Video editing
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February 27, 2025
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11 min
If you’re running a coaching or consulting business, you’ve probably noticed that we’re in a huge content creation trend. However, 99% of the videos don’t get more than a couple hundred views.
When you are making a video, there are two things that you can’t do poorly. The one is your idea, and the other thing is video editing.
In this article, I’ll breakdown every aspect of video editing:
And I will give you clear guidelines on how you can always have a high production quality that brings results. So, let’s get started.
The reason why editing is so important is because when it is finished, the video at this point is practically irreversible - you can’t re-edit the video after it’s published (unlike your thumbnail or title). So, you have to do it right from the very beginning.
Theoretically speaking, you could delete the video, edit it again and correct the mistakes, but this is costing you so much time (and money if you’re paying a video editor) that it’s just much more efficient to record another video instead.
Your video is the combination of two components that cannot be separated, it’s the visual component and the audio component. You can look at the video as the coin, and visual component is one side of the coin, and the audio component is the other side.
When visual and audio aspect are perfectly matched, the video has a meaning, the storytelling is good and it’s interesting for the viewer to watch. Just like the coin, it has value only if you can see the currency and the amount, you cannot have one without the other.
First of all, let’s bust some myths. Nowadays, the short-form content is edited in such a way that it doesn’t have a millisecond of empty audio in the video. This means that when you start watching Reels or TikToks there is no pause between the words the speaker is saying.
A lot of editors try to translate that same editing style to the long-form videos on YouTube, and this is another common mistake. It’s like if you are trying to wear your winter coat in the summer, it will fit, but you will not feel comfortable because you’ll be too warm.
You want to match the platform requirements and standards, so that when the video is published, the viewer is feeling comfortable watching it. You cannot have a person talking constantly without a pause for 10 – 20 minutes in a YouTube video. It’s not natural.
A great editor doesn’t just remove pauses, they use them to their advantage to improve the pacing of the video.
Now, some coaches and consultants record their videos with two cameras:
This is not necessary if you’re just starting out with your channel, but it gives off an impression that the video is higher quality. It also gives another angle of the speaker and the environment – this also makes the whole video a bit more interesting to watch.
If you have one camera, use your iPhone as a B-camera. Phones nowadays have better video quality than some professional cameras.
If it’s just one camera angle, it gets boring after a couple of minutes. With multiple camera angles, you have a possibility to break that boredom by switching between cameras and make the video more engaging.
But the main reason why you want to have the second camera is, when you are speaking about something that’s less interesting, you want to use the B shot and when you are giving some important advice, you want to show the speaker with the main camera to emphasize the point even more.
Before editing the video, the first thing you should look at is how the storytelling of the video looks like. Does the video have some story behind all the points or are there just random facts that are chaotically put in the video?
Because if there is no natural progression in the video, the viewer might get confused or even bored, and he will click off and your video will perform poorly.
More of, if you don’t have some kind of story that connects all your points, then it’s very hard for the viewer to understand all this information because he probably hears it for the first time.
In an industry like coaching and consulting, sometimes it can be hard to come up with a great story, especially if you’re just starting out with video content creation. If your storytelling is not the best, then your video editor has to come up with animations which will help the viewer understand better the information you are sharing in the video.
The common mistake 95% of editors make is they put a b-roll (extra video footage showing what you’re talking about) or text over your video that says the exact same thing as the speaker.
This has 0% improvement for the quality of the video. Because the viewer could get that same information just by listening to the audio. The job of a video editor is to present something that has not been necessarily said but will explain the topic even better.
Let’s say you are a web designer, and in your video, you’re talking about SEO improvements and how changing a certain feature can help improve Google ranking by 3 positions.
Instead of putting stock b-roll footage where you show a person developing a website, you can make an animation where you enable that feature, and then your website changes its position and moves up 3 spots on Google’s rankings.
This way, the viewer can understand what you’re talking about just by looking at the animation, even without the sound.
If you can understand the context of the video without the sound, then the animations you’ve made are amazing.
There is one thing you need to check before you publish your video... You must check if your first and last animation in the video are the best animations that you can possibly make.
Why is this crucial?
At the beginning of the video is the highest chance for the viewer to click off and stop watching, so with a kickass animation you will spark curiosity and intrigue them to watch till the end. Think about this as your visual hook.
Now you’re probably wondering why you also need a good animation at the end of the video?
Well, at the end, you’ll probably have a Call to Action. That could be asking for a small thing like subscribing to your channel, or something more important like signing up for a newsletter or buying your coaching services.
If the ending point of you video is boring, people will click off and not even get to see your Call to Action, and you’ll end up with nothing.
That’s why your endpoint needs to be so valuable that the viewer is happy that he watched the whole video. Additionally, if you have a cool animation, then there is a higher probability for the viewer to see your CTA and do whatever you asked him to do.
Now, we almost forgot the other side of the coin, the music and sound design. The truth is that the choice of the background music is taken lightly, and in many cases, it is so neglected that you can see that it is put in the video just for the sake of being there.
Without good sound design, you’re losing a key part of editing a video - pacing. Music should define the pacing of the video, and we do that by balancing out 3 elements:
- Build tension – Create moments that grab attention and keep viewers engaged.
- Release tension – Provide satisfying payoffs.
- Relaxed moments – Allow breathing room to maintain a balanced pace.
You already thought about having all these elements when you were writing your script. With the right music choice, you will evoke emotions of the viewer easier, and the overall impression of your video would be in the rank of a Netflix production.
If you succeed to evoke some kind of emotion throughout your video, you will connect with the viewer at the highest possible level, and in the end, you will grow your channel easier and sell your coaching or consulting services even more.
When picking music, be aware of copyright restrictions. All our clients are covered with a paid license of Hollywood-level music at no additional cost.
I tried to cover as much as possible of the non-technical part of what to look for when hiring a video editor, or if you’re editing your videos by yourself. If you implement all of the points, I am sure your videos will explode in quality (and results too: views, subscribers, and sales).
It doesn’t stop there though. A professional video editor will keep improving and do what we call “retention hacking”. This is when you review the whole video and see if there are parts of the video where you can emphasize certain emotions even more and make the video even better. But that’s a topic for another blog post. :)
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