I’ll use an example of what isn’t terribly "real". Say that you are wanting to document the process for accessing and checking your AdSense account stats. It’s a regular daily task that needs to be done but is not necessarily critical in the operation of your business. You want to give this task to a new employee or outsourced worker so that you can spend more of your time doing the more strategic work of growing your business.

The most basic way to capture the process would be to write down all the steps involved as you understand them. You may even paste in some screen capture images using a program such as SnagIt to appeal more to visual learners. You hand your new document to your new employee so that they know where to look and the crucial statistics to gather.

But the new employee finds the process (from your familiar understanding of it), fragmentary and open to interpretation, especially since they have never used an AdSense account before. They constantly ask you questions on the correct screens to go to and what to do when they hit a problem despite what you thought was your careful detailing of the process. In the end you decide not to delegate the task and continue doing it yourself for better or for worse.

This situation is very common and familiar to Internet business owners and is in large part due to the poor transference of information from the head of person "A" to the head of person "B". There is just too much room for interference or "noise" within the communication and confusion and frustration are the result.

Video takes everything quite a few steps further than simple text or screen capture information. It does this due to its ability in communicating far richer process information that reaches viewers on multiple levels.

Not only can video contain text based information but also a "live", view of a process captured "at source" with nothing left out. On top of this, video can contain expert narration to explain what is being done and what to look out for. This means that video is able to appeal richly to both our sense of vision and sound and is far more engaging for the viewer.

What is your experience of learning a new business process or software program? Do you find that standard operating procedures (SOP’s), or user manuals are all that you need or do they quickly become door stops? How have you found videos that have shown you how to use software programs? Did they help you to get up to speed fast?

Thank you greatly for reading this post and I welcome any and all comments that you may have.

 Jason