Creator Tips and Tricks for Editing Short Form Content

Just getting started with short form content? Or looking to up your game? We’ve compiled a helpful group of tips and tricks from FreshCut partners that might be useful!

Short form content is a great way to capture the best moments from your streams, create new content using highlights and fails, and grow your community on platforms like FreshCut, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels.

Master Your Craft

Get good at editing! Or if it works better for you, hire an editor who excels at short form content. It can make a big difference in improving your content and accelerating your ability to share new content.

“While editing, know your shortcuts! Learn how to snip a clip, how to unlink audio and video, how to slap a zoom effect or camera blur quickly. The simpler those come, the faster you can execute ideas, and the more creative ideas you can try out for not just success, but fun! Be yourself in each click - from import to upload!"- realPOISONKill

Keep it Short

You’re competing for attention on these platforms. The longer the clip, the harder it is to get viewers to watch all the way through. For many platforms, getting viewers to watch the entire clip is a bonus to their algorithm. Make life easy by keeping your clips short and to the point! Save your long form content for platforms like YouTube.

Have a Good Hook

The first 3-5 seconds of a clip can make or break if people watch it all the way through, like, comment, or share it. It’s critical to catch a viewer’s eye and capture their attention right away. This could be by presenting an interesting scenario, riding off of a trend, interesting visuals, or some other dynamic beginning.

Tell a Story

Going off of our earlier point about getting viewers to watch to the end of the clip, having a narrative or story in your clip can help to keep users interested. If you capture their attention at the start and they stick around to find out what your clip is about, they’re more likely to finish watching the clip. Think about your clip as having a story with a beginning, middle, and end. There should be a set up of an interesting scenario, the climax, and a conclusion. This can be tough to do in 10-30 seconds but that’s what makes great short form content so special!

Using a narrative within your clip can help to achieve better clip completion. This is just one style of clip. You should explore various different kinds of content from storytelling to montages to memes and edits and find what works best for you and your audience.

Catch a Trend

While your content might not be directly associated to popular trends on TikTok, Reels, or Shorts, taking inspiration from them or recreating them in your context can help you create compelling content! You can use trending music or catch the latest viral gaming or cultural trend. It helps you to stay relevant and deliver timely content. Trends are popular for a reason, don’t be afraid to lean into them!

Use Captions

Adding text to your short form content in edits has become popular among creators. It is useful as many viewers watch content without sound - meaning they can still understand your clip without the voiceover, on this note captions a great way to make your content more accusable. Additionally, text overlays can be eye catching and help people stay engaged.

Use Memes and Cultural References

Sometimes sick gameplay isn’t enough to keep viewers engaged. Think about supplementing your edits with memes, clips from popular shows and emojis, pop culture references, sounds, and more.

Meme usage in particular can be a great way to show how "in the know" and authentic you are about the community you're making content for. Both casual and diehard fans of a game will appreciate you incorporating a good meme or joke that they can relate to.

Find Your Style

Having a consistent style or theme to your content - whether that’s in the branding, visuals, voice cues (consistent intro), face camera, music, or editing technique can also help to create a sense of consistency with your content. New viewers who visit your profile will see similar clips while viewers who encounter your content in the feed will get to associate certain elements with you over time. You can also focus in on a particular genre or theme and claim your niche.

“Familiarize yourself with your editing software and content watchability. Learn and know what moments are okay to cut out, and which moments are just too funny not to zoom in to your reaction and crank the audio! Everyone will respond differently to what you make and share, so know what you want to make and why you want to make it! You have to create short form content that enhances your uniqueness and not just expands your reach.” - realPOISONKill

Avoid Perfectionism

It’s more valuable to try, post, and iterate on your content than to optimize for getting the perfect edit. Get feedback from your community, see what’s getting views and engagement, and always be adjusting.

“It is important to hear this, but your content does NOT need to be perfect. A lot of us wait for something to be better in order to post, and the truth is that only YOU can provide YOUR content. The longer you wait, the less people are going to see what you have. POST YOUR CONTENT, THEN IMPROVE CONTINUALLY.” -MrMasterWong

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