Went with a raw unfiltered style for my last 5 TikToks instead of polished edits

I spent 4 hours editing a single 30 second video last month that got 300 views, then threw together a 15 second clip with zero cuts on my phone that hit 45k in two days. The rough one was about a specific tool failure I had at a job site in Phoenix, nothing fancy just me talking to the camera. Has anyone else seen a huge jump when they stopped over producing their content?

3 comments

3 Comments

angela_grant15d ago

Think about the audience's trust filter though. Polished edits can feel like a sales pitch (even when they aren't). The raw stuff triggers this weird protective reflex in viewers where they think "this person isn't trying to sell me anything, they're just real." I saw a video last week about a guy's failed plumbing repair that went viral exactly because you could hear his neighbor's dog barking in the background. That accidental noise made it more credible than any scripted tutorial could be.

riley_schmidt15d ago

@angela_grant you mentioning that barking dog reminded me of something. I watched a TikTok where a woman was showing how to fix a squeaky door hinge and in the middle of it her cat knocked a glass off the counter. She left it in the video, didn't cut it out, and it had like 2 million views. The raw stuff almost feels like you're eavesdropping on someone's actual life instead of watching a performance. Makes me wonder how many perfect-looking videos I've scrolled past that actually had better stories underneath.

rubyk8614d ago

That's exactly how I felt watching a guy's lawnmower repair video where his kid ran through yelling about a spider.