Creating “How-to Guides” for SaaS: Workflow + Best Practices

How-to guides have become indispensable tools for businesses, serving both internal teams and external clients with valuable insights and step-by-step instructions for various tasks and processes.

These guides not only empower users by explaining your offerings better but also reduce the workload on support teams by providing answers to common queries.

However, creating and managing these comprehensive resources can present considerable challenges. Teams can struggle to create guides that are easy to understand, accessible to all relevant parties, and kept up to date with the latest information.

Moreover, the effort to make and maintain these engaging and user-friendly guides can be quite substantial (and expensive).

In this article, let's explore how B2B SaaS businesses can efficiently craft how-to guides without compromising on quality or clarity.

1. Understanding Your Audience

Learning more about your audience’s pain points and desires is key to creating how-to guides that help.

SaaS businesses can do this through customer feedback sessions, analyzing support ticket data, and participating in industry forums and social media conversations.

These channels provide invaluable insights into the roadblocks and questions your users face daily.

It's crucial to continuously revisit and reassess these pain points, depending on how quickly your niche evolves, and so do the needs of your users.

Crafting the most efficient path for the end user means laying out your how-to guide in a way that leads the user to their desired outcome with the least amount of friction.

From the user’s perspective, this path is clear, direct, and devoid of any unnecessary steps or jargon that could confuse.

Consequently, you can look forward to enhanced user satisfaction, increased likelihood of guide utilization, and decreased volume of support queries related to the topic at hand.

Furthermore, it is also valuable to familiarize yourself with the lingo of your audience.

Speaking the language of your users not only helps in making your how-to guides more relatable but also establishes credibility and trust. It shows that you understand their world, which is particularly critical in the B2B SaaS sector where specificity and technical accuracy are highly valued.

This approach ensures that your guides are not just seen as helpful resources but as expert advice tailored to your audience's exact needs.

2. Planning Your How-To Guides

After you have isolated your audience’s pain points and are aware of which questions need to be answered, the first step is to determine which format between text and video would be best suitable for your use case.

Ideally, it is recommended to have both formats.

Written step-by-step guides are easily searchable and great for users who prefer to go at their own pace or reference specific information quickly. They’re also simpler to produce and update.

Video guides, on the other hand, are highly engaging and can demonstrate processes in real-time, making them ideal for visual learners.

Either way, the basic workflow for B2B SaaS businesses might start with identifying user pain points (using support data, customer feedback, etc.), deciding on the guide format based on the complexity of the topic, creating a draft or storyboard, producing the content, and then reviewing it with a focus group before publication.

As you can imagine, this necessitates a handful of tools in your workflow which can make it tedious to run and costly to maintain.

Fortunately, Clueso, an AI-powered documentation and video-creating solution, can solve these problems.

The platform can transform simple screencast videos into engaging studio-quality how-to videos and visually rich explainer articles, making the overall process 10x faster. Clueso’s advanced AI features can automate manual processes like writing content, clipping GIFs from videos, etc, enabling SaaS teams to create guides in minutes.

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Additionally, with customization and branding features, SaaS businesses can keep their messaging across videos and articles consistent while streamlining their process and cutting costs.

3. Creating Content Quickly

Customers and employees alike prefer quick access to information that can help them solve problems or understand products better.

However, the emphasis on speed should never compromise the quality of the content.

Here’s a fundamental workflow that can help you achieve the right speed-quality balance from the get-go and can be enhanced as your needs evolve:

1. Identify the topics: Begin with user pain points and frequently asked questions. Use customer support data and feedback for quick topic selection.

2. Determine the format: Start with the format your audience prefers based on past engagement metrics. As suggested earlier, it’s better to go with both text and video.

3. Create content:

• For Text: Draft an outline focusing on clarity and conciseness. Use a how-to guide template to save time.
• For Video: Plan your storyboard and script. Leverage screen recording tools for efficient content capture.

4. Edit and review: Ensure accuracy and user-friendliness. Use AI-based editing tools such as Clueso to automate grammar and style checks.

5. Publish: Choose the right channels for distribution. Clueso can help you build dedicated knowledge bases for various purposes.

6. Gather feedback: Keep an eye on engagement metrics and reviews to continuously improve the guides to keep them relevant over time.

Clueso helps you run the above workflow efficiently by enabling you to record, edit, review, and publish video how-to guides in one platform.

Moreover, its AI-powered features like automatic voiceovers and converting a how-to video into a detailed article with perfectly trimmed GIFs reduce time to market immensely.

For instance, Vidyo.ai, an AI-powered content repurposing platform that can create shorts from long videos, produced user guides 90% faster with Clueso which accelerated product training by 75% and decreased how-to support queries by 60%.

Clueso also helped CloudEagle, a SaaS management and procurement platform, create user guides 80% faster leading to a 50% quicker onboarding while seeing a 60% reduction in how-to support ticket volume.

4. Incorporating User Feedback

Feedback can help identify areas that are unclear or require more detailed explanation, as well as topics that might not need in-depth coverage.

It also aids in deciding whether a text guide, a video, or a hybrid format would be most effective based on user preferences and engagement.

SaaS businesses can simply employ a thumbs-up and down system to know whether a guide was useful. On top of that, you can solicit detailed feedback and track metrics like time on page, revisits, and the change in the volume of support queries.

Clueso allows teams to directly publish and distribute how-to guides in all formats on the platform, making it effortless for B2B SaaS businesses to know whether they are accurately answering their audience’s questions.

5. Best Practices for How-To Guides

For B2B SaaS businesses, how-to guides are more than just instructional content; they're tools for empowering users and reducing the workload on customer support teams.

To ensure they hit the mark, here are some best practices you can adopt while creating them:

1. Use Visuals (images, GIFs, videos): They not only break up text-heavy content but also provide a clear, at-a-glance understanding of processes and steps, making it easier for users to follow along and retain information.
2. Update Them: Your how-to guides should reflect changes related to products, policies, etc., promptly to remain relevant and useful.
3. Enhance Accessibility: Place your how-to guides where they are most useful to your users, especially for complex products. In-app guidance, for example, can provide users with immediate help without needing to leave the application.‍
4. Leverage AI Automation: Tools like Clueso can automate the production of high-quality content, from text articles to video guides, enabling faster updates and decreasing the time to market for new guides.

Wrapping Up

How-to guides, regardless of their format, play an essential role in enhancing user experience and making self-service easier to help customers and team members get the most out of tools and processes.

To create guides that contribute towards that, start by diving deeper into the pain points and desires of your audience and planning your content structure in a format that your audience prefers.

Then, leverage AI-powered tools to produce these help docs faster without compromising quality and deliver them where the user finds it most comfortable.

Of course, do update your how-to guides as per user feedback and changes related to products and processes to ensure they stay relevant and engaging.

Clueso can transform your guide production and maintenance workflow by enabling you to produce and deliver help docs in video and text format within minutes.

Schedule a demo and learn how Clueso can help you hit the ground running.

FAQs

What is the fastest way to write a how-to guide?

Leverage AI-powered tools like Clueso for content creation, use templates, and focus on clear, concise language. Automating repetitive tasks and organizing content in advance can significantly speed up the process.

How can I make my how-to guide more engaging?

Incorporate visuals such as images, GIFs, and videos. Break text into smaller, digestible sections and use bullet points or numbered lists for clarity. Engaging guides often involve interactive elements or real-life examples.

What are the key elements of an effective how-to guide?

An effective how-to guide includes a clear, actionable title, a concise introduction, step-by-step instructions, visuals to enhance understanding, a summary of key points, and a call to action for feedback.

Can how-to guides improve SEO and organic visibility?

Yes, well-crafted how-to guides can significantly improve SEO and organic visibility. By targeting specific queries and using relevant keywords, these guides can attract traffic and establish your site as an authoritative source.

How do I choose the right format for my how-to guide?

It is a great practice to publish your how-to guides as both text and video to cater to the needs of all users. Additionally, some guides are better in the text format whereas others can convey your message better in video. Cluseso can convert screencast footage into polished how-to guide videos and articles in minutes, making the entire workflow streamlined.

How can feedback be incorporated into the how-to guide creation process?

Conduct user interviews to find areas of improvement, look at the number and nature of support queries you get, and track relevant metrics like the number of thumbs-ups and thumbs-downs.

When should how-to guides be updated?

Update your guides regularly, especially after product updates, changes in processes, or when user feedback indicates confusion. This ensures your content remains accurate, relevant, and useful for your audience.

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