click2try QuickStart Tutorials:

A Conceptual Overview and Guidelines for Writers

Welcome aboard the USS click2try, a virtual star ship whose overall mission is to explore innovative, entertaining ways to instruct people how to quickly begin to use the software appliances we will offer on our click2try.com web site.

As a writer, your role will be critical to our success. You will be drawing upon both your creative writing skills and your technical writing abilities to craft a scenario-based tutorial that will show people how to quickly start using one of the software appliances in our catalog. You won't be writing a comprehensive, exhaustive user guide that documents each and every feature or function of the software. Instead, you will provide an entertaining, marketing-oriented introduction to the software that will be instructionally sound enough to get people up-and-running in the software, while communicating its essential features, flavor, and capabilities.
Beyond its instructional value, the overall sales objective of a QuickStart guide is to get people so enthusiastic about trying-out a software appliance for free that they will want to discover the software's deeper value and eventually subscribe to it on a persistent, paying basis.

A Space Adventure

We want to create a brand image that click2try.com is not merely a web site where people can try-out software for free, but where they can also have fun learning how to use the software appliances we've packaged together in our catalog. One of the primary ways we want to accomplish that goal is by making the QuickStart guides as entertaining as they are instructive.
Accordingly, we have decided to write all QuickStart guides as scenario-based tutorials that occur within the context of a space adventure taking place on a futuristic star ship on an perpetual mission to explore deep space. Think Star Trek. Think of the USS Enterprise and all the adventures its crew encounters as it travels through space, and you will get an image of the context we are talking about.

We want to produce scenario-based, QuickStart guides that set the software within the context of a space adventure.

Since all good instruction manuals will include easy-to-follow instructions given in a numbered, step-by-step fashion, we also want to include such "spoon feeding" techniques in our QuickStart guides. However, for consistency and continuity among all the QuickStart guides on the site, we want to see those instructions occurring within the context of contributing to some aspect of the space adventure of the USS click2try.

You will have a wide latitude of creative freedom in coming up with your scenario, as long as it fits within the context of a mission in outer space on a star ship. For example, if you're writing a QuickStart guide for a blogging application, you could use as your examples stories about space travel. If you're introducing someone to a project management package, you could present your scenario-based examples in the context of constructing a sports stadium on some distant planet. If you're teaching someone how to get up-and-running in a construction package, you might want to concoct a scenario of erecting some buildings —or even a city— inside the holodeck of the star ship. Whatever you dream up will be fine, as long as your scenario and your step-by-step examples tie in with the concept of the software being used in some way within the context of a space adventure.
We realize that it may be more creatively challenging to write instructional guides in such a style and format, but we also think that, by doing so across the board, we will be providing an extra measure of entertainment value for our subscribers that will allow our QuickStart guides —and our web site— to stand out from the crowd.

Marketing Flair and Technical Savvy

click2try.com is a web site that will offer people a unique opportunity to try-out Open Source software as a virtual machine in a browser on their desktop. The success of our enterprise rests not merely on the unique, secure, risk-free method in which we will deliver software to people's desktops. Our success will also be intrinsically based on the added value we bring to the software delivery mechanism in terms of the instructional guides and the technical support we provide, elements that are all too often lacking (or completely absent!) in the case of much Open Source software.

This means that the quality of the QuickStart guides will be a critical component contributing to our success. In order for the QuickStart guides to sell people on the idea of using our website, the writing style of these scenario-based, tutorial-driven QuickStart guides must be a delicate blend of marketing flair and technical savvy.

Whether we include it in the QuickStart guide itself, or in the catalog that describes the software appliance, every virtual machine product we offer must have an introductory section that is written in the style of an ad that encourages, excites, and motivates a user to want to use (i.e, subscribe to) that product. This introductory ad copy needs to explain what the virtual appliance is designed to do, while telling the customer what the benefits are of using that particular software. This introductory ad copy must not only educate the customer about the features and benefits of the virtual appliance from a marketing standpoint, but it must also be primarily designed to motivate the customer to try it out. The introductory ad copy has to take on the role of the packaging copy on a software CD that a customer picks up in a brick-and-mortar store. It has to be the smooth-talking, compassionate sales associate that gives a customer all she needs to know about that product so she can decide then and there if she wants to try it out.

As you craft your QuickStart guide, give some thought as to blending advertising copy into your introductory scenario, when you set the stage for what the software can do and how you will use it on the star ship. While the QuickStart guide itself will not necessarily be written specifically as a piece of advertising, it should have sufficient elements of marketing deftly blended in your introductory scenario to hook the reader into wanting to learn more about the product by going through all the steps of your QuickStart guide. Once you have completed the QuickStart guide, you may also be called upon to write an extended version of the marketing aspects of the software for the Catalog listing of the software, and the style for that piece will most definitely be in the form of advertising copy. In this way, the technically-oriented copy of a QuickStart guide will reinforce the advertising copy in the catalog listing, and the more marketing-oriented presentation of the features and benefits listed in the Catalog, i.e. the promise, will dovetail with the QuickStart guide, where the promises made in the Catalog listed will be fulfilled by the examples illustrated in the QuickStart guide.

Visual Orientation: Show, rather than Tell

We want our QuickStart guides to be as visual as possible. Whenever you can show someone how to do something in pictures, rather than merely tell them how them to do it by words alone, use the images. Words and pictures together are a stronger educational tool than words alone.

Thus, although a QuickStart guide will present technical information in the tutorials, it should do so with a marketing orientation and a light, informal writing style that includes a multitude of screen captures and other illustrations, even links to videos, if possible, in order to provide concrete, visual information to the new learner.

As you are writing out your numbered, scenario-based, step-by-step instructions, think in terms of writing a script for a video tutorial that will be based on screen capturing your instructions in the form an animated, narrated video. Ultimately, when we talk about QuickStart guides, we are talking about text-based guides that will be delivered as PDF files, as well as about video-based QuickStart guides that will draw upon, and reinforce, the text-based QuickStart guides.

In similar fashion, we also intend to produce video clips that will be promotional in nature. Those marketing-oriented clips will be accessible from the Catalog, and they will be designed to use screen captures of the software to illustrate its features and capabilities. So, whereas the QuickStart guide videos will be instructional in tone and nature, the promotional videos will be more advertising and marketing oriented. While the styles may be different, each will reinforce the other in seeking the achieve the same goal: to encourage users to try-out —and ultimately to subscribe to— our software appliances.

John-Michael Battaglia
Marketing Communications
June 24, 2008