Build a Tutorial Library With 2-Minute How-To Videos
A tutorial library is a shared collection of short (around two minutes) screen-recorded how-to videos that answer your team's recurring "how do I do X?" questions. You make each one by recording your screen while you do the task once and talking through it — far faster than writing a doc, and far easier to follow than a wall of text.
Every team has a set of questions that get asked over and over. How do I submit an expense? Where do I update the project status? How do I export that report? Each time, someone stops what they're doing to explain it again — usually to a different person, usually the same way. The knowledge exists, but it lives in people's heads and gets re-transmitted one interruption at a time. Written docs help, but for anything involving clicks and screens, text is slow to write and painful to follow.
Learning how to make short tutorial videos breaks that loop. You record the answer once, and from then on the question gets answered with a link instead of an interruption.
How do I create quick how-to videos for my team?
The key mindset shift is that these are disposable and rough, not polished productions. A two-minute screen recording with your normal voice talking through the steps beats a beautifully edited video that never gets made. Perfectionism is the enemy here — the value is in the answer being captured and findable, not in production quality.
The format is simple: turn on a screen recorder, do the task exactly as you normally would, narrate what you're clicking and why, and stop. No script, no editing, no intro music. Then drop it somewhere findable with a clear, searchable title — ideally phrased as the question people actually ask ("How to submit an expense"). The library only works if people can find the right video in seconds, so titles and a single home matter more than the videos themselves.
How to build a tutorial library, step by step (about an afternoon to start)
You need a screen-recording tool (most operating systems have one built in) and a shared place to store videos.
- List your team's top "how do I…?" questions. The ones answered repeatedly are your first videos. Five to ten obvious ones will cover most interruptions.
- Record each task in one take, narrating as you go. Do it at normal speed, talk through your clicks, and resist re-recording for perfection. One messy take beats no video.
- Keep them short — aim for two minutes. If a task is longer, split it into two videos. Short means people will actually watch to the end.
- Title each one as the question people ask. "How to export the monthly report," not "Report_tutorial_v2." Searchable titles are what make the library usable.
- Put them in one findable home and share the link. A single folder or page, pinned where the team looks. Scattered videos are as good as lost.
- Make recording a team habit. Set the norm: "answered the same question twice? Record it." That's how the library grows itself instead of relying on one person.
A worked example
A new hire keeps hitting small "how does this work here?" walls — expenses, status updates, the reporting tool. Instead of explaining each one live for the third time, a colleague records three two-minute videos as they answer, titled as the exact questions. The next new hire gets a link to the folder on day one and self-serves most of their questions. The team realises the pattern and adopts the "answered it twice? record it" rule. Within a month the library has twenty videos, and the steady drip of repeat questions has largely dried up.
When this is most useful
A tutorial library pays off most for teams with frequent onboarding, repetitive process questions, or tools with non-obvious steps. It's especially powerful for distributed or async teams across time zones, where a video answers a question at 2am that no one's awake to field. It's less worthwhile for one-off tasks no one will repeat, or processes that change so often the videos go stale faster than they help — there, a quick written note may be easier to keep current.
The takeaway
If you're answering the same how-to question more than twice, you're paying for it every time. Record the answer once as a rough two-minute screen video, title it as the question people ask, and keep it in one findable place. Make "answered it twice? record it" a team habit, and the library quietly turns a stream of interruptions into a stream of links.
This is one of Funstorming's 100 quests — bite-sized soft skills methods you actually put into practice, not just read about. Try it, then bring your result (or your sticking point) to the Funstorming community of practice (CoP), FunHub | Your Soft Skills Playground.
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