in 3 Years – but long does not have to mean rambling. If you need 15-20mins to make your point and it’s a well constructed video with many topic that all build up context on your topic – then go for it! BUT If its a 15-20minute video that when you watch it yourself seems to slow down at points, repeat itself or waffle for 2-3 minutes in the middle – maybe you should trim it and make it a GREAT 8minute video rather than a slow 12minute video.

5 – Ending Words

This is a very YouTube focused tip but can be adapted for other media as well. When you watch a YouTube video you are in for the journey. You want to settle in and watch the 5-6 minute video, learn the lesson, here the story and then leave. So when you get to the 4 minute mark and the video host is dropping hints its finishing soon it can break your focus and make you leave early. This can be as a simple as the video host saying “and finally” in a list video or “last tip is”. What this does is warn the viewer that the important part of the video is over and that the last 1-2 minutes of the video can be skipped – and this can hurt your audience retention and watch time.

The way to fight this is to make sure you NEVER hint that the video is ending. You pack the video from start to finish with the main meat of the video. If you want to advertise your product try and sneak it into the middle of the video, the description or with pop ups. Most importantly end the video with them wanting more or with an abrupt wrap up that means they didn’t see it coming and in return they watched all 6 minutes of the 6 minute video before pointing to an end card or playlist.