Stacy Kinney

Video marketing has quickly become a fun and effective way to promote your business. With so many people turning to the internet to learn a skill, producing a video tutorial is a great way to demonstrate your expertise as well as generate an influx of prospects hungry for what you have to sell.

A video tutorial is a video that teaches people how to complete a task. The best way to show people that you are an expert is to teach another person how to do what you do. For example, if you are a social media marketer, you could produce a video tutorial showing people how to use a popular social networking website.

To produce your video tutorial, you’ll need equipment appropriate to the type of tutorial you want to make. If you are creating a video on how to do something using a computer program or website, you can use screen recording software such as CamStudio or Camstasia to record your computer monitor. For non computer related video, such as showing someone how to cook a meal, you’ll need the appropriate camera equipment.

You’ll also need a video editing program, like Roxio, to clean up your footage as well as a microphone to record audio.

Step One – Decide on a Topic

Perhaps the easiest step is choosing a topic for your video tutorial. You’ll want to pick something of interest to your target market. To maximize the number of views you get, you’ll want to pick a topic that is in demand but where there is a lack of material on the subject.

Step Two – Write a Script

In order to produce a good video tutorial, you’ll need to make sure the lesson you are teaching gives the viewer a thorough understanding of the process.

Start by writing down all the steps involved in the tutorial. Keep in mind the skill level of your audience. Beginners will need to have technical terms explained to them whereas you can skip such explanations if you are teaching advanced techniques to experts. When you are done, write an introduction and an ending.

To sound as natural as possible, use the script more as a guideline rather than memorize it.

courtesy of @photos8

Step Three – Do a Dry Run

Go through the video tutorial as though you were recording it but don’t actually turn on your equipment. You do your job all the time and it’s easy to skip over things that seem obvious to you but may be unclear to your viewer. Update your script with anything you may have missed.

Do as many dry runs as you need to feel comfortable making the video tutorial.

Step Four – Produce the Video

With your script in hand, do a recording of the video tutorial then go back and view it. Make note of things that need to be polished especially the use of stumbling words such as “Umm” and “Ahh.” Not only do they sound unprofessional, your viewer is concentrating hard to follow what you are saying and stumbling words will distract them. You may need to do the video a couple of times before it comes out the way you want it.

As a side note, don’t worry if the audio portion of the video tutorial trips you up. You can rerecord the audio portion later.

Step Five – Edit Your Footage

Go back and edit your footage to remove the parts of the video tutorial where you are waiting for the computer to process your commands. If the audio didn’t work out to your satisfaction but the video looks good, go ahead and rerecord the audio portion only and overlay onto the video.

After you have finished editing your video, upload it to the internet and wait for feedback. Producing a video tutorial does involve a lot of work but it is well worth the effort when you have a cadre of videos selling for you even when you are busy having fun on the beach.

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