Creating in
Edits.

Open Edits and start a new project.

Open the app. The home screen shows your previous projects (empty if this is your first reel). Look for the + New project button. On most builds it sits at the bottom centre of the screen, with a Pink Organza-tinted plus icon.

Tap + New project. Edits will ask whether you want to start from a blank canvas or use one of its templates. Choose blank. Templates lock you into a structure that everyone else is also using — which is exactly what you don't want.

Import your footage — or film directly.

You have two options:

Trim and arrange the timeline.

Once your clips are on the timeline, you'll see them as horizontal blocks at the bottom of the screen. The vertical playhead shows your current position.

To trim a clip: tap the clip — it'll highlight with Pink Organza handles at each end. Drag the handles inward to cut from the start or the end. Edits shows you the new duration in real time at the top of the screen.

To reorder: long-press a clip until it lifts, then drag left or right to a new position.

To delete: select the clip, tap the trash icon that appears in the top right.

The 15-second rule: while you're editing, watch the total duration display at the top. If you're over 30 seconds, you've made two reels. Stop, decide which half is stronger, delete the other. The algorithm measures completion rate. A 15-second reel watched fully beats a 60-second reel abandoned halfway, every time.

Add text overlays.

Text is how the viewer understands what they're watching in the first second, especially if their sound is off. About 60% of reels are watched silently the first time. Plan for that.

Tap the Aa (Text) button in the bottom toolbar. A text box appears on the preview, centred by default.

Type your hook line. Keep it under 8 words. Anything longer and the viewer is reading instead of watching.

Font: Edits has a built-in font selector. For brand consistency, avoid the playful fonts (the cursive ones, the bubble ones) and pick a clean sans-serif. Pick one font and use it for every reel. Inconsistency reads as amateurish; consistency reads as a brand.

Position: drag the text box to the lower-middle third of the screen. The bottom 15% is where Instagram's UI sits (like, share, comment icons) — keep text out of that zone or it'll be covered.

Timing: by default, text appears for the duration of the clip it sits on. Tap the text element on the timeline and drag its edges to control exactly when it appears and disappears. For hooks, the text should appear at frame 1, not frame 15.

Add audio.

Audio in Edits comes from Instagram's audio library, which means you can search for currently trending sounds and use them legally for commercial accounts.

Tap the Music or Audio button in the toolbar. The audio panel opens.

You have two ways to find audio:

Tap the audio to preview it. Tap Use or Add to project to drop it onto your timeline.

Sync to your visuals: the audio appears as a separate track below your video clips. Drag it left or right to align beats with cuts. The strongest reels have at least one cut that lands on the beat — even if subtle. It's the small detail that makes the algorithm and the viewer both lean in. Don't agonise though — one beat-aligned cut is plenty. Move on.

Volume: if you're talking on camera, lower the music to around 20–30% so your voice cuts through. If it's a no-voiceover reel, the music can sit at 80–100%. Adjust by selecting the audio track and using the volume slider.

Captions (the auto-generated kind).

These are different from the caption you write on the Instagram post. These are the subtitles that appear over your reel itself.

Edits has an auto-caption feature. Tap Captions (sometimes labelled Subtitles or CC) in the toolbar. Edits will transcribe any spoken audio in your reel automatically.

Always check the transcription. Edits gets travel destination names wrong roughly half the time. "Bali" becomes "barley." "Hvar" becomes "have are." Tap any word to edit.

Style: keep them simple. White text with a subtle black drop shadow reads on every background. Avoid the animated word-by-word captions unless they fit your specific brand — they're trendy now, they'll look dated in eighteen months.

Position: centred, lower-middle. Same safe zone as your hook text.

Final review — the 15-second pass.

Before you export, watch the whole reel back twice. Once with sound on, once with sound off.

If anything fails either pass, fix it before exporting. This is the single highest-ROI step in the whole process — and the one most people skip.

Export and publish.

Tap Export (top right). Edits offers two paths:

Format: Edits exports in 1080×1920 (9:16) by default. Don't change this. That's the native Reels resolution.

Once it's in Instagram: add your caption (Chapter 06 covers this) and post. But before you hit publish — the cover image.

Do NOT add hashtags. Not even travel ones. We'll cover why in Chapter 06.

The cover image.

This is the exception to the "post messy" rule. The reel itself can be loose, off-the-cuff, talking to camera while your dog watches from the sofa. The cover image cannot.

The cover is the still that lives on your grid permanently. It's the showroom window. Three years from now, when a prospective client lands on your profile, they'll see a wall of these — not the reels themselves. The reel does the reach. The cover does the brand.

What a good cover does.

It earns the tap. Someone scrolling your grid should be able to read your cover in under a second and want to watch the reel behind it. That's the entire job.

It signals brand. Cohesive cover design across your grid is the single biggest reason an account "looks expensive" — more than feed photography, more than copy, more than logos. If your covers look polished and on-brand, the whole account does.

How to make one.

You won't make the cover inside Edits. Make it in Canva (or your preferred design tool). Set up a single template once — it'll save you twenty minutes per reel forever after.

Dimensions: 1080×1920px (matches the reel). Build your design with the understanding that Instagram crops the bottom third on the grid view, so keep your headline in the top two-thirds.

The template: one strong photograph (atmospheric, on-brand — Aman Resorts mood, not stock photography), one short headline in your brand serif (4–7 words max), and your logo or handle in a small corner. That's it. No more elements than that. The discipline of restraint is what makes covers look high-end.

Once your template's built: every new cover takes about 2 minutes. Drop in the new photo, write the new headline, export, upload to Instagram as the cover. Done.

If you don't have a brand template yet, that's the single highest-ROI design investment you can make this month. Worth a few hours of a freelance designer's time, or worth a couple of hours of yours. The reel can be messy. The cover holds the line.