Shoot with the edit in mind
Hold each shot 3 to 5 seconds longer than feels natural, keep the light in front of the subject, and film a little wider than you need. Ten extra seconds of footage per take gives you room to cut. You can always trim, but you can never add what wasn't recorded.
Cut first, polish later
Start by deleting dead air, bad takes and every second that doesn't move the story. Then do a second pass for pacing: shorten scenes by 10-20% and the video almost always feels tighter. Color, sound and effects come last. Polishing a cut you're about to throw away is wasted work.
Win the first 3 seconds
Viewers decide in the first three seconds whether to stay. Open on the most interesting frame: the result, the action, the surprise. Not a logo or an intro. Put a quick hook first, context second. The same rule applies to every short video: the thumbnail and the first frame do the recruiting.
Quick wins: sound, speed and frame
Three cheap fixes that lift any video: normalize the audio level so it doesn't jump between clips, keep speed changes pitch-corrected so voices don't squeak, and export in the platform's native ratio (9:16 for shorts, 16:9 for YouTube). Each takes one minute and none requires any skill.
Keep the master file, export twice
Never overwrite the original footage. Every edit is easier to redo when the master survives, and export per destination: a full-quality MP4 for your archive, a compressed version for chat and social, where speed beats pixels. Compression with a sensible preset usually looks identical on a phone screen.