As you probably know, how-to guides and tutorials are an extremely popular form of video content that tend to perform well on social media.
However, if you’re hoping that a cobbled together tutorial is going to be effective – you need to think again.
For Video Tutorials to be effective, they need to interest and engage the viewers. While it is true that videos, in general, are good at both those things
– it is important that you take steps to maximize that potential.
Planning the Tutorial
Before you start rolling the cameras, you should first take a few steps back and plan out your video tutorial. In particular, you’ll want to cover the following areas:
- Choose an interesting topic
The key to an interesting topic for a video tutorial is that it should pinpoint a problem your viewers may be facing and then show them how to solve it.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that it has to ‘fix’ something, but it could help address a gap in their knowledge about something they want to know more about.
- Research your audience
Try to get to know your audience and identify the demographics that they come from. That can be helpful in selecting topics, and can also help you to tailor your video’s style and approach.
- Write the script
Starting to write a script for a video tutorial is easy – just list the instructions step-by-step.
After that, you can slowly develop and flesh out the script more, and start to think about what is going to be shown in each scene, what the voiceover will say, and so on.
At this stage, you can also start to try to simplify the tutorial – to keep it short and focused, which is best for social media.
- Select the right format
Ask yourself: What’s the best way to ‘show’ the steps in your tutorial?
In some cases, you may want to record live video footage, or in others, you may want to use screen capture or even slideshows.
It will largely depend on the topic of your tutorial and its subject matter.
- Plan the logistics
Some video tutorials require nothing more than a simple video camera or a screen recorder, while others may be more complicated and require lots of equipment, sets, and other paraphernalia.
Based on your script and the other decisions that you’ve made you should have a good idea of the logistics that will be required
– and you should plan accordingly and decide whether or not it is feasible in the first place.
Once you’ve planned all the areas listed above, recording the tutorial itself should be the easy part.
The groundwork that you’ve laid should help to ensure that it is effective – though there are other steps that you can take to improve on that further.
Tips for Effective Video Tutorials
While your plan should go a long way towards ensuring your tutorial is both interesting and engaging, there are a few other tips that can help you to boost its performance on social media:
- Try to keep its duration under a minute
Viewers on social media prefer shorter videos, and you should cater to that.
Ideally, your video tutorials should be a minute long at most, and so they should be tightly focused on delivering the content quickly and efficiently.
- Use subtitles
More and more viewers nowadays are watching videos with the volume turned off (or way down) – and that trend is likely to increase. So that your videos can engage viewers without relying on the sound you should use subtitles rather than rely solely on a voiceover.
- Pay close attention to video and audio quality
While it is completely acceptable to record amateur-looking videos and in some cases will lend your social media tutorials a more authentic feel
– the quality of your video and audio should be beyond reproach. Try to record in Full HD and use a good microphone – and perhaps tidy up the video and audio when editing it.
- Don’t go overboard with visual effects
Needless to say, you want your tutorials to get noticed, but there’s no need to go overboard with visual effects to do that.
Instead, focus on delivering the message effectively, and only use visual effects tastefully to accentuate the content.
By now you should have plenty to chew on when you decide to make your first (or next) video tutorial.
If you intend to do so using a screen recorder however you may want to try Movavi Screen Capture Studio for Mac as it has everything you need to record high-quality videos.
In fact in addition to screen recording Mac it will also allow you to edit your video and improve its quality, cut and join video segments, add subtitles, apply effects, and more.
Suffice to say Movavi Screen Capture Studio for Mac will let you produce some great tutorials from start to finish.
With its help coupled with the tips listed above, you should be able to come up with some highly effective tutorials that manage to interest a large number of viewers, engage them, and ultimately help to expand your social media presence.