The Simple Editing Process for Reels That Saves Me Hours Each Week

Shannon McKinstrie [00:00:05]: I am your host, Shannon McKinstrie. Welcome to Good Content, the podcast where I remove the never-ending content creation guesswork and overwhelm so that you can actually enjoy being on social media again and growing your business with what has always worked, good content. Hey there, friend. It is a gloomy day, a very fall day. I'm so excited. The Halloween decorations are out. There's pumpkins on our porch. It is a new season. Shannon McKinstrie [00:00:31]: It is October, which is crazy. And I got a DM the other day, and sorry for how I look right now. If you're watching on YouTube, I apologize. This is how I spend my Mondays. I don't like to start the week going hard in the paint, right? And I really protect my Mondays and keep them really, really slow because our weekends are usually really, really busy. We don't have relaxing weekends these days. So I thought it would be the perfect episode to talk about how I create my reels and how I edit them that don't take hours because I'm not someone who has hours to edit, right? Of course, a lot of people who create really complicated reels, like that's their thing, right? You guys, some of you do vlogs and yes, those are complicated and require more editing. I'm not one of those, right. Shannon McKinstrie [00:01:11]: Now. Of course, if there's so many different ways to edit. And with that said, the one piece of content I create a week that is the most time-consuming is the one I create on Mondays, but these are my slow days. I'm usually not camera ready, as you can see. Again, sorry. Um, it's real life over here, but on Mondays, that's when I create my carousel with hooks and your content ideas for the week. Those are made on Canva, so I don't have to be camera ready. I can be on my couch watching Today Show, drinking coffee, and that's what's going on today. This is my very much lazy recharge day. Shannon McKinstrie [00:01:46]: And weirdly enough, creating content helps me recharge. So remember I talked about that a little bit already about how I structure my week. I believe that was last week's podcast, right? So I make sure Monday, you want to look at the days that, you know, you have time to create the types of videos you're creating because that one on Monday takes a lot more time. But I have the time on Monday because I don't have calls. I don't have anything crazy going on, right? Then on Tuesday, I'll usually do a talk to camera and on Wednesday as well. Now the talk to cameras, that's what I want to talk about most today is how to save time editing your talk to cameras. Yes, AI is going to be helping you guys as well. Um, an amazing creator and business owner I've known for years is launching something that's going to help you guys. Shannon McKinstrie [00:02:27]: So stay tuned for that. But what's so cool is another thing to help you guys right now is lean on the templates that are already in Instagram. And if you look at my post from yesterday, Monday, where I deliver all the hooks, I mean, most of them, when you go to the audios, you can literally, especially when it comes to trends. So let me go to one that is going to be in my post from yesterday if you want to go look at it. The trend is the My Reaction trend. And when you click on this, there's a little button that says Use Template. When you use the template, it opens Instagram edits. If you don't have Instagram edits, I'm going to beg you. Shannon McKinstrie [00:03:01]: I'm literally going to, if I was with you, that would be probably the first thing I do is download edits because This app is amazing, and it's through Instagram. It's free. It stores all your projects. You can duplicate. You can save your favorite sound effects, your texts, your fonts, right? So anyway, it opens it up. So now all you have to do is update, change the text to your idea, right? We're not stealing people's stuff, but it's literally got his exact reel. You swap in your videos, and you're done. So that's one way to save time editing your reels when there is a trend. Shannon McKinstrie [00:03:33]: Or something that you like really see the idea and you know exactly how you can put your own spin on it. And there's a template, go for it. I did it a few weeks ago. I did a template. It was allow me to reintroduce myself trend and the creator who created it made it a template. So all I had to do was go in and swap out my photos and swap out the text. So it was mine, saved me hours. So that's number one. Shannon McKinstrie [00:03:53]: That's one way to do it when you see a trend going. And of course, whenever I see these, I put them in the Reels Lab. I will note them on Instagram too. So. Uh, to help you guys with that. That's one way. The other way is, for a fun example, I thought that'd be fun to tell you, for Your Content Playdate, that series I've been doing, every week I do it, I literally just swap out the video to a new video. So the beginning part where the text pops up and says, welcome to Your Content Playdate episode, whatever, I just changed the episode number and the name. Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:19]: That's it. So already built in are my sound effects. So that saves me about 10, 15 minutes off the jump. Okay. So that's why it's really cool to have a series and have a Kind of a loose plan for the week every week. Like, you know, you're gonna, like I said, listen to last week's episode where you kind of look at the days of the week to see which are low-lift days where, you know, you just need a quick B-roll with text. Those are the easiest reels to create, right? We know those take 5 minutes. The ones that are harder are the talk-to-cameras, the vlogs, the carousels, right? And that's what I wanted to talk about today. Shannon McKinstrie [00:04:47]: So when it comes to a series, once you've edited it and it's in edits, you open edits. I'm gonna do it right now. And you go to your projects, right? It's the button with the 4 squares. And then you can see right here, when I open Content Playdate right here, what I'll do the next time is I will literally hold it down. When you open the project, you hold it down and it will say duplicate. And now I can duplicate it. So when I film my next one, I now only have to do, I will go tap on the video clips and add my new video because the beginning starts the exact same way every time. So if you can do some sort of series where once a week you're talking to the camera and you start it the same way every time. Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:29]: So I basically made my own template. So that's another way. Third way is just, I'll tell you exactly how I edit my talk-to-camera reels and I keep it so simple. Those first 3 seconds of your talk-to-camera reel are the most important. Within those 3 seconds, I include 3 important things. Ready? One, a hook directly over my head. My face is usually in the middle of the screen. So a hook over my head that gets them to know what I'm about to talk about and why do they care, right? And then I have captions. Shannon McKinstrie [00:05:57]: So that's 2, right? So they can see what I'm saying. And then within those first 2 to 3 seconds, I put some sort of overlay. All these buttons are in edits. When you click overlay, it will open your camera roll. You can put a quick video, you can put a screenshot, and I usually do that. And again, with my hook over my head, I use the RISE method. I make sure R-I-S-E, one of those are in it. R is for Recognizable. Shannon McKinstrie [00:06:21]: So something recognizable, a word, a store, a product, a brand, right? I is identity. So your identity or theirs, right? Stay-at-home mom, corporate millennial, girl dad, big law attorney, right? Some sort of identity that they can attach to, whether it's yours or their own. S is specific. So some sort of specific detail. That's where you can have a lot of fun. And then E is effect, which is the payoff. They know what they're gonna get at the end of the video. I'll give you some ideas. Shannon McKinstrie [00:06:50]: But as long as an RISE hook is over your head, you've got 'em for at least the first couple seconds. And then what's coming out of your mouth is obviously important too. The, your verbal hook, which also needs to grab attention. I like to usually start with like, I heard you were da da da da, or if you are someone who blank, and I'll go right in with what I'm saying. And then in those first few seconds, some sort of overlay. So maybe it's a DM from someone where proof, or it's like my credentials, like maybe I show like My follower count or my recent insights, right? I usually just show like a couple, uh, I'll do like pictures of, let's say I'm talking about how I edit my talk-to-camera reels. You'll see it. I just did it over the weekend. Shannon McKinstrie [00:07:28]: I was like, I get asked all the time how I edit my reels. And right when I say reels, I had 3 pop up, 3 screenshots of my talk-to-camera reels pop up for not even a second and they go away. So I had something specific. I didn't have identity, but I put my identity was how I But I, I put something specific under 10 minutes. That's also the payoff, same thing. So, and then verbally I'm like, I get asked all the time. And then I had boop. So right away within 3 seconds, they know what they're getting. Shannon McKinstrie [00:07:53]: They know I know what I'm talking about. I showed some sort of credentials that show that my reels get views, right? So for you, let's say you're going to Home Depot and you're an interior designer. Say like, let's go check out the brand new white paint collection from Sherwin-Williams or at Home Depot. That either Sherwin-Williams or Home Depot, that's recognizable right away. We're interested. And if you put underneath in a sub-hook, I love a sub-hook. It's that hook that goes right under the main hook. It's a tinier font. Shannon McKinstrie [00:08:22]: And you could say, as an interior designer and minimalist, I don't know, something like that. Let's say you are a Bookstagrammer. Let's go away from talk to cameras. Let's do a simple one. POV, you find this the cutest and spookiest Bookstore in Maine, right? So that recognizable is Maine. Their identity is there. If they like spooky type of things, right? You're, you're giving them that feeling. And then it's just quick little video, little clips of the bookstore. Shannon McKinstrie [00:08:48]: That's it. Let's say you're a Disney travel agent, right? You're talking. So again, back to talking to the camera. Let's say you're a Disney travel agent, but you haven't gone to Disney in a while, or you don't have the clips of what you need. It doesn't matter. Go to Google Image, go to Disney's site and grab, you know, some screenshots of the snacks. Maybe there's 3 new snacks that you can't wait to try for your next Disney trip. So right away you're talking to the camera, or you could even be green screening it and be like, oh my gosh, I'm about to book a flight right now because 3 new snacks just dropped at Disney that I can't wait to try. Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:19]: Number one, right? And then when you say 3 new snacks, you go, you just maybe show a screenshot of those snacks, boop. And then you break them down one by one. Over your head would say. 3 new snacks at Disney I can't wait to try as a foodie and Disney fanatic. Boom. Identity recognizable. Do you see what I'm saying? And once you have that talk to camera reel in your edits, you duplicate it. So there's a hook over your head. Shannon McKinstrie [00:09:46]: You've got the text right where you want it every single time you duplicate, and then you insert your new video and add your text. So the more that you can templatize things, In edits, the quicker you're going to get your content out. 'Cause I'm telling you right now, if you don't have an editing process that is easy and manageable, you won't do it. Trust. It's, it's a lot. The edit, it's, it's one thing to record and then you gotta edit. So if you make a certain editing structure you love, 'cause again, like I always say, don't reinvent the wheel, AKA reel, right? So with that said, best thing to do for editing your talk-to-camera videos if you're brand new to it and practice, right? Talk to the camera, say something conversational, relaxed, or just like really grab their attention. Something like, I heard you hate Thanksgiving because you struggle with boundaries with family. Shannon McKinstrie [00:10:34]: Here are 3 of my favorite phrases or one-liners to use as a therapist who works with da da da da da, right? Right off. Um, you know, if that's like their issue, they're like, count me in. Over your head would say 3 one-liners to set boundaries as a people pleaser. I would stop because it's a huge issue for me, right? So you think of your hook, your talk-to-camera hook, conversational, relaxed, right? This is Instagram. This isn't in a classroom setting, right? And then over your head is that hook. So now every time you do something about one-liners you use as a therapist or paint colors you choose, or your favorite finds at Aldi as a dietitian, you just duplicate that bad boy, swap out the text and put in your video. And of course, take all the other videos out and just drag that video and then What I love also in Edits, when you tap the video clip, tap, go to way in and tap cut silences. It'll take all that dead air out. Shannon McKinstrie [00:11:25]: and then I go adjust each clip from there. This way I'm now down to 10 minutes because I already knew what my hook was going to be. I edit it and then I do all my little editing. I'll sometimes add a few more overlays. And of course the sound effects before I end, I can't not stress the sound effects, but again, Edits lets you save them. So all my favorite sound effects are saved. I love the typewriter, right? I love all those fun little sounds. And since I have them saved, I don't try to do overboard, but I have them saved. Shannon McKinstrie [00:11:53]: So when I go to sound effects, I just go to the save button. And at the beginning, maybe I'll put the typewriter and use the typewriter effect, which is under text. If you go to the text animations, just, it's all you just gotta do is go in there and go in there and dig into the sound effects, the animations, the text, the fonts, all that stuff. And just choose your favorite when you're not trying to rush. Right. That's a good assignment to do actually today. Like, just Just download edits, go into sound effects, go into tech, and just start saving things you like. That way when it's time to create, half the DUMB work is done, right? And then you just use the templates that are already created by other creators, figure out how you wanna do it. Shannon McKinstrie [00:12:33]: And even the vlogs, I mean, even if you want to go down the route of vlogs, which I love watching them, they're a lot to create for me personally. But again, maybe you find someone else's template and then that way you just go from there. And then like I said, with more and more, you know, AI tools that come out, there's gonna be video AI, right? You're gonna be able to edit. But again, what scares me about that is you wanna make sure you're using a system that is also studying and aware of, you know, what type of B-roll reels are performing well, right? And things like that. So I can talk about that another day, but you know, it's changed. Everything's changing so much. So that's why if you follow me, like you'll be fine. 'Cause the hooks that are working right now, I notice a lot of people that use Claude, ChatGPT, I'm like, that's not what's working on Instagram. Shannon McKinstrie [00:13:17]: It hasn't caught up there yet. So that's just a side note. But I do think if you struggle with editing, it's really cool that there's things out there for you guys now. And then you just have to make sure you're using the hooks that are working, which I got you covered for that, right? We don't want, who was it I was talking to the other day who said it perfectly about AI? Like it's almost like bookends, right? It's like the person needs to be in the front and on the back of it or it's not gonna work. Yeah. Anyway, that's for another day. I don't wanna talk too much about that, but, uh, I hope this helped give you like a couple ways to make talk-to-camera editing easier, because if it's not, I know a lot of your stuff is sitting in drafts, and if you just had a template, it would help you so much. So make your own template based on the way you like consuming and what reels you love, and see, kind of study and see if that creator already has a template available for you, which would be amazing, or make one yourself. Shannon McKinstrie [00:14:09]: Like I have done, and I just rinse and repeat. I love you, friend. I hope this was so helpful. And if you give edits a try, let me know what you think. Mwah!