By nature, video tutorials have the potential to interest and engage viewers by helping them to learn how to perform a particular task or solve a certain problem.
At first, they may seem easy to create as well since it’s really just a video showing people how to do something. However as much as they are simple in that sense, the fact of the matter is that creating tutorials that are effective and engaging is a bit more involved.
Finding the Right Topic
Before you start to record any actual video footage, you should first start by planning your tutorial to provide yourself with a solid foundation. That starts with one deceptively simple step: Choosing a good topic.
The topic of your tutorial should be something that your target audience wants to know about. It should be useful to them and help them solve some problem they may be facing or teach them something that would be beneficial to them.
Considering that, if you want to choose a good topic you’ll have to know your target audience, and their interests, needs, and problems. That may take some research, and it is a good place to start.
To start researching your target market, first define the demographics that you’re interested in reaching. Break them down by age, gender, location, interests, and other factors. After that, try to identify the needs of these demographics, and the problems they may be facing.
When you’re carrying out research on your target market, you may also want to research your competitors – since they will probably be targeting the same demographics. By looking into what your competitors are doing, you can glean insights into what types of topics perform well, and how the target market responds to different types of tutorials.
Always remember that it is important that you don’t just ‘copy’ your competitors outright and create the exact same content. Instead, use the information that you acquire as a baseline, and ask yourself: What can we do better? By identifying areas of improvement, you could put your own spin on the video and make it more effective.
Based on your research you should be able to start listing topics that you think will be a good fit. Initially, you may want to just list any and all topics that you can think of, and then later go back and narrow down the list till you settle on several topics that you can start with.
Planning the Tutorial
Assuming you settle on a topic, you can then start to plan the video tutorial itself.
The best way of doing that is to come up with a detailed script that lays out your entire video from start to finish. That may sound daunting, but writing a script for a tutorial is actually fairly easy.
To start simply list out the steps in your tutorial one by one, and then begin to flesh them out. As you expand each step, add details to it and think about what is going to be shown in the video while the step is being performed, and what the voiceover narration will be at that point in time.
If you keep going in that way, you should eventually end up with a solid script that has all the details you need. Remember to add an introduction that will inform viewers what the video is about, and how it will benefit them. More so, you may want to include a compelling call to action at the end.
Rather than moving forward immediately after you’re done writing your script, take the time to refine it. Keep in mind that you’ll want to keep your tutorial short and focused – preferably under a minute long. Better yet, when editing your video, erase unwanted elements or anything that will bore your audience.
As such you should trim out any bits that aren’t necessary, and make sure it is framed in as clear and straightforward a manner as possible.
In some cases when you’re planning and scripting your video you may find that the topic itself is too long – in which case you could want to split the video into smaller topics that are more focused. You should be able to determine the logistics that will be required to record the video and can evaluate how feasible it is as well.
Tips for Producing Engaging Content
All that groundwork should help ensure that you’re on the right track – and by the time you start rolling cameras you should know precisely what you want.
Still, there are several ways to make your content even more effective and engaging during the production stage, and they are:
- Make sure the audio quality is high
Audio quality is an area that is often overlooked when creating videos – but it can have a huge impact on the overall video quality and its effectiveness. Ideally, your audio should be crisp, clear and without any issues such as background noise, popping, or crackling.
Recording high-quality audio can be tricky, but the best place to start is with a good microphone. You may want to record the voiceover narration separately in a quiet setting and then add it to the video later.
- Use subtitles or visual elements
More and more platforms are automatically muting videos until they are clicked, and many people mute their devices as well. As such your video needs to be able to interest viewers without relying too heavily on its audio.
The easiest way to do that is to use subtitles of any voiceover that is being used. In some cases, you may want to rely on other visual elements, however, such as titles or captions that could serve the same purpose.
- Keep it clean
In any tutorial, the content itself is what should stand out, and so you should keep it as clean as possible. Try to avoid including any unnecessary visual elements, special effects, or other additions that may distract the viewer from the message itself.
The most effective tutorials ensure that viewers stay focused on each step of the tutorial. If they do, they are more likely to keep watching, stay engaged, and eventually can be converted using a call to action.
- Re-shoot as required
Don’t expect the video footage that you shoot to turn out perfect on the first try. In fact, it may require several takes and re-shoots before you’re fully satisfied.
Ideally, you should re-shoot and record multiple takes at the same time, as it will make the logistics easier. However, if you find that re-shoots are required later on (possibly during the editing stage), you should not shy away from doing so.
Tracking and Analyzing Videos
Although all the tips listed above will help you to produce effective and engaging video tutorials, there is one other action that you should take to continue to improve them: Track their performance.
By tracking your videos performance, you can learn more about your viewers and how they respond to certain topics, styles, and other aspects of your tutorial. Based on what you learn you can then improve subsequent videos, try out new things, and learn from them too.
Try to use analytics to track as many metrics as possible. More is generally better, as it is always better to have more information than you need, rather than need information that you don’t have.
Once you track the performance of videos, analyze them. Try to pinpoint which video tutorials performed better, and identify the reasons why they did so. After that try to incorporate what you learn into the next tutorial that you create, and see if it performs better as well.
In the long term, this is key if you intend to create effective and engaging tutorials as you’ll be able to iteratively improve your videos and make them better with each new tutorial that you publish. Some of what you learn could apply to other types of videos that you may want to create as well.
If you’re looking for a good video tutorial software to help you pull all this off, you may want to try Movavi Screen Capture Studio. With its help, you can easily record video footage from your screen which is perfect for creating tutorials for software, apps, and digital products in general.
Additionally, you can also capture footage from other sources, such as webcam, AVCHD cameras, or analog sources such as VHS player.
Aside from giving you the tools you need to record high-quality videos, Movavi Screen Capture Studio has its very own built-in editor that you can use too. With it, you can compile your footage into an impressive tutorial, complete with background music, voiceovers, customizable captions, filter and effects, and much more.
Simply put: Movavi Screen Capture Studio is a powerful tool that will supply you with what you need to create effective and engaging tutorials.
Now that you’re aware how to go about doing that, why not get started right now and start to choose a topic, plan your tutorial and actually create one?