7 YouTube Editing Tips to Instantly Boost Retention

my business partner Maro and I have created videos with retention graphs like this which has led to views like this this and even this and today I'm going to show you these seven editing techniques that we use to make this happen consistently by the way I'll be using capcut to show you these techniques because it's free and they've also sponsored this video but you can use any editing software that you like starting with number one don't overedit for your audience a mistake I see a lot of creators make is that they think more editing equals

better performance which simply isn't the case I've even made this mistake myself in the past just take a look at the YouTuber penguin zero the man just throws in a few Cuts in b-roll Transitions and still brings in a few million views per video or take a look at my buddy micaa who's brought in hundreds of thousands of views with very simple a-roll and stock footage the point I'm making is that editing is not the star of the show it's simply the supplement which means that you need to align your style of editing with your

audience's preferences and also realize that the value of your content is way more important than the way you present it if you have a younger audience you'll likely need to add more Transitions and fancy editing gimmicks to drive retention but on the contrary if you have an older audience you probably won't need to employ this as much and doing it might even overwhelm your audience so again the level of editing that you're employing in your content really just depends on who you're making videos for and again you definitely don't want to overedit number two is

to raise your graphs now everyone knows that intros are the most important part of your video to drive retention so you'll watch to do what's called frontloading your video which means that you'll first want to pay special attention and put more work into the first 30 seconds or so of your video we keep the pace of our videos pretty similar throughout the entire thing but definitely add more animations b-roll and so on if it makes sense for the audience in those first 30 seconds to really Drive retention and keep viewers for the rest of the

video but you'll also want to take this a step further if you really want to increase your attention now when you've consistently published videos for a while you'll start to get more and more data on your audience and how long they watch your videos this will obviously depend on video length and also the age of your viewers for the most part so for example if you have a younger audience your average watch time might be in the range of like 3 minutes versus if you have an older audience it might go up to let's say

6 or 7 Minutes whatever this is you'll want to expand the effort that you put into the first 30 seconds of your video to Encompass the same amount as your average watch time so you're pleasing as many viewers as possible now Beyond just raising your graphs you'll also want to flatten them after the front load of your your video you obviously don't have to edit as much in the latter part of your video but you definitely don't want a huge drop in retention after those first let's say three or 4 minutes otherwise you'll see dips

like this where people drop off of your video and kill your attention So to avoid this you're going to want to keep a consistent style and relatively consistent pacing to bridge viewers from the beginning of your video to the end of your video and bump up your retention number four is to keep the big transitions for the big moments in your video transitions are a super important part of the editing process but if you're going to throw in a huge whoosh or Zoom or whatever else then you're going to want to make sure you do

it at the right time to keep retention High some creators I talk to think big transitions in their edits equal better retention but unfortunately they don't instead they really only work when you're doing something big changing scenes or really anything else that warrants that big transition versus otherwise where people get distracted you overedit and they click off for example take a look at this clip of Mr Beast you can see that he uses a big transition sequence when he's going to one of the biggest houses in the video the key here is that if you're

going to use a big transition sequence it needs to be at the right time and in every other scenario you're probably just going to want to use jump Cuts so you're not again being distracting and over editing and losing viewers remember editing shouldn't steal the show it should really just be a supplement to the value of your video number five is to focus on sound design sound design is crucial for creating immersion in your video and that doesn't mean everything needs a sound but for example if an icon slides onto the screen you're going to

want to have a SL sliding noise if money falls in the floor you're going to want to have a noise for the money and so on or if you're using actual footage in your video you can even artificially improve sounds to get the exact same effect for example let's take a look at this clip in the movie The Lord of the Rings Bilbo drops the ring here and in order to convey the idea that the ring is super heavy the sound design team behind the movie artificially enhanced the sound obviously don't overuse this for example

if you have subtitles in your video you're not going to want to have a pop anytime a subtitle comes on screen because again it gets distracting you're over editing and you lose viewers but otherwise be tasteful with it include sounds when you can to immerse the audience in your video and I promise you your attention will Skyrocket and if you're using cap cut PC like I am right now cap cut even includes a whole library of free sound effects that you can use in your videos to achieve this effect now building off of just using

sound effects Tastefully in your videos you're also going to want to purposefully use music as a tool to boost retention I suggest first having the volume quiet enough where you can actually hear your voice over for me this is like -5 to -25 DB below the voiceover volume but for you it could be different however on top of that you'll also want to change the music when big things happen in your video like when you go from the intro to the body of your video or when you move from a section to another section or

a place to a different place just like you'd use transitions you're going to want to change music to bring viewers over to these big changes when I first started on YouTube I saw music as an afterthought and I would honestly just throw one one or two songs in a video after I was finished with everything else but I soon realized that it was killing my retention music is powerful so you definitely want to be purposeful and use it to bridge viewers over different sections of your video different moments settings whatever number six is to get

creative with your edits for example you can play subtitles on your video as a supplement to whatever you're saying but also if you're going to do that don't make the same mistake I used to and make all your subtitles manually instead if you're using cap cut PC you can use cap Cuts built in autoc captions tool to automatically add subtitles in whatever style you want to your video to use it all you have to do is click a button and if you have an audio track in your timeline capcut PC will automatically create captions for

you without you having to do a thing you can also use cap cut or any other video editing software to create motion tracking on objects add text overlays create trending effects and so much more to add just a spice of creativity to your video and cap cut is great because it makes this way easier all this does is keeps your edits interesting for your viewers and also makes you more unique and more likely to stick out to your viewers finally tip seven is to give your viewers a break definitely don't be afraid to give your

viewers a break a lot of YouTubers hyper stimulate their viewers with side by-side or even overlapping voiceover tracks and cuts and eventually it just becomes way too much for a viewer to digest if they're getting information thrown at them like crazy so instead in between different sections of your video I'd recommend giving your viewers a little bit of breathing room and you'll notice that some public speakers even do this like for example Barack Obama here has breaks in the way he speaks we know the battle ahead will be long but always remember that no matter

what this makes him appear more confident and it doesn't hurt him because his audience is engaged enough to a point where little pauses really just keep them listening as opposed to making them tune you out so definitely cut your voiceovers this way too and you'll have better retention instantly on your videos