Video: Your Secret Weapon for Incredible Software Tutorials

Your customers rely on your software tutorial content to ensure they can actually use your software. But what happens when your help content doesn’t actually help anyone? Software tutorial videos to the rescue!

Unfortunately, it usually means unnecessary calls to your tech support department, angry and frustrated customers, or worse — users who may actually just decide to buy from a competitor.

But great software tutorial and how-to content can actually delight your users help create customers for life. Plus, you’ll take a huge burden off your tech support team!

In this post, you’ll discover:

• Why video is your secret weapon for software tutorials.
• The three easy steps you can take to start creating incredible software tutorial videos right now.
• How software tutorial videos can help reduce burden on your tech support team.
• Why tutorial videos can make it easier to keep up with changes to UI, features, and more.

Video tutorials can be a game changer for both your customers and your company! No one wants to read through pages and pages of software documentation hunting for the answer to their question.

More and more, users want self-service content that can help them do what they need to do without sitting on hold or waiting for an email response to their question.

But I’m not here to convince you that video is an essential part of your customer education content. You already know that.

For most people, the problem is that they simply don’t know where to start. Some people think videos are too time-consuming or expensive to create.

Or, maybe you think you need to be a video professional to create professional-quality videos.

What if I told you that you can start making incredible software tutorial videos with no experience. Not only that, it’s also actually really cost-effective and takes way less time than you may think.

It’s true!

Is your software tutorial content actually helping anyone?

Here’s the long and short of it: If your software help content is text-based, you’re behind the times. Today’s consumers are used to being able to find how-to videos of all sorts via YouTube and if they can’t find all the ways to provide great help content, giant walls of text is most likely the least useful. Research shows that people don’t just prefer video and visual content — they actually perform better when its provided. They even remember it longer! It’s literally a win-win-win.

When your users can see how to perform tasks, they understand faster what they need to do.

Remember, though, that not all of your users will be able to consume your visual and video content in the same way. Always create content with accessibility for users with disabilities in mind. All images should include alternative text and all videos should include an audio description and captions.

Of all the ways to provide help content, giant walls of text is most likely the least userful.

How to create incredible software video tutorials (right now!)

You don’t have to be a video professional to create professional-quality software how-to videos. Here’s how to get started today!

Step 1: Choose your software

While it’s incredibly easy to make software tutorial videos, they don’t make themselves. That means you need to choose your video software.

There are a lot of options out there, but we happen to think that Camtasia is the best software for creating software tutorial videos. In fact, we have an entire library of software how-tos created with Camtasia. Pretty meta, eh?

But seriously, with Camtasia you can record your screen, add audio, effects, animations, and more with a simple drag-and-drop interface that’s easy enough for anyone to use.

Plus, you can download it free to use for 30 days. What do you have to lose?

Step 2: Record your video

Once you have Camtasia downloaded, you’re ready to get started.

Now, I could write out all kinds of instructions on what you need to do, but why would I do that when we have so many great tutorials?

Here’s an overview of how easy it is to get started.

You can see how easy it is to get started recording and editing your videos. Of course, we recommend that you have a plan for what you want to show. Keep your videos short and to the point. Cover one topic for each video whenever possible to avoid confusing your users or giving them too much to understand or remember.

Adding some professional polish

While a basic screen recording may work for some videos, adding animations, callouts, cursor effects and more can go a long way in enhancing your video’s effectiveness.

Camtasia makes it ridiculously easy to add powerful effects and more.

Want to take it even further? It’s just as easy.

Step 3: Share it with the world

Once your video is ready, you’re ready to share it! We recommend hosting your videos in a library on your website where your customers can easily find it.

But, it’s also a good idea to have a library of videos on a site like YouTube where many people go to look for help content.

Camtasia offers exporting to many of the most popular hosting destinations, including YouTube, so you can find your customers where they are!

Software tutorial videos aren’t just great for your customers

Your tech support team works hard. Probably too hard. You can help with that!

Think about what YOU do when you need help with a product. For me, the first thing I do is go to Google and search for the problem I’m having. My first choice is rarely to go directly to tech support. I want to solve the problem on my own. Chances are, your customers want to do the same.

A great library of tutorial videos helps your customers help themselves. Solve the most common issues and most of your customers won’t ever need to contact support.

And that frees up your tech support team to handle the really tricky issues.

Keep up with the pace of innovation

One of the hesitations with creating video tutorials is that the minute you update your UI or add a new feature, they may become obsolete.

New software features can come at any time. Keeping your videos up to date can be a challenge, especially with more complex video editors.

With Camtasia, it’s ridiculously fast and easy to create videos to highlight new capabilities and UI changes — or edit existing videos to include enhancements.

Video templates allow you to create new videos. But it’s just as fast to edit existing videos, as well. Simply open your project, remove the outdated content and drop in the new content. You can adjust timings as needed and get your new tutorials out quickly and easily.

No lag time. No hassle.

Help your customers help themselves

So whether you’re on a customer support team, a content marketer, or someone in between, these tips will will help you produce help content that makes more successful users.