How to Edit Instagram Reels Using Instagram’s Free Edits App [Episode 161]

Molly: Hi, today's episode's gonna be super short. Um, I actually got some feedback, I think I said this last week, that y'all like the shorter episodes with, um, like one really actionable thing per episode. So send me a DM and let me know if that is the same case for you today. I'm going to quickly talk about the app that we use in our agency to edit all of our clients' reels.

And it is so super simple. I've done an episode on this, but it's been like. I dunno, over a year. So I wanted to do an update, updated episode because this is a question that I get asked all the time. So let's dive in.

Hey, welcome to Holistic Marketing Simplified.

This podcast boils down to the fact that we wholeheartedly believe that more humans need to know about holistic health solutions. And you didn't go to school to learn how to be a. Full-time content creator and show up on Instagram and do all of this marketing stuff all day, every day.

So let's come hanging out while we chat. All things easy in your marketing and my goal is that you shift your mindset around your marketing from a quote should to a, I get to more dream patients and clients. Yes, please.

Kristen: Hi, I'm Kristen Spz and I am a life coach and a sound bath facilitator, meditation and breath work teacher.

And I live in Evanston, Illinois, outside of Chicago. And I listen to Molly Cahill's, holistic Marketing simplified podcast. It's so great.

Molly: Okay, so I can't remember when this app came out, but Instagram created their own editing app and it's called Edits. So I just have my phone pulled up right now as I'm recording this.

And so if you go to the App store or the Google, Google Play Store, if you have an Android. And you type in edits, you'll see a bunch of options, like there's a bunch of different edits, video editors, but you wanna make sure you pick the one that says edits and Instagram app. It is a black square with like a, the Instagram pink and orange, like little square in it with a white vertical line on the side.

It's free. And I just absolutely love it. We've been using it for all our, like I said, our all our clients videos ever since it came out. And we really like it. And I use it for editing all of my own a, uh, own reels. So the beauty of the Edits app is, for one thing, it's free. So we used to use InShot, uh, for our editing, and it was only 4 99 a month.

But still. And then, you know, cap cut got really big for a while. We don't use cap cut anymore in our agency. You can literally just Google cap cut controversy. I won't get into it, but apparently there was like a big, not apparently there was a big issue with privacy and any video that you created in cap cut, basically they were saying like they had the rights to it.

So you know, if you still wanna use it like. Use it at your own? I would. I would just Google cap cut controversy before you make that decision. So I, like I said, with the Edits app, you can do everything that you could do in InShot or in Cap Cut, which like I said, are things you had to pay for and it's free.

The other added bonus is the fact that anytime you use one of Instagram's native. Products, features, whatever it's always going to like. You're always gonna be rewarded. So I haven't seen this much recently, so let me know if you are still seeing this. When it first came out, if you created it a reel in the Edits app and then posted it on Instagram, it would go to the top of your followers notifications and be like, Molly created a reel using the edits app.

So it was really, really, really pushing edits. I've also had some clients ask me about creating their reels in Canva. And you, you can, I just wouldn't, like, it's not, it's not as user-friendly to me as the edits app, and that's just not what we're seeing as an agency work on Instagram right now. As anything really made off app, we're seeing, um, the stuff that looks more native, like actually using the Instagram fonts.

That is the stuff that's been performing better. So a quick overview of the Edits app. You can actually film right in the app. I typically don't, I typically like already have my videos filmed or am like grabbing a b roll that I have that's older or whatever. Um, but you can, you can film right in the Edits app.

You can look at trending inspiration on the edits app. There's like a little play like Arrow icon at the bottom. And when you tap that, you can see like a lot of stuff that's like trending and you can even, once you tap the videos that are trending, you can tap use template and it will literally like pull in the text from the person, which I don't know why you would, I mean, you wouldn't obviously wanna use someone else's text, but it at least gives you like the timing of the text and the placement of the text.

That's one way that you can find and use trending audio as well. The thing about trending audio is I just really don't see that being as much of a thing anymore as it used to be, so I wouldn't get too hung up on trending audio. Um, you can also go all the way on the bottom far right, there's a little bar graph icon and you can look at all of your insights so you can kind of click that and be like, okay.

What reels have gotten the most views recently? The most likes, the most comments, the most reposts, the most shares. Saves new followers. Ooh, I didn't even know that was there. So, um, if you're trying to grow, you can be like, okay, what reel got me the most new followers? And then you can also look at, ooh, you can look at what reel's got the lowest skip rate.

That's awesome because we know that, you know, people actually watching it all the way through and then rewatching it is what's going to have the algorithm push it out to more people. So that's very interesting. Ooh. And it goes back like a long time. Okay, this is really cool. Why have I not played with this before?

So that's cool. 'cause then, you know, like if, if you're new around here repurposing and like, you know, re like basically reinventing some of your top performing content is the flex man. Like, it's like the best move. And that's not all you want to do. I can't go into that in a whole other episode because that's why I teach what's called a content ecosystem.

If you only double down on what's performed really well, like views. Well, I wouldn't necessarily say comments, but comments wise, that's not necessarily always gonna be the content that actually gets people to book appointments with you. Often what we've seen is like, that's why, again, I said, I call it a content ecosystem because there's certain types of content that I teach that you post that sole purpose is to get a lot of views and a lot of comments.

And then there's other types of content that aren't gonna get as many views, aren't gonna get maybe any comments, but that's actually gonna be the thing that gets like the silent lurks to pick up the phone or go on your online booking and book an appointment. Like I said, I've talked about that in past episodes, but, um, I'm not gonna go into that today.

Let's stick to the Edits app. Like I said, all next to the little bar graph, there's like a little recording icon, and so you can literally just record your video right there in edits if you want to. Um, what's cool about this is there's even a teleprompter feature if you go to the record. I don't ever use a teleprompter just because I like to film my face to camera reels.

Differently. I film mine in one sentence, first at a time, one sentence videos at a time, and then piece all my one sentences together in the edits app for you. That might sound harder. There are lots of viral content creators who recommend writing a script and reading it. For me, that just feels so unnatural and you can tell I'm reading a script, so I prefer, 'cause I can't do it all in one take.

I prefer to just record one sentence at a time and put it together in the edits app. It's not as hard as it sounds, I promise. Along with the teleprompter feature that's down in the recording, you can, uh, do slow-mo, you can do a timer. There's a green screen feature. You can add music. Um, there's even like a filter option to kind of blur a little bit.

Um, like I said, there's, there's all kinds of things, but then the, the feature that I use the most in the edits app is at the very bottom. There's just gonna be four squares, and that's your project area. So that's where you can import a video. You already have, like if you already have some B roll from you, like working with a patient or whatever, and you can import, um, all the videos there and piece them together.

Also, if you have like a face to camera talking reel, that's where I would pull this video in and make sure you're cutting out what people dub the millennial pause at the beginning. So you want to start your video if it's a face to camera, like talking to the camera, start your video as your mouth is opening because if you start your video with, you're just standing there.

And then talking, people are gonna scroll right on past. Okay. So yeah, you can pull in as many clips as you want. You can pull in still photos. What I really like about the Edits app versus just creating it right in Instagram's reels, 'cause you can still make your reels right in Instagram's like Native reels, editor, but.

I have found, like I, I just haven't done it in so long. I don't know if it's still as glitchy as it used to be, but it used to be so glitchy and I would like create these reels and then I'd lose my work and then I'd get really frustrated. And then another benefit of the Edits app versus creating it right in reels is that you can pull in.

So for example, when we went to San Diego last summer, I got to get adjusted by one of my amazing clients, Dr. Cassandra. And it was like a 25 minute long adjustment. Like she gave me the full thing and like, you know, was explaining it as she went and all that. So I was able to pull in 20, 25 minutes of footage into the edits app and then like cut it down to like a ten second reel, which is really cool.

And the edits app handled that 25 minutes of video perfectly. Once you import your video from your, from your gallery, you can also do, um, an overlay. I had someone, a student just ask me this recently. So down at the bottom, um, once you import your video, like I said, there's an overlay button, and that's where you can put a video on top of your video or a photo on top of your, your video.

So if you're wanting to show like a screenshot or a review, or a screenshot of a question or a product or whatever, you can do it that way. Always, always, always add close captions to your video because, uh, 80% of people watch with no sound. So if you have no closed captions, and if it's a talking, you know, o only if this is like a talking video.

Um, then people are just gonna scroll right past it. So there's a closed captions feature right there. There's a voice, there's a voice button with like a little microphone. And that is to record a voiceover. So like, let's say you were demonstrating a certain, you know, say you were filming yourself doing a fertility, acupuncture treatment for somebody, but you don't have like a mic and you're not talking, you're just like, it's like a B-roll type video.

You could import that into the edits app, tap the little voice microphone feature, and do a little voiceover and be like, okay, here I'm choosing this point because blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, you know, obviously like the most basic is like the AA text button. That's how you add the text over the top.

And once you add the text, you can, um, you know, move for the text pops up. You can have multiple text boxes. You can add audio, you can even add sound effects if you want. But I, I mean, I basically, I don't wanna overwhelm you. I would say just get in there and start playing around. Um, don't worry about using any like the advanced features, but the coolest thing in my opinion about the edits app is at the top left, you'll see new project.

When you've made it, you can rename it to, you know, be like, okay, pregnancy B roll or something, whatever you wanna name it. And then in your edits app you've got, like, if you ever, like I told you how, you know, I love to repurpose stuff. You've got all of your reels saved right here in the Edits app. In that video I was telling you about that I took from 25 minutes down to like 10 seconds, I don't have to go re-edit that video, that B-roll, I can literally just go scroll down in my edits app, find that original video, change the text over the top like you there.

You can hold down on the video and hit duplicate. And so now it's in your edits app twice, and then just change the text over the top and post it again. I like that you can name, like I said, name your different reels inside of the Edits app. It's just makes it easier to kind of refer back to. And then probably like, the best thing about this is you can post your reel on Instagram directly from the Edits app.

Now, you can't actually write your caption inside of the Edits app, but what you can do is, is if you have a, if you're a one man or one woman show, this is not an issue. But if you do have a bigger practice with multiple people. I often recommend purchasing a clinic, iPhone because here's the thing I didn't say.

Lemme just say this really quickly before I finish my thought about the caption part. This is not a cloud-based storage system. If you know, let's say you have a front desk helping you with your content, if they are logged into the edits app on their phone, you will not see their drafts on your phone. So, like I said, it's not, it's not a cloud-based, it's device specific.

So that's why sometimes I recommend having like a, like a clinic iPhone that you use. So like I said, going back to the caption part, you can't write captions and edits, but, but since you can name the file, um, inside of holistic marketing hub, I like teach how to batch create two weeks worth of content.

And so what you can do is just like, maybe you have a Google Doc where you are like, you know, batching out all your content. You can literally just put on the Google Doc, like, okay, the name of the reel in the edits app is, you know, like pregnancy one or whatever. And then you would know that's the reel to refer back to for that post.

And then if you want to pre-schedule things, you can, like, you could just go not through edits, you can actually go right through the Instagram app and pre-schedule stuff that way and like, go ahead. But I just like word the wise. I would never, ever, ever, ever. Keep your captions right inside of the Instagram app because if there is any glitch, if you need an update, it's all gonna be gone.

So you wanna make sure that you're actually writing your captions and storing your captions. Like I said, either on a Google Doc, which is my favorite method, or well, really my, my, for my own account, I just use like the notes app on my phone. For our clients, we often do Google Docs. We use Planoly for a lot of our clients, P-L-A-N-O-L-Y.

And I have an affiliate link for it, but I'm not even gonna share it because I don't want you to use, I don't want you to use it. I just don't think it's worth paying for for you because I'm telling you, a good old fashioned Google Doc is just the way to go because you can like, um, like I said, if it's a Canva graphic, you can hyperlink to the graphic right on the Google Doc.

Anyway, I don't wanna get into the whole batch creation stuff on this episode. I wanna stick with the edits app stuff. The other cool, so like I said, when you go to post from the Edits app. You also need to be signed in to the account you wanna post to. So for example, like I've been helping my acupuncturist, if I use my I, you just have one edits app.

You don't have to like log in and out of edits app based on the account. If I am working on my ACU, like a reel for my acupuncturist account, I just first, before I go to edits, first, switch over on the Instagram app and make sure I'm logged into her account. Then I go to edits, create the reel. And, um, when you go to Post, it will then, like there, you'll just see like a little Instagram button and it'll post directly, or it won't post right away, but it'll go to your Instagram app, and then that's where you add the caption.

Like I said, I wouldn't recommend like writing the caption right then and there, because every time I have done that, it's like, fool me once, fool me twice, fool me 57 times. I have lost it before. So that's why, like I said, I, I, um, like to have the caption either like, just somewhere else that you can easily copy and paste.

That's how you would push out your reel from the edits app. You can see and you still have to add your location. Like I said, the caption, all that still has to be added right in Instagram. That can't be added in edits. Another cool thing about the Edits app is this like new-ish. You can actually add the audio or the music right in the edits app, and when you download it to your phone, the audio will transfer over.

If you've been a like avid Instagram user for a while, you know that that's like a cool feature because it used to not do that. It used to, if you wanted to download your reel and it had any type of audio on it, um, other than you just like talking to the camera, it would not download the audio. So now it does.

So you can actually just like download from the edits app to your camera roll. You don't have to go like straight to Instagram if you don't want to. You can go straight to Facebook too, I believe. But wait, we've never done that. Another cool feature that the Edits app has. I don't have it yet, but some other accounts do.

So let me know if you have it. I'd be curious to know, and if you're wondering why I don't have it, it's not because I don't have the updated app. It's just like sometimes Instagram rolls out new features in waves. So like trial reels, for example, like some of our clients still don't have the ability to post a trial reel, but like I do and some of our accounts do.

So Instagram tends to roll, roll like new features out in waves. And I don't really know the rhyme or reason to it to be honest. So if you asked AI Why, why don't I have it? They'll say, does your app updated? Like yes, minus mine is updated still. I just still don't have this new feature, but it's really cool.

But there's a new feature in the edits app for some people where at the bottom it'll say link a reel. And you know how I'm always preaching collab posts. And if you don't, this is your first time listening or you haven't heard my episode on collab posts, we'll link that in the show notes. But this is a really cool way to, um, do collabs with people too.

You can literally like hyperlink another reel or like your account or a link to something like write over the reel. Now, it'll just be along the bottom, like I said, and it'll say, I think it says link, but like I said, I don't, I don't have the feature. Unfortunately. I can't really play around with it to tell you.

So let me know if you have it, but you can also, like I said, link back. Like say you're doing a series on, you know, fertility and acupuncture and maybe you've got like a five part series, you could go link back to like say you're on part three of the series. If you do, if you are one of the lucky people that has that new link, a reel feature.

You can link like part two, like right on your reel in the edits app, and it's really cool. So you can be like, you know, this is part, you know, go back to part two. Kinda like YouTube, you know, YouTube you have like in app or what do they call it? Like over screen links. I forgot what they're called. They have a technical term.

It's kind of like that. So that's really cool. There are some more advanced things that you can do, like key frames and all kinds of stuff. And just in like there's transitions and filters. I don't typically use all of those advanced features, but I mean, it's definitely there if you want it. So I hope this was a helpful episode and, um, if you are a hub student, you have a full edits tech tutorial inside your portal.

If you are not a hub student, why not? It's super affordable. This is like my, this for 400 students in this membership. I've been running it and ideating it since, not ideating, iterating, but since 2020. And it just got a brand new curriculum. The, the videos are always being updated. I literally just updated the reels at its tutorial a week ago, and I'm sure you could go on YouTube and find some, like edits, tutorials there.

But, um, you know what I always say, just push some buttons. So my tip to you is just download it the first time around. If you're frustrated by it, like, congratulations, you're a beginner. This is what happens when something's new, right? Like, if I all of a sudden decided I wanna be really good at throwing free throws.

I'm probably going to miss like 18 outta the 20 at first, right? Like you have to be okay being a beginner and just pushing buttons, and I promise you, your phone will in fact not blow up in your hands. That's how I learned better. But like I said, there's, there's all kinds of tutorials out there as well.

Um, okay. I hope this was super helpful and, um, like I said, let me know what questions you have about the Edits app. Actually, hey, could you do me a favor, just questions in general that you feel like I haven't answered on the podcast. Will you DM me like I, I, I'm 161 episodes in now, and I'm like, alright, what else do the people need to know?

So let me know your biggest questions, even if it's not a question. Maybe like frustration, like what's keeping you from being consistent? What's keeping you from outsourcing, what's keeping you from, fill in the blank. And I am so happy to help. I hope you have a fantastic day, and thank you for listening.

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