How to Script Learning Videos That People Actually Watch

Good morning, good evening, good afternoon, wherever you are and wherever you're watching from. My name is Matt Pierce. Today I want to talk about something that if you're in training and development, you probably have done. If you've ever made a video, maybe you haven't, and you know, you're just really good off the cuff. But I want to talk about scripts. We've talked about scripts on the show before, of course, but I

think it's always a topic I like coming back to. One is because frankly, I'm making a lot of scripts right now, writing a lot, and it seems relevant to talk about the process, to talk about the things that I'm learning, things that I've experienced, and hopefully help you to make a better script. Now, let's be fair, the world of scripting has changed dramatically in the last couple years with more and more AI. I think people are turning to AI, whether you like

it or not. They're using it to help them to get to something, get past the blank page perhaps, or to even do it wholesale. In fact, you know, I think about my own process and there's lots of different AI tools out there. We've been using Gemini, one of My teammates, Danielle, she actually made a bot to incorporate a lot of brand information, stuff

like that. Used ChatGPT before. All these things are great, and I think we have to acknowledge— just let's acknowledge the bot in the room— that AI is a thing that can get you from start. It can do the thing, it can polish the thing, it can give you ideas, it can be a partner, it can do the wholesale. Whether you like that or not, that's a whole other decision for another podcast about ethics of AI and everything like that. But we have to

acknowledge it. But Today's episode, we'll talk about AI, but I really want to focus on some process, some

structure, things that I've been thinking about, particularly for learning videos. But if you're a marketer or others, stick around. There's some really great stuff here. I think the line between really good marketing and the line between really good learning is very, very close, if not just one big Venn diagram. And if you know me, I love a good Venn diagram. So

let's start with your intro. Every video needs a starting point, right? And there's lots of ways to start. I start the podcast the same way every single time. Is that good? I don't know. Maybe it's not the best way to start. Maybe there are better ways to start than saying who I am, telling people good morning, whatever. I think the idea though is in most videos, learning videos or otherwise, you do want something to draw your learner in, that hook. And I've talked about this in other

places, but that hook is really important. Why? Because it is the establishing thing. It's what sets up the learner for the opportunity to say, yes, I want this, or okay, I— here I am, I'm going to get this. And I think there's lots of things to think about. I think one is from a cognitive load perspective, a good hook, one, it connects, right? It's like it brings you in, but two, it can establish where you're going and

what you're doing. So hopefully there's a start of a mental path for your learner to go down that they're not like, what is this about? Why am I watching this? What am I trying to get out of this thing? Is this even relevant to me and to what I'm doing? So you've got some time. You gotta move fast. You gotta think about that. One thing I found, and this is where AI can come into play, is it can definitely help maybe ideate on some of those hook ideas.

I do think there's an opportunity here to start creating your own kind of library of hooks, or as you go out and watch videos, How are people engaging you? What are they doing? I talked to one of my colleagues today and they talked about that they watch, you know, as they're going through Instagram, they hear this one voice and it's like, hey, and they know every single time without even, they don't have to look, they just

know that it's this person. Is that the right hook? Probably not, not for a corporate brand, not for training, but I do think there are signals that you can give to someone that sets the tone. When my guests come onto the Visual Lounge podcast, one of the things that often share with them in advance of hitting the record button is I have a specific process. One of the things that I do before I record

is I have a little bit of music. It used to be when the show was live, it would play and it became very Pavlovian. And I know when that plays, I'm in the zone. I'm on the Visual Lounge. I'm doing the podcast. This is what I need to be. This is who I need to be. This is what, what I'm about. And I think by establishing a series of the right types of introductions and hooks, particularly for an internal organization, I think you can do something very similar.

Now, we're not trying to science experiment on our people, but the Pavlovian behavioral science is real. You can help people to say, like, this is the mindset I need to be in when this happens. And then that hook, that hook, that little thing can be the thing that can help. And of course, you know, you want to gain interest, maybe you set up a problem for somebody, you know, give them an unanswered question so that they're like, oh, how

do I do that? How do I make that change? You know, I can imagine if you're an HR professional, you're doing something with— you want your staff to designate beneficiaries, you know, for policies and stuff like that. You could say, What would happen if you were to pass away to all your insurance, blah, blah, blah, right? Like, it's not a perfect example, but you can see like all of a sudden like, oh, maybe I don't know, or I do know. And then I know what I'm like, okay, I know this. I know what

I'm in for. I'm set. But I think we can really play, start playing with the hook. And, you know, AI again gets us past the blank page. Use it as your kind of sounding board a little bit. But I think every video needs a good solid start if you are starting with your company logo. I don't recommend it. You can, you can obviously do whatever you need to do, whatever your company policy

says. I'd push back against it. I would start with something that's going to be engaging, interesting, sets up the problem, sets up the opportunity, you know, brings them along. If you're starting with music, that's fine. Music's not bad in the beginning. Just make sure it's not drowning out the purpose. Make sure you're taking that, like, think 6 seconds. You got 6 seconds to engage my brain. And internal training, maybe a little bit longer. External, it might be

more like 3 seconds. So you gotta, you know, you want to get into it. Next, in the scripting process, what I've been finding

lately is that there are a variety of different structures for different types of videos. If you're making an ad, that's going to look very different than a how-to video. That's going to maybe look a little bit different than what I'd call marketorial or something that's maybe a little bit more polished marketing, but it's also helpful. You might do a customer testimonial, you might be doing, you know, a longer kind of training that's more like maybe a Zoom

presentation, right? And what you want to make sure you're doing is creating a strong structure and flow. You want to make sure— and this is true for any training, whether it's a video or not— but you're thinking about, hey, I need them to do X, Y, and Z. What is going to be the logical progression to get them through that? And thinking about the words that you're using, thinking about the opportunities

that you have, thinking about What's going to move them through? And if this is going to be a longer video, it's going to be longer than, I don't know, 2 minutes. What's going to re-engage them along the way? So you've got your outline, you're starting to build that out and saying like, hey, you know, I hooked them in the beginning. Now I probably need to give them some, a little bit of background information. You're going to have the debate with

yourself. Do I provide the learning objectives? Like what they should be able to do at the end of this? Maybe depends on what you're trying to approach it with. Then your outline, maybe it's moving from 1 to 2 to 3. Whether that's steps or whether that's concepts, you know, front load, always front load your stuff that you really want them to know the best you can.

We know if people are going to fall off, they might fall off at any time, but they might, it might not look in the viewer analytics, but they might do this. They might just turn their head and be doing other work. And the other work probably is important, but it's distracting. I can't stop them. That's the reality of modern work. You can't stop somebody from being distracted. But what you can do is make sure they're getting the information in your outline. Early on, right? And

so there are some opportunities there. Again, if we're talking AI, this is

where you might lay out, hey, here's the 3 things I need them to learn, here's my learning objectives, what are some ways I could structure that? Now, if you talk to Josh Cavalier and other AI people who are much more expert than I am, you know, you give them that— the AI a role, hey, as an expert instructional designer. You might want to give them some context, the opportunities, like what are all the stuff that's going to help them, and, and really

start to frame in. What I've found is, and I think I've talked about this, but just getting questions, asking the, the AI to ask me more questions so that I have to answer it. And as I answer it, we're building a body of knowledge to then flesh out that structure and that outline.

But I think, again, a good hook, you don't have to write it first, but that's got to be the first thing in your video. Come up with that structure. What are the things that we're going to go through? And maybe you're moving things around again because maybe you don't want to quite reveal the, the, the, the ending. You're building a little bit of mystery, but you want to

make sure it's clear and easy to follow. In the video viewer study, over and over again, over the many years that we've done it, it's videos that are easy to follow are the ones that people want to watch, particularly if it's a how-to. If you've ever watched a how-to video and you found it difficult to follow along, that's a problem. That's not just a little problem, that's a big problem. I recently— building some furniture, not handmade by any means, but like putting together

some furniture, I should say. And I appreciated a video I watched because it did give me some step-by-step. But I made a mistake early on. You had to put on like this bar and, you know, get it aligned up and so that you could put the screws into your wall. It's what anchored your furniture to the wall. And I watched the video, I watched it a couple of times just to make sure I understood everything.

And as I was doing that, I I anchored it, put them in my anchors, and I realized one thing they didn't point out is that you had to— even though, like, you just look like you kind of set it in there against the back cabinet and, you know, it had some notches for it or whatever, you actually had to lift it up a little bit so it could align with the holes that are on the side of the cabinet so it would hold it. And I missed it. They didn't say anything about it. There wasn't a

notice about it. And that was, that was frustrating to me because I ended up having to drill another hole, which I didn't like. I don't want to have to put another wall hole in my wall and put an anchor in, things like that. So, you know, make sure you're going through that process to make it easy to follow along and that there are steps you're not missing. Those things you might even start with kind of where level setting, like, hey, in this video, after

you get through your hook, here's 3 things that you need to know. If you don't know these 3 things, make sure they're level set, right? We want to, we want them to connect with these things and you move them along. There's some emotion there in training you want to help them feel, but obviously there's a lot of different areas how you might approach that depending on your culture, depending on what type of video it is, things like that. But you

want to make sure you're, you're helping them to move along. So we've

got our outline, we've got a hook. Obviously we need to start thinking about like outcomes. If we are not already, your outline should be getting in outcomes. And so I think the next thing we, we think about particularly again, we're writing a lot of marketerials, is once we've got that kind of outcome and outline, we're starting to think like, hey, what's coming for them? Like, what should they be able to do? Are

steps clear? Then really spelling that out, like writing out the script. Now again, this is a chance— maybe AI could do that for you, but like, I just worked on a script today, in fact, that we used AI, and what it really needed— it needed a human. It needed someone who could understand the nuances of the product. It could understand things that it just maybe doesn't know because no one it, and I didn't want to necessarily tell it all those things. It also couldn't understand maybe

the bit of the tone we were going for. A little bit different in the script. I won't talk too much about it, but it was like, it wasn't just a traditional, like, in this video we're going to talk about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so there were some nuance to the tone that I just didn't understand. Again, doesn't know all things. It couldn't read my mind, but I could spend the time massaging, fixing, changing, rearranging in a way that allowed me to get those key ideas across.

And so I could segment things a little bit better. I could provide a little bit more nuance, a little bit more context, and even a little bit of honestly what I think was funny. I didn't know, right? So I think you just have to be thoughtful about those things as you're building out and working to that. Like, yep, here's the step one. Step 2, step 3. Another key thing is always follow along, like do

your homework, go through the steps. Did this do the thing that I expected? Was there anything that I had to do that I didn't mention? Remember moving the bracket? That's really important because sometimes we know, particularly I work for software companies, so I know the products fairly well and there are things that I have just stopped thinking about. Just steps along the process that I don't think about that. It's like,

hmm, I didn't even think that I had to do that step. Someone new would maybe not know or catch on to the fact that I had to do that. So you're working through that process, you get that all put together, and you're getting your detailed instructions in place. And then there might be other things

that you're adding in during this time. You're adding the value statements, the motivational statements, The things of purpose, like, you know, someone's going to be learning to use a new system. Help. Yes. Train them how to use the new system, but what's in it for them? The WIFM we talk about in instructional design and learning. What's in it for them or me? WIFM. It's one of my favorite acronyms of all time, just because it sounds so great,

like WIFM and people get it, right? You get it. So you want to make sure again that you know And you're laying that out for them. Don't assume they know. Don't assume they've been in the conversation. Don't assume anything about that.

And you might find as you go through, as stakeholders review, you can— there are things you probably can cut, but by leaving it in there, putting it in there, you're going to make these statements that are allowing your learner, the viewer, to really to come along and not just assume things about them because they might not have been in the conversations. They might not be aware. Maybe you've told them 20 other

places. You can reinforce the value there. You can reinforce like, hey, this is going to help with, you know, value to you being smarter, faster, getting more done. Or maybe value to the company— we can do this more effectively, cheaper, easier. You know, we're going to save money, we're going to get bigger bonuses, whatever it is.

But usually those are not that dramatic, but You want to make sure they know that because that reinforces after the learning, like, hey, yeah, you really need to do this because here's the value you're going to get. And sometimes you might be saying, as a compliance training, I just have to tell you to do it. And we've talked about compliance training on the podcast. So you tell them, this is compliance training, you have to do it. Well, what's the penalty?

Do I— am I gonna get fired? Am I gonna get fined? Is the company getting fined? You know, like, I don't know that you have to go to those extremes, but like, help them to understand the real outcome, because there are real outcomes with this. Okay, moving on to our next thing. One thing to look for in

your script as you're writing, particularly screen recording, screen software, software tutorials, right, is there's a principle by Richard Mayer that talks about, uh, using specific phrases for signaling. And you want to be really thoughtful about this, is making sure that the things that you're saying are aligning with what you're showing if you're talking about a process. So you might say something like, now look here, That's even a little bit too

ambiguous. Like, look where? Using the mouse cursor, of course, you can guide in their direction. That's why one of the reasons I love Camtasia is because I can make that mouse cursor a little bit bigger and make it easier to follow along with. But you might be a little bit more specific. In the upper left corner. Now there's a whole world of accessibility that

you want to be careful about. So you want to be specific, like in the upper left corner, there's a button that says click here or whatever it might be. And, but you want to focus the learner and you can, you know, start moving that mouse cursor. And as it's moving, say in the upper left corner, click on the button and that will give them a sense of where are we going. So as you're going through your script here, you've started to flesh out that outline into actual words that are going

to be said. You want to make sure those instructions are clear and included because it is really easy to be ambiguous. Or just give context or directions without context. So for instance, you might say something like, click on the button. Well, if I'm in Microsoft Word, which one? Or go to the menu. Which menu? File? Edit? What is it? And so just be, be really thoughtful. The other thing that Meyer talks about is

a personalization principle. I love the personalization principle. I think it's really important. It's the I, you, we versus being more third person. Also making it conversational, like use contractions in your video. Now you might again have reasons why you've got to be stiff and formal. I can't think of them, but you might have them. And so what I would say is make sure that you're writing in such a way that it is personal. It feels like you as a coworker, as a friend, are maybe

walking them through. We actually have this whole thing from a voice standpoint. Now, AI voices may make this redundant or not needed. I'm a fan of personal voices in a lot of videos. I think human connection is really important, which we'll talk about more. But I would say if you're struggling to get consistency in your voice, one thing

you can do if you're doing a voiceover particular— it's a little weirder for video, but you can still make it work— you do the Hey Mom principle. And we've talked about this, I think, a long time show, but it's like when you start a line, you say, "Hey, Mom, I want to talk to you about how to click on the menu in the upper left-hand corner." Something like that. Or, "Hey, Mom, drag this box across the screen into the drop zone." That "Hey, Mom" just makes it feel a little bit

friendly, gets you kind of a nice beat. It makes it feel a little bit more personal, warm and friendly. If you're against your mom, I'm sorry. I feel terrible about bringing up moms. But if most people have a decent relationship with your mom, even if they're complex and strained as they can be sometimes, Being saying like, hey mom, or even your best friend, hey Sarah, let me tell you about this, right? So whatever it might be,

you can use that to connect. And think about that, you don't have to write that in your script, but it is, it's a great way to make it feel personal because you sound personal, you sound connected, like you're connected to that person that you're trying to help. And that's a good way to write a script.

Now, the other thing here I think is really important is you're looking to remove redundancy. You don't have to, you don't have to repeat things all the time. If it's on the screen for them to read, maybe you don't say it. You just give them time to read it. Or if you said it, don't put the text on the screen. Like we put too much text on too many screens. We've got too much, especially for video. So just be really mindful of any redundancies that are not necessary.

Now, again, if you're showing them to go up to click, I think it is a helpful guide to give them that instruction. All your audiences will be slightly different. All people are different people. So you want to think about like what's going to help them to be most successful, even if they might be more expert in their craft. Once you've got all that done,

you're looking for just polish, making sure you're not getting into jargon. If there is jargon, you're defining the jargon, particularly if it's for an audience that you don't know if they'll know what that thing is. Like, what is an LP in marketing? What is a LOB, what is an API, what is whatever, right? You want to make sure you're defining those appropriately, giving people the benefit of the doubt that they might not know, you know. And then

ruthlessly cut everything you don't think you need. Be brutal, cut it out if it's not needed, if it's not helpful. You might also in this process be thinking, starting to think visually, because hey, all video is visual, right? And be thinking about like, what am I going to show? And if you're getting to a point you're writing your script, you're What am I going to show? What's going to be on screen here? And you're not sure. That's a great time to pause and say, why do I need to say this?

You might, and that might be a time for you, or if you're into the AI avatar thing, to be on the screen. That could be a point of personal connection. But ultimately, what you want to do is be brutal. Remove it if you don't think it's— if it's not helping move it along. And sometimes

you have to be brutal and ask other people to be brutal. I love working with our video producer Katie, and now our new video producer David, because we're building this rapport that we can just be brutal to each other's scripts. We're just like really questioning the word choices, questioning like, does that need to be there? Do we need that? And it is making me a better writer and a better video creator. So find that person, even if it's not the final stakeholder. Your stakeholder's

probably gonna be brutal. Hopefully they're gonna be brutal in the right ways. So just keep working on that and make sure that you're thinking about those visuals. So,

okay, we've talked about a lot of these processes in the script. At the end, make sure you've got some kind of call to action, steps to take. What's the thing that they're going to do? They watch this video, therefore what? There's a great person I love who is very wise and has said a lot of things, and he was giving a talk and he said, you know, we have to ask the question, therefore what? And therefore what, right? What is

it that you are to do. At the end of this podcast, I usually give a little call to action like, hey, try to do this to level up, right? At the end of your video, if it's a software tutorial, what's next? Do I need to go practice? Do— is there a specific task I should do? Is there something along the lines that's going to help me to improve? Particularly from a marketing standpoint, where marketers are really good— call to action, go look at the

web page, go buy this, try it, whatever it might be. Training, we need to develop a core function functionality that we're thinking about what's next. I love Mike Taylor. He's been on the show. He talked about maybe we stop thinking about training as courses and more as campaigns, right? So if you got a video, is there an SOP they need to read through? Is there an assignment they need to do? Is there some on-the-job type thing that they need to get viewed at, right? Like,

what is it that you would have them do? And make sure you're putting that in there. And through all this

whether you're using AI or not, find the way to be human, right? We talked in a previous episode not too long ago about the Human Framework from TechSmith. I'll link to that in the stuff below that you can check it out. But bring the humanity into your training and people will respond. They will listen. Now look, we're imperfect. We make mistakes. Videos are hard. Don't let anyone fool you. Making a good training video can be hard because

There's lots of nuances. We got lots of constraints on time and budget, opportunity. Our audiences are all different at all different levels with maybe different constraints for themselves. So like, this is hard, but it— I think having a little bit of human in there goes a long way. And I'm not saying don't use AI. I'm not saying don't have it help you write. I'm not

saying don't use it as voices. I'm not saying don't use it as avatars. We've heard great things and results that come from using those as well. But I think in through all that, there's a thread that we get to pull on that when it comes to learning, making sure that you're thinking about at the end of this, whether you're using AI or not, there's a human watching it. And as the human watches it, make sure that they are the focus of your success, that they are the ones who will be able to succeed

because you have a training video. Because a training video that's successful, a marketing video that's successful, it's not about you. It's about them. So with that said,

I hope this has been helpful insights into some scripting thoughts I've had lately. I hope you are using scripts. If you're not and you're good off the cuff, that's awesome. Write an outline, do what you got to do. But I think there's fundamental practice, and the only way to get better at writing script is writing more scripts. The only way to get better at writing better scripts is getting better feedback from those around you who are willing to

help you understand and break it down.. And you might say, no one around me is a video script writer. It's okay. Ask them, do they like it? Ask them what they would change, what was hard, what was easy? Were they able to follow along? There's lots of great questions you can prompt that will help them. And as you do that, I think you're going to find

a lot more success and you'll get faster at it. And you'll understand even working with the AI, how to prompt it better to be able to get better outcomes.

And in a future episode, we'll talk about using rubrics for your AI. I think there's— got something I'm working on. Hopefully it pans out with Rubrik. We'll see. But most of all, thank you for watching. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being part of the Visual Lounge community. So grateful for each and every one of you. I do want to note that we do have a new domain. It's visuallounge.net. So you can go there

or podcast.techsmith.com will work as well. So grateful for that opportunity to continue to grow the brand and share with you guys, hopefully things that you find useful. With that said, I hope you're also taking time for yourself to level up every single day. Thanks, everybody.