Role of Videos in Modern Technical Writing

Given the speed and bandwidth of current internet infrastructure, videos are dominating.In technical writing, videos are essential to articulate complex workflows. Then, it becomes easy for your audience to register the flow and undertake the right steps to accomplish technical writers can use videos for the following scenarios

• Explaining concepts
• Articulating “How-to” process
• Diagnosing any issues

The modern audience are very tech-savvy and aware of YouTube / Shorts / Reels. Thus, watching videos in a technical documentation site feels natural to them and prefer consumption of new knowledge in the video format.

Videos in software documentation

In software documentation, videos can be very useful in many scenarios. It is mostly used for showing audience on “how-to”. Instead of writing a step-by-step process / procedure on how to configure a particular feature, videos become powerful medium to present the same information visually. These “how-to” videos also increase product’s feature adoption.

Videos also play a huge role in helping customer support agent in delivering solutions to customer support tickets. These videos reduce the resolution time thus increasing customer satisfaction.

Tutorial videos are great for learning and developing of new skills.Tutorial videos serve as an asset to the software company in gaining traction in their ecosystem and promote inclusive learning. These tutorial videos can also be embedded into the product, thus making them an integral part of your product strategy. Videos uploaded to popular sites such as YouTube and Vimeo help to drive traffic to your website.

Videos in user manuals

User manuals are fundamental to many hardware product companies as they explain how to assemble a product, configure it, or troubleshoot any issues with it.

Most of the customers try to troubleshoot the problem using the internet. If the printed user manual is not available on the internet, then customers must call the trained technician for support. However, if the user manual is made into a video, then it becomes easy for customers to troubleshoot the problem by themselves. Any common issues with your product can be made into a video. Thus, it increases the self-service rate boosting your customer satisfaction.

Many companies, such as Ikea, Bosch, and so on, produce product assembling and troubleshooting videos. These videos are available in YouTube to help their customers’ self-serve.

Situations to use videos

Videos are a powerful medium to use as it engages all our senses. It has visual elements, sounds, and text. This makes it a powerful storytelling medium. It should be used on certain scenarios such as

1. Information density

   It is recommended not to pack too much information into short videos as your customers might be overwhelmed by information density.

2. Time interval

   It is recommended to create “how-to” and troubleshooting videos of length 1 – 3 minutes. Tutorial videos can be as long as 5 minutes. Instead of creating one lengthy video, break them into few short videos.

3. Content

   Instead of showing stock image, and graphics, showing real demo would enhance content quality and increases the authenticity of the solution provided in the video

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