If you have any sort of product or service, creating a series of how-to videos for your website, or for social media platforms such YouTube, is a great way to engage your customers and deliver value for money while cementing your reputation.
If you sell a digital software product, for example, you might want to produce bite-sized tutorials on how to get the best out of it or complete certain tasks. If you run a legal firm, you could produce a how-to make a claim video or give potential clients advice on the best way to collect evidence.
There are a lot of options with this type of video. To help, here are our top tips for creating how-to content that really hits the mark:
- Focus on the Right Questions
Ideally, you want to provide your customers with the information they need but also highlight your own expertise at the same time, so they come back to you again. You want them to think of you as the go-to business if they have a query about the product.
Depending on what your product or service is, you could have many different opportunities to create a how-to video. The key is to hone this list down to the most appropriate ones which will deliver a strong ROI. You can do this by actually asking the customer directly. It should also save you wasting time on content that isn’t as important or relevant to your audience.
- Get to the Point
Your job here is to show someone how they do something. It’s not to explain WHY they should do it. These kinds of videos are usually found through searches, so your audience already knows the why part. Get into the habit of jumping straight to the heart of things and showing the ‘how’ immediately.
Keep it as short and sweet as possible without missing out any vital stages to the solution and your audience will thank you and come back again.
- Keep it Simple
Don’t be overly complicated with jargon or terms your audience may not understand and probably don’t even care about. Of course, you don’t want to do this and cut out valuable information that may be useful. It’s a judgement call and you might want to do some testing of your script with those around you before you actually start making the video.
- Summarising and Recapping
If you do have a complicated how-to video to make, you will need to break it down into stages to make it easier to digest. What can also help is putting in summaries of what has gone before at strategic points so that your audience doesn’t lose track.
This works for longer videos that are designed to cover quite a big subject but, for shorter ones, you can also do a recap at the end (just don’t make it too complicated).
- Keep it Entertaining
Finally, while your primary objective is to show your audience how to do X or Y, you should also try to make it as entertaining as possible without obscuring the beneficial tips. It’s all about giving your how-to video some personality which makes it easier to take in and connects you to the viewer in a more personal way.
Generating the results, you want from a how-to video (or any video for that matter) takes experience, expertise and strategy. The team at Tallboy can help you meet your goals and make the video you intended with the results you expected to see.