Video Tutorials

Q: Do you learn faster by reading blogs or watching videos?

Posted on by Anthony James

I’ll be honest. I didn’t get this video thing until I saw the Khan Academy. It’s incredible.

If you commute, you’ll have noticed that everyone seems to be watching videos these days instead of reading the paper. The others are on Kindle.

I have an 80 minute commute three times a week. It’s interesting to see the way we ‘consume’ content has changed.

It used to be

  1. Blogs
  2. Then blog aggregators, like Google Reader. Feedly is the one I use now.
  3. Then video inched its way in.

There’s several reasons for this:

  1. The network is fast enough. Remember when video really crawled.
  2. The tools are there. You can use free screen recording tools, editing software, and get videos online in a few clicks. Or you can just use your phone, ipad, or android and bingo – you’re a video star!
  3. YouTube tools are there. YouTube has created some very slick online editing tools, offering free music for your clips, and an incredible set of guidelines and best practices for video blogs.
  4. Facebook is also coming up to speed. You can now upload videos – incredibly fast – to your Facebook business page. Expect to see marketers shift from text to video in the next 24 months to take advantage of this.
  5. The appetite is there. We’ve seen sites like the Khan Academy and want more.

So, what does this mean for you?

  1. For those who want to learn, it means you can complement text based learning with videos tutorials.
  2. For those who want to develop content, it means you can develop videos tutorials. I use Camtasia (commercial, PC), Jing (free, web), Screenr (free, web), Screenflow (Mac) to create screencasts.

At Klariti, we decided to give it a try.

The results? I’m not sure. Some are better than others. If you take a look, you’ll see what I mean.

Here are some examples:

There are other videos about business writing, proposal development, and white paper writing techniques at: https://www.youtube.com/

Some of these I’m pleased with, others I’m tempted to delete.

If you have two minutes, please take a look. A quick email would be great.

Thanks,

Ivan

PS – as video is a whole new world for us, your thoughts would be VERY helpful. Are these terrible, ok or really helpful? What do you think? Don’t hold back 🙂

Anthony James