AP 0570: How Do I Create Video Tutorials?

AskPat 570 Episode Transcript

Pat Flynn: Hey, what's up, everybody? Pat Flynn here. Brand new week, brand new episodes of AskPat here for you. This is episode 570. Thank you so much for joining me today.

All right, here's today's question from Tammy.

Tammy: Hi, Pat. My name is Tammy Adams, and I have a website I've been building that is dedicated to helping local small business owners. It is called TrainingForSmallBusinessOwners.com, where I am working and providing tools and resources to help our local small business owners. My question is, I absolutely love your tutorials on how you were able to use Keynote, record your voice-over, and write on the screen, and it all looks so professional and seamless. My goal is to create training materials that I hope to look as amazing as yours. I am using PowerPoint, but I am going to assume the process is very similar. Is it possible for you to share with us how you make these amazing tutorials, and what tools you use to capture the presentation, your voice, as well as write on the screen? I really appreciate that you're always willing to help us all out. Thanks again, Pat.

Pat Flynn: Hey, Tammy. Thank you so much for the question today. I really appreciate it. So, really quick and simple: the video screen recordings with my voice over it. One of the best things ever. It definitely has an amazing response from the audience. I always get an amazing response with those kinds of videos, and they're also relatively easy to do. The nice thing about it was I actually started doing that because I didn't want to put my face on the camera, and I know that's why a lot of people don't want to do videos because they don't want to put their face on the camera. Well, you don't have to. You can just record what's on your screen and talk about what you're doing. I think it's super handy; it's very helpful. Also, you're providing a lot of value. And if you share these on YouTube, you're going to get a lot of shares; your audience is going to love you for it. You embed them in your blog post, too, similar to what I did at PodcastingTutorial.com. That's one example you can all check out. And you could also put it in a course, and if these courses are there and they have this kind of video quality to them and it is very professional, you'll be able to charge more, people are going to have more value coming out of it, you're going to get some great testimonials, so on and so forth.

So, I have a challenge for you, Tammy, and for everybody else out there listening. Try to do one of these screen recording videos, if you can. It doesn't even need to be more than a couple minutes long, although I will say that when you start this process it's not as easy as it sounds, because there is a lot of things moving at the same time—and I'll go through that in just a minute. I will also say that it's very easy for you to keep talking. You might feel uncomfortable with talking and sharing your voice out there, but you'll see that when you start this process, it's actually going to be quite challenging to keep it short. But that's where a lot of the effectiveness comes in, is when you optimize these videos to just say exactly what you need to say, go through these processes, people are going to love it. They're going to enjoy it. And that's the big challenge. I will say that, although you will struggle in the beginning when you do this—I did—it's not going to take you very long after you do a few to get the process down, and it's going to become much easier. So, like anything that looks cool, it's going to take some time for you to get into it.

So, how do you do this? Well, there's different software out there that can record your screen. There's actually one that you can do it for free: QuickTime, I believe has the capability of screen capturing, although it's not going to give you a lot of the options that some of these other tools that I'm going to mention will give you, that I would actually recommend instead. So if you're going to be serious about doing this, I would recommend using a tool if you're on a Mac; use ScreenFlow. Again, it's called ScreenFlow. If you are on a PC, use Camtasia Studios. Camtasia Studios. And they'll run you anywhere between $99 and $199, I think. I don't know the prices at this point. But it varies between $100 and $200. But like I said, if you write it off and also if you use it, it's going to be definitely worth your time. So check that out. Again, ScreenFlow if you're on Mac and Camtasia Studios for PC.

Now you also asked, Tammy, about how I am able to write on the screen. There's a couple tools you can use to do that. If you're recording yourself on PowerPoint, you can also write on top of that. If you are in a particular slide, for example, you can use the pen tool and draw around things and then if you want to clear it, just undo what you just did. You don't necessarily have the capabilities like you would have on some other platforms, and mainly I'm talking about Mac. Because Mac has some special applications that you can use. If you're on a Mac and you want to draw on your screen, on top of anything, you can use a tool called OmniDazzle. That's O-M-N-I dazzle.com. Or I don't even think that's a dot-com actually, just look it up on Google, OmniDazzle, and you'll find it there. That's a tool that allows you to draw on your screen using your mouse. I also have a pen that helps me; however, that's a Wacom tablet, and so you can check that out on my resource page at SmartPassiveIncome.com/resources too; I have that link too there, and that is my affiliate link, just so you know.

So those help me with that part of the presentation, the actual drawing part. But you don't need that. I mean, that's actually the most difficult part, is coordinating the screen recording with your voice and the pen. And in the beginning, again, it's very difficult to do, because as you're writing you're going to fumble your words, and as you're talking, the writing looks bad. It's going to be difficult. So don't necessarily think like you have to do that right from the start. What I would do: bare bones, record your screen, and if you're doing some tutorial on some sort of software you can just record yourself going through that software. But if you want to record yourself doing slides, you just record your keynote presentation or your PowerPoint presentation. So you set up your slides ahead of time, you hit “record,” then you run through the slides, and you just talk while you're going through them as if you're giving a presentation. And then in post-edit, which is nice about these different softwares that QuickTime doesn't give you, is you can edit, you can splice, you can take out the parts that you screw up on, and that's the other thing I would recommend. As you're recording this, don't think like you have to get it all in one take. And actually I would not recommend doing that. You're going to do it a hundred times before you get it right on one take. Just finish up a part, then just take a breather, then get ready for the next part as you're still recording. Don't stop recording; just record all the way through. And then before you start your next part, just do a little click or clap or [snapping, clicking noises] or something like that. And that will signify with the WAV form that that creates, in the editing process, that that's where the new part begins. So you can use that to your advantage while editing. And again these softwares, especially ScreenFlow, they make it really easy. I actually use ScreenFlow for all my video editing, not just what I record on my screen. But any time I do any video, it's even easier than iMovie. So again, that's ScreenFlow, and Camtasia Studios, and that's what I would do.

So just, again, one recording all the way through, no matter how many takes it takes, and then you can just take the best ones that you do and put them together and then you can add some effects on top of them if you want. You also want to make sure you have a good microphone too if you're doing this, because video is not just video. It's video and audio, so have a mic set up. Your basic internal mic is okay; it'll work in the beginning, but I would highly recommend getting a more pro mic. You don't even need to spend hundreds of dollars on one like I did for my podcast. You can pick up a mic called the ATR-2100, or 2-1-0-0. That's by Audio-Technica. You can get it on Amazon for $60–80 and it plugs right in to your USB, and it sounds amazing. It sounds almost like this mic that you're listening to right now. So again, that's the Audio-Technica ATR-2100.

So your voice: that will be taken care of. Your videos: ScreenFlow or Camtasia Studios. That's taken care of. And then editing, that's what that software does and then you can export it directly to YouTube or export it as a video, plop it in wherever, upload it to your video hosting company for your course, and you're all good from there.

So, Tammy, thank you so much for the question. I appreciate you, and I wish you all the best of luck. Thank you again for sending in the question. We're going to send you an AskPat t-shirt for having your question featured here on the show. I also want to say that everybody else out there who has a question–all you have to do is head on over to AskPat.com and you can ask right there on that page. Big shout-out to SpeakPipe.com, which is the software and the application I use to collect those voice messages that I can then drop into these files to create AskPat. So again that's SpeakPipe.com.

And finally, I love to end with a quote as I always do here on AskPat, and that quote to finish off the day, is from Albert Einstein. He says, “Your imagination is your preview of life's coming attractions.” Boom. Cheers. Take care, and I'll see you the next episode of AskPat. Bye.