In recent weeks, some of you may have noticed a few videos popping up on both Interlinked.mobi and SMS Gateway. These are designed to help guide you through using each system, whether you're a partner or a client. We've generally had little or no documentation with our products, as they've always been pretty straightforward. But with the increasing number of features available we decided we needed some.

So after some discussion, we decided the logical step was a video tour. These are becoming increasingly common due to the tools available, and with the likes of youtube and vimeo we could host videos off-site, freeing up our own servers bandwidth.

Predictably, I drew the short straw and started running through some ideas of how to present the videos. At first it seemed like a fairly easy task to me: Run through the system as I would normally do with a training call and talk into the microphone, but it soon became apparent that it wasn't that easy at all.

Listening back to myself I realised, for the first time, that I wasn't really explaining things as well as I should be. I was glossing over certain parts of the system that could potentially be very confusing to new clients, I wasn't speaking clearly enough, and above all i sounded like a robot!

So what at first appeared to be a relatively straightforward task turned into an enlightening, if laborious, exercise. I drew out storyboards to help organise each step of each process. I re-did the videos several times until I was happy that what I was saying was clear and concise. And above all I made sure that the videos weren't confusing.

In the end, not only had I produced some valuable demonstration videos, I'd also learnt a lot about how I present myself, and how I could improve on it time and time again.

But I haven't finished, I'll be updating all the videos again, and adding new ones as the system develops.

So the moral of the story? Take the time to listen to yourself, you might just be surprised at what you're actually saying.