Software Tutorial Videos for Help Content

I’m going to go out on a limb and say something that may be controversial: If you don’t have help content videos for your software customers, you’re behind the times. Not only is it more effective than written content, software tutorial videos are what your customers want.

Better yet, creating a library of tutorial videos (Like Avaya did) helps your audience help themselves, which gives your tech support team the time they need to solve the really tough issues

But don’t worry! Whether you’re creating videos from scratch or based on existing written instructions, creating tutorials is easy with the right plan. 

In this post, you’ll discover:

  • The three-step path to creating exceptional software tutorials
  • Why video tutorials are essential for software mastery
  • Benefits of video tutorial content for your tech support team

The Best Tool for Creating Engaging Software Tutorial Videos

Camtasia is your secret weapon for creating powerful and effective software tutorial videos to help your users use your software to its fullest!

Download Camtasia for Free

How to create exceptional software tutorials

You don’t have to be a video professional to make professional-looking tutorials. We’ve put together an easy three-step plan to create your own software tutorials. In fact, we’ll use some of our own software tutorials as examples! Here’s how to get started.

Step one: Select and categorize tutorial topics

Before you start creating, identify some much needed topics. Your support team is a great resource to get started! They know your customers’ needs and questions better than anyone. You can also check your FAQ page or internet forums where users are searching for answers.

For the most part, we recommend covering just one topic per video. This helps reduce cognitive load for your viewer and ensures they can find the answers they’re looking for quickly and easily.

There may be times when longer or more complex videos are appropriate, but sticking with simple, straightforward tutorials is almost always a winning strategy.

By thinking about your topics early on, identifying gaps in your tutorials is easy. In fact, you’ll often think of new topics while deciding how they all work together. 

Step two: Choose the right tools

There are a lot of options out there for video editing software. Because it offers crystal-clear screen recording and advanced, but easy-to-use video editing capabilities, we believe Camtasia is the best software for creating software tutorial videos. In fact, we use Camtasia to create and maintain our library of videos for all of our software!

Step three: Record your tutorial

Recording is simple with Camtasia. The recorder helps you record your screen, camera, system audio, and microphone at the same time! Or, choose the appropriate combination that’s right for your project. 

This makes recording your software tutorials faster and easier since you don’t need to record and stitch these pieces together manually. Here’s how to do it!

Record & Edit Camera Video (Picture-in-Picture) | Camtasia | TechSmith

Once your video is recorded and edited, you might want to add some finishing touches.

Once of the best touches to add to a software tutorial is cursor enhancement. This is especially true if you have a screen recording tutorial ー it needs to be clear where your mouse is moving and clicking.

Making the cursor larger and smoothing the cursor path is easy with Camtasia. Here’s how!

Edit the Cursor with Effects | Camtasia | TechSmith

If you are creating video content based on existing written tutorials, make sure to keep the written content handy! Working from a transcript makes it easy to add callouts and captions.

Step four: Share your video tutorial

Bringing your video to life is one of the most exciting. You’ve spent a lot of time and effort on these videos. So how do you ensure it gets shared in a way that finds your audience?

Where do most people go for help content? YouTube! YouTube is a great platform for sharing videos with a wide audience. It’s especially helpful for creating top-ranking video tutorials since YouTube and Google work together. Just make sure to include relevant keywords in the title and description of your video.

To promote accessibility, you should always include the transcript of your video when you upload it. Not only does a transcript help search engines understand your video, it’s an essential element for people who use screen readers. 

Conclusion

Whether you are part of a customer support team or work in content marketing, you likely know the importance of helping your customers already. But following this three point plan moves you past the point of understanding. Soon you’ll be creating truly helpful software tutorials!  

For more tips, tricks, and advice for creating great videos, head to the TechSmith Academy. Here you can access resources to help you level up your video skills.

To hear expert advice and tips visit TechSmith Academy on YouTube or listen to the Podcast.

The Best Tool for Creating Engaging Software Tutorial Videos

Camtasia is your secret weapon for creating powerful and effective software tutorial videos to help your users use your software to its fullest!

Download Camtasia for Free

Ryan Knott

Ryan Knott is a Marketing Content Strategist at TechSmith, where he creates content about easy, effective, and efficient video creation, editing, and tips and tricks, as well as audio editing for creators of all kinds. He/him.

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