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The Art of the Tutorial

Guy Kawasaki Co-Founder, Alltop Recent Posts

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March 19, 2009

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Affordably Build Your Brand

FedEx Global Brand Management Director Monica Skipper shares a cost-effective way to build a bigger brand for your small business.

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This week I sat through eight hours of companies pitching themselves to a panel of experts at SXSW. It was a challenging experience because the companies had two minutes to explain what they do, and very few could. Indeed, in most cases the first question that the panelists asked was, “What exactly do you do again?” The same thing happens hundreds of thousands of times every day as people visit company websites. How many websites pass this simple test: “People can understand what the company does in two minutes or less”?

About a year ago I stumbled upon a website called Start Cooking. It’s method of showing how to prepare food blew me away in terms of effectiveness, speed, and simplicity. I ended up doing an episode with it featuring my world-famous chicken teriyaki.

If you’d like to see how these tutorials are created, watch this video and view this collection of photos collection of photos. As a small business owner your website has got to explain what you do in under two minutes. The explanation has to be fast, interesting, and compelling. I don’t know of a better way to do this than this type of video. In case you’re wondering, the vendor is Atelier Transfert.