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How to Edit Your TikTok Videos with 15 Easy Tips

Tricia Lim

Tricia Lim

TikTok has proven itself to businesses in these few years. With over 1 billion monthly active users, it’s one of the largest social media platforms in the world today.

What originally began as a fun video app for Gen Zers has taken the marketing world by storm. It has completely revolutionized the way brands create and share content. Adding TikTok to your marketing strategy helps you raise brand awareness, enlarge your audience, and attract new customers. 

On top of that, using TikTok for business gives you the freedom to create relatable and engaging content with its wide variety of in-app features and tools.

The key to success on TikTok is in the editing of your video content. It can help you leverage new trends, engage your audience with transitions that hook their attention, and stand out amongst the endless sea of videos on their “For You” page.

Table of Contents

Knowing what videos to film

Before we jump into how to edit your TikTok videos, we first need to establish what videos you’d like to produce. 

1. Understand your audience

The basis of all marketing efforts stems from knowing who your audience is, what they’re interested in, and how to best communicate with them. Remember the buyer persona you’ve created for  your marketing strategy? Always refer to their pain points to better understand how you can add value to their lives with the video content you’re creating on TikTok. Should it inform? Should it promote your product? What is the key takeaway? Do you want to inspire them to take action? Do you want to provide some sort of edutainment? 

2. Stay up to date with current trends

Apart from keeping in line with who your audience is, keeping up with current trends on TikTok is equally important. The nature of TikTok relies heavily on trends, so creators are always keeping their finger on the pulse for trending audios and TikToks to jump on. By keeping up to date with current trends in TikTok, you’ll be staying ahead of the curve.

How to film and edit your TikTok videos

TikTok has paved the way for short-form videos to take center stage across most visual platforms including Instagram. Below are some tips on how to film and edit your TikTok videos.

1. Use the timer + countdown feature

TikTok’s timer feature allows you to film your clips hands-free, without help, and with ease. Their countdown can be set to 3 seconds or 10 seconds which gives you flexibility to position your video subject in time. This feature is really helpful especially when you’re doing the bulk of the filming process on your own. You simply need to set up your phone with a tripod and you’re ready to go.

Additionally, if you’re planning to film something more elaborate with more stop-starts, you can set the timer to automatically stop recording at any point. You just need to drag the little red bar forward to where you want it to stop. This is great for when you need to record several short clips like our latest TikTok!

2. Invest in a lighting + phone stand

One of the basic things to keep in mind when shooting a TikTok video is lighting. Good lighting is key to making a successful TikTok video. If you’re wondering why some TikTok videos perform better than others, consider how their lighting was set.

Great lighting helps to set the mood or tone you’re going with your videos. Take the dreamy wanderlust travel TikTok videos for example. They’re typically shot in bright and natural light with the help of sunshine. Lighting helps you direct your viewers to where you want their attention. If your videos are well-lit, they’re more likely to grab users’ attention when they come across it on TikTok. 

The secret to many content creators’ filming high-performing TikTok videos is the tools they use. That’s why a trusted tripod and ring light are a must have in any content creator’s tool belt. They’re great for framing up your shot, providing a stable and consistent view for viewers. Plus, you can easily find budget-friendly options online to get the job done. Otherwise, you’ll just have to get resourceful and creative to find the right nook for that natural lighting and a stable support for your phone or camera.

3. Edit clips

Once you’ve recorded your video clips, you can adjust them before publishing. TikTok gives you the flexibility to edit them to your liking by allowing you to reorder, trim, add effects to, or add text captions to each clip. If you have existing video clips saved in your camera roll, you can upload them to edit them in the same way.

4. Play around with video effects, filters, or add stickers!

As with most content creation apps, you can use TikTok to enhance the feel of your videos. You can add some fun and flair to your TikTok videos by adding video effects, filters, or stickers. 

TikTok has a range of effects and stickers within their inbuilt library to explore. You can use their effect library in two ways:

  • To record as a recording screen such as green-screen effects, AR filters, and other interactive effects. 
  • Edit your pre-recorded videos with visual effects such as Shake and Rainbow Strobe, as well as motion effects, stickers, transitions, split, and time effects.  

The few filter options available are:

  • Color filters – this is where you can adjust the hue, saturation, temperature, and other settings related to color.
  • Beautify – as the name states, you can beautify how your face looks with this filter. That includes adjusting facial features, smoothening your complexion, and even the options to add makeup such as lipstick!
  • Enhance – here’s where you can adjust the brightness, exposure, colors using the click of one button.

5. Set recording speed

Another feature that you can play around with is adjusting the speed of your TikTok video using the “Speed” feature. You’ll see this button on the recording screen which you can adjust before you begin recording. This feature has 5 speed options enabling you to slow down your video, keep it normal, or speed it up.

These are great if you want to make timelapses and other cinematic style videos, for example: showing the behind the scenes of your office renovation.

6. Upload clips from your camera roll

This is my personal favorite and quite frankly, underrated TikTok function. If you’re worried about not having the time to film your TikTok videos at the moment, you can always upload pre-recorded clips from your camera roll. This means that you can take your time to edit your footage however you like when you want. 

Plus, you can edit your videos in other professional editing software prior to uploading them on TikTok! This gives you plenty of flexibility to plan your videos, and repurpose footage from other channels such as your YouTube vlog into bite-sized TikTok videos.

How to add the right audio and sound to your TikTok videos

When it comes to watching good TikTok videos, the sounds are just as important as the visual content. That’s why TikTok has a massive library of songs and other audios to accompany your footage. You want to consider what sound will complement your video best, which could be a trending sound or an original audio perfect for your story.

This section covers the tips on how to add the right audio to your TikTok videos:

7. Use trending songs and audio

Choosing the right choice of audio matters because the right audio can hook your audience in from the first few seconds of watching your video. If you’re not sure where to begin, trending audio is always a good place to start. These sounds are already highly favored by viewers, users, and the algorithm. 

Trending music is often the reason why TikToks go viral. You can find these under the search tab when you click “Add Sound” on your recording or editing screen. Filter through the discover tab to browse the trending audios which you can save to your favorites to film or use later. I like to do this when I watch a TikTok that gives me inspiration to film my own TikTok video later.

You can also use trending songs and audio to film a TikTok to reply to a comment, this continues the conversation with your audience and builds rapport with them too! Just click on the “Reply” button on the right-side menu to begin recording with the selected audio.

8. Sync your videos to the beat of your audio

One of the ways to create engaging videos is by syncing your clips with the audio. TikTok makes it easy for you with their built-in “Sound Sync” feature.

Simply upload multiple clips from your camera roll and you’ll be directed to the “Sound Sync” page. Here you can choose a suggested sound, or select a sound from the audio library page. You can also adjust the videos manually if you choose to.

You’ll see it used in all kinds of TikTok videos: vlogs, fashion, makeovers, dance videos, and many others.

9. Record a voice over

Another built-in post production feature that’s great for content creators is the ability to record a voice over on TikTok. Once you’ve recorded your clips, click on the Voiceover button on the editing screen to begin your voice over recording.

This is helpful for narrative videos for behind-the-scenes footage and mixing original audio with music.

10. Enable text-to-speech

For those of you who may not feel comfortable speaking on camera, TikTok can help you narrate your text captions using the built-in “text-to-speech” feature. This way you can incorporate spoken audio into your TikToks without actually saying anything yourself. 

Once you’ve typed out your text caption, tap on it and a menu with the “Text-to-speech” button will appear. You can then choose the voice that fits your content the best.

How to write your TikTok captions

What makes a TikTok engaging is the way it’s edited, the choice of audio, AND the captions that adds context to your video. Here are some best practices for adding text to your TikTok videos.

11. Manually add text to your video

With TikTok, you can add text overlays to your videos. Why is that important? As we wrote about in our blog, video captions make your content more inclusive. They make your videos more accessible including to those who watch your video content without audio. Captions also help you to reinforce your key points, highlight certain words like call-to-actions (CTAs), and make your video more easier to understand.

To do this, tap the “Text” button icon on the menu on your editing screen. You can add up to multiple lines or blocks of text to your videos.

If you want your text to stand out, you can customize your captions using the several built-in styles. You can edit the color, font, alignment, and background style to fit the theme of your video. You can also move around the text to where you want. 

Bonus tip: remember to place your text in an easy to read position on screen! You can preview your TikTok before posting by clicking on the thumbnail in the post screen next to the description box. If your text is obstructed by the like, comment, or share buttons in the preview, this is the best time to edit it.

12. Use auto-captions for spoken audio

When it comes to improving accessibility features, TikTok has users covered. Their auto-captions help creators reach people who watch without sound or those with hearing impairments. 

You can turn this feature on for any recorded or uploaded video with spoken audio by tapping “Captions” on the editing screen. Give it a few seconds, and you’ll be able to see the auto generated captions which you can also edit manually if you’d like.

13. Adjust duration of your text

Once you’ve decided what text you want to include on-screen and where to position them, you can then adjust the duration of the text. Basically, you can precisely set how long you want your text to appear for, when to appear, and when to disappear. 

It’s typically used for:

  • adding multiple lines of text throughout your video
  • describing a scene
  • asking questions
  • adding several CTAs
  • and more. 

 

This is also helpful when you’re trying to match your text to the audio to keep your video accessible sans audio.

To adjust the duration, simply tap your text and select “Set duration” from the text menu that pops up. Then, you can use the timeline editor to set when exactly the text should appear and disappear from your video.

14. Keep it short and sweet

Compared to Instagram Reels, the nature of TikTok captions are short and sweet. Creators often use their Instagram captions to elaborate their content, add context, and place their CTAs. However, when writing captions for your TikTok videos, make sure they’re short, sweet, and informative.

Your audience may only stick around for only a few seconds, so it’s best to make it count!

15. Drive action with on-screen CTAs

Adding text to your video also adds impact to inspire your audience to take action–your call-to-action. According to TikTok’s best practices guide, TikToks with CTAs have a 55.7% life in impressions compared to those without anything additional on screen.

Top video editing tools for TikTok

Although TikTok’s features are handy as they are. If you want to explore options of using third-party apps to edit eye-catching TikTok videos, here are a few video editing tools we recommend.

1. CapCut

TikTok’s sister company,CapCut, is a crowd favorite. It’s packed with creative filters, much like those you would find within the TikTok app itself. Of course, it also comes with the basic video editing tools too. Plus, it’s completely free to use! 

You can download it here on Google Play or the App Store.

2. InShot

InShot is also a popular video editing app that comes with an easy-to-use interface. The app comes with features to add stickers and effects like background blur, cinematic filter, add music, and more. InShot is free to use but you would need to upgrade to the premium version if you want to get rid of the watermark.

You can download it here on Google Play or the App Store.

Wrap it up: take your TikTok video to the next level

TikTok is highly favored as THE platform to share bite-sized video content. Whilst the landscape is highly competitive, applying these tips will help you edit and create engaging content that performs well.

If you found this article useful, subscribe to our newsletter and stay tuned for our other content!

Are you looking to create effective and fun TikTok content that drives leads? We’re here to help. Get in touch with us at hello@medianetic.me, or drop us a message via our chatbot below! We look forward to working alongside you.

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