I may not be able to answer that for you but I can tell you why I use both Clarify and ScreenSteps and why we created Clarify in the first place.

Why did we create Clarify?

The simple answer is that we had a need that ScreenSteps wasn’t meeting. We used ScreenSteps all of the time for creating how-to’s and documentation. But there were dozens of times each week when something like ScreenSteps would be perfect. But we didn’t use ScreenSteps. We muddled on with text-only communications.

What were these situations? It was firing off a quick how-to to a customer that only applied to them. It was filing a bug report with a software vendor. It was trying to get help with a technical problem we were having. It was trying to point out website revisions. It was trying to point out key elements of a report.

In each of these situations ScreenSteps seemed too “heavy”. We had to decide what to title the lessons we created. The lessons got stored into our library whether or not we wanted to keep them. And in ScreenSteps we had all of these features that made creating documentation simple but got in the way of quick, one-off communications.

For awhile we tried to add these workflows into ScreenSteps. But it never worked. We never really adopted the new workflows and explaining what ScreenSteps “did” became increasingly difficult as it was trying to do too many things. We decided that we needed to create a totally new product that focused on creating speedy, one-off communications instead of creating documentation. It was take the essential parts of ScreenSteps and streamline them. That is what Clarify is.

So what do I use now? I use both applications almost everyday. All of our product documentation and business process documentation is done in ScreenSteps. Everything else is done in Clarify. Here is a sample of what I have used Clarify for in the past few days:

• Highlighted some key areas of an A/B testing report to send to a friend.
• Submitted about 5 technical questions to our online store service as we are setting up some new products there.
• Filed some bug reports in Pivotal Tracker for bugs that we need to fix.
• Showed our email marketing vendor a problem we were having with an email template.
• Showed a customer how I made some changes to their account.
• Posted some images to a forum I participate in.
• Uploaded some images to a Basecamp discussion thread.

In that same time period I used ScreenSteps to:

• Add updated lessons to our Clarify manual.
• Add updated lessons to our ScreenSteps manual.
• Create several procedural lessons for some of the backend systems we use to operate our business.

Some interesting things about how I use Clarify:

• About 90% of the documents I create in Clarify I don’t save. They are really just transient communications that I don’t need to reuse.
• I rarely create PDFs (though we have a lot of Clarify customers that do). I tend to share to Clarify-it.com and then insert the url into a forum post, IM or email.
• I drag images out of Clarify a lot to upload them to services like Basecamp and Pivotal Tracker.

So, that is why we created Clarify. If you want a little more of a feature comparison then you can check out this page. But for me, feature lists are rarely important. What is more important is not only what I can do with a piece of software but what I will do with a piece of software. Really good software isn’t about features. It is about changing people’s behavior, helping them do things that they wouldn’t or couldn’t do before.

We created Clarify because were weren’t using ScreenSteps in all of the situations where we could have benefited from something like ScreenSteps. If you are a current ScreenSteps user then you might find that Clarify would help you in the same way.

So this post is for all of you who know you need to write documentation for your business, your school, your non-profit or your software product, but just can’t find the time to get it done.

Key 1: Rethink your goals.

If your goal is to “finish” your documentation then you will never get started. It is too big of a project. And, as we have said before, your documentation is never really finished. Your documentation doesn’t need to be finished, it just needs to be useful. Make usefulness your goal and it will be much easier to get started.

Key 2: Adopt a system

The hardest part of writing documentation is knowing where to begin and where to end. Making those decisions is what takes all of the time. But if you adopt a system for writing documentation then you can remove the need to make decisions. We call our system the Road Blocks and Road Maps technique.

Write down three questions people ask you when they hit a roadblock.

Write down three road maps you would like to provide for your customers or employees. Then just start filling in the answers.

Key 3: Schedule small amounts of time

I am a big fan of the Pomodoro technique. Schedule a 25 min block once a week or once a day and move your project forward. If you are using a system it will be very easy for you to jump in and get some substantial work done. By setting aside small 25 minute sessions occasionally in your schedule you will be amazed at the progress you will make.

Key 4: Use your documentation

Start using your documentation to help co-workers and customers. Send them articles you have written that answer their questions. Why is this important? Because if you are using your documentation you will write more documentation. Nobody has any motivation to write documentation that never gets used.

Key 5: Use the right tools

Now this next part is going to seem like a shameless plug but I promise you it is an important part of getting great documentation written. Have the right documentation tools. Microsoft Word is not a documentation tool. Neither is Google Sites or a wiki system. These systems are just optimized for writing text. Any kind of text you want. And that is why writing documentation in them is so hard.

We created ScreenSteps Live specifically because we didn’t like writing documentation. But we couldn’t afford to not have documentation. We had to support customers and run our business.

So we built a solution that would help us:

• Write faster
• Use our documentation more easily
• Spend less time keeping it up to date

I won’t go through everything that ScreenSteps Live includes to make this possible but I can tell you that every feature is focused around those three goals from the way we let you capture screenshots to the way we let you link between lessons to the way we help you update images inline when changes need to be made. Having tools that help you write more quickly, deliver more effectively and update more easily will make a huge impact on your ability to get documentation written in a timely manner.

What works for you?

This is what has worked for us. What approaches have you used to find time to write your documentation?

What is one of the biggest mistakes inexperienced teachers make? Overloading their students with information.

But you’re not a teacher right? Wrong. Teaching is about communicating. Great marketers teach. Great salespeople teach. Great support agents teach and great entrepreneurs teach. We have all been subjected to people in these categories who don’t teach well. Think of these situations:

• The marketing page with thousands of bullet points listing every feature possibly known to man.
• The sales video that is 6 minutes long causing you to race for the back button.
• The knowledge base article that looks like a chapter from “War and Peace.”
• The entrepreneur that talks to you for 30 minutes and at the end you still have no idea what he or she does.

These are all examples of teaching failures.

Why am I thinking about this right now? The other day someone was showing off a new product they had created. On first launch it showed a 6 minute video that went through every aspect of their application in painful detail. I never watched the video. I just skipped it and started digging into the application.

Later on, after I had used the app for a bit (and liked it a lot) I went back to the video. It was still too long but I skipped through parts to glean some information that would be useful.

The purpose of the video was to teach me. I skipped almost all of it so the video failed to meet its goal.

The problem wasn’t lack of content. It was too much content poorly organized and presented.

Too many first time teachers make the mistake of thinking that presenting a lot of content is teaching. It’s not. Teaching is doing whatever you have to do to help your students reach understanding.

At first you might think, “Why not give them all of the information in one place?” Because they will become overwhelmed. As soon as they are overwhelmed they will disengage and you will have lost your ability to teach them.

Think of your student as being on a path. As a teacher you want to help them move to a destination. On the path there are stops where you will leave food (the knowledge you are trying to transfer). Before they can move to the next stop the student must digest the food at their current stop.

What happens if you dump all of the food for the entire path at the first stop? The student sees the mound of food and does one of two things:

• Throws up their hands in frustration, deciding that can’t possibly digest it all.
• Tries to cram all of the food in their mouth and throws up all over your nice little learning path.

Not the outcome you, or they, were hoping for.

If you instead give them just enough food to digest then they can comfortably consume the knowledge you have shared and move along the path to get more. As they progress, they are easily able to internalize all of the information you want to share.

This applies to any teaching you do in business, whether it is as a marketer, salesperson, entrepreneur, or support agent. If you try to share all of your knowledge at once you will end up not sharing any at all.

Aside: For some reason large businesses and consulting firms can charge a lot of money without ever delivering a useful product or business outcome. But that is a subject for another day. Startups, independent consultants and small businesses don’t have that luxury.

If you can become a key part of the success of your customers you get some major benefits:

1. Super low customer churn
2. Higher referral rates
3. Increased customer lifetime value as customers purchase additional products or upgrade existing ones

For too many businesses though, helping customers be successful is more an art than a science. In order for something to be repeatable it needs to be systematized.

A good customer success system has 3 elements. I’m going to use a road map analogy to help illustrate them. Each customer success system needs the following:

1. A destination – Where does your customer want to go? Where is your product or service going to take them? The customer needs to know what success will look like. The destination is the purpose of your system.

2. A road map – This is the actual system you put in place for your customers. What are the detailed, turn-by-turn instructions that your customers can follow to reach the destination you have shown them?

3. A process for removing roadblocks – Regardless of how good your road map is, your users are going to run into roadblocks. You need to have a way to remove them. Most often this is done through customer support.

Once you get your system in place, customer success becomes a lot easier.

• Customers know where they are going (they don’t try to use your product in ways it wasn’t intended to be used).
• By referring to the road map they can tell how far they have progressed in their journey and how much further they have to go.
• When they get stuck, customer support can swoop in to remove roadblocks and keep everyone “moving along the highway” to success.

If your customers are constantly moving forward and making progress their business will improve. As their business improves, so will yours.

Customer Success System Self-assessment

Ask yourself these questions to evaluate your customer success system:

1. Does everyone at your company know what customer success looks like?
2. Do your customers know what customer success looks like?
3. Can you point your customers to a specific location (website, ebook, video series, etc.) where they can find the road map for success?
4. Do you have a system in place for identifying and removing roadblocks?

Systematizing customer success is a lot of work. It requires a lot of thinking, analysis and, most importantly, content creation and teaching. But the payoff makes the effort well worth it.

The goal of any business should be to offer fantastic support while spending the least amount of time answering support questions as possible. Seems tricky, doesn’t it?

There are two keys to getting it done:

1. Stay organized. Know which emails have been answered and which are waiting for responses.
2. Answer questions as quickly as possible. Provide clear answers that don’t require repeated email follow-ups and don’t spend all of your time answering the same question over and over again.

Help Scout and Clarify-it.com or Help Scout and ScreenSteps Live offer a one-two meets both of these requirements. Help Scout keeps your organized while Clarify-it.com or ScreenSteps Live help you answer questions quickly.

In this webinar we will show you how to setup Help Scout in just a few minutes and integrate it into your email support process. There are no templates to customize or customer portals to configure, just dead simple email support that keeps your team organized.

We will then show you two options for improving the responses you send to customers through Help Scout.

1. For those who want zero setup and instant results we will demonstrate how to use a Clarify-it.com team account to quickly share how-to information via Help Scout and close support requests quickly.

2. For those who have more robust support needs we will demonstrate how you can use ScreenSteps Live to create a self-service online knowledge base that will deflect customer questions AND let you close tickets more quickly.

It is important to understand that in this webinar we aren’t going to just show you three separate products. We are going to show you how to tie these products together into a smooth, efficient workflow that will improve your business.

Who should attend?

• Anyone who is using a shared email account to manage support. That process is going to break at some point. In this webinar we will show you a better option.
• Any Help Scout customer that wants to add an online knowledge base to their support process.
• Any ScreenSteps Live or Clarify-it.com customer who wants to have a better way to manage their support requests.

Register for the FREE webinar

A recording will be made available to registrants after the webinar is completed for those who can’t attend.

That is why we are happy to announce new advanced search filters on all ScreenSteps Live accounts.

Users can now filter search results by manual:

They can also choose whether they want their search to look for any of the keywords or all of the keywords:

We hope your customers find it useful.

But over and over we keep getting the same feature request. It is by far the most frequently requested enhancement. What do you think it would be?

Add the ability to generate world peace? No.

Make Clarify print money? Nope.

Customize PDF templates? Bingo!

We are happy to announce that Clarify 1.1 now supports customized PDF templates. It also comes with an additional “Black & White” template that is better for creating PDFs that need to be printed.

Clarify 1.1. is currently in beta and also includes the new notification center and Evernote integration.

Download the Clarify beta

You can see tutorials on how to customize PDFs here:

http://help.clarify-it.com/m/clarify/c/28052

Let us know what you think.

Evernote integration – If you have Evernote installed on your Windows or Mac computer you will automatically see an Evernote icon in your toolbar. Just click it to instantly share the document to Evernote.

The new notification center – Once you share a document to Clarify-it.com or Dropbox you get a nice area to copy urls or HTML for your shared document.

Here is a brief video overview:

You can download the beta here.

That isn’t it for this round of betas. Hopefully mid next week we will have another exciting addition to the beta.

Download the Clarify beta

When 37signals created the original Basecamp they were doing a lot of client work so they created a great tool for managing client projects. When we used to do more client work we used Basecamp a lot because it was great for managing those projects.

But over the last several years, as ScreenSteps and Clarify sales have increased, we have virtually eliminated all of our consulting work. As our consulting work got phased out, so did our use of Basecamp. The types of projects we were managing changed. We were less concerned with specific projects and more concerned with areas of focus. An area of focus could be a specific product, like Clarify or ScreenSteps, or an aspect of our business such as marketing.

37signals stopped doing client work a long time ago and from the looks of the new Basecamp, their needs changed in the same way ours did.

Projects vs. Areas of Focus

The new Basecamp is much better at managing areas of focus. They are still called projects, but they work very differently. In our account we have set up following projects:

• Marketing
• Clarify
• ScreenSteps 3
• ScreenSteps Live Support Client
• ScreenSteps Live

These are all major areas of focus for our business. Inside of each area of focus there are many mini projects.

For example, in the next couple of months we have several joint webinars scheduled, some promotions we are doing with third parties and revisions planned for our marketing site. In the old Basecamp these would have all been separate projects because they all involve different outside contractors and companies. In the new Basecamp we can wrap all of these under the Marketing project. Each task or event gets its own discussion thread. We can “loop in” outside contractors or partners on the specific threads that pertain to them.

But most importantly, I can easily jump from a 10,000 foot view to looking at the specific details of the tasks our company is working on. In the old Basecamp these would have all been separate projects and it would have been more difficult to see what the overall activity was on all of our areas of focus.

A few things I would like to see

There is no question that we will switch our plan over as the usefulness of the product in our own business has already skyrocketed. But it is only version 1 so there are a few things that we will probably miss in the near future:

• Private messages – The new “loop in” feature is awesome. It allows you to add anyone to a discussion thread whether or not they are part of a project. But private messages are gone and I hope they come back. For example, we are currently working out a licensing agreement with a company and would like to loop them in on a discussion thread. But we would also like to have private messages in that thread as we internally discuss different options. Right now there isn’t a way to do that. Our internal discussions would have to happen in a separate thread or via email.

• To-do’s tied to events – Events have replaced the old milestones but it would be really great to tie a to-do list to an event. Most events require specific actions. It feels funny not to be able to tie the two together.

• Tags or categories – Right now there is no way to categorize to-do lists, discussions or events within a project. I imagine 37signals is going to introduce some sort of tagging feature which would be great. We don’t have a ton of content in there now so it isn’t a big deal yet. But I could see tags as being really useful once we get more discussions in there.

There are other things that are missing that we don’t care about as much. A lot of people are complaining about the fact that time tracking wasn’t added in. My opinion is that Harvest and FreshBooks are already doing a great job in that area. I don’t see why 37signals needs to reinvent the wheel there. But we don’t do much consulting work so I am obviously biased.

• Easier copying of screenshots to presentations or other applications
• Easily insert documents posted to Clarify-it.com into your wiki, project management software, forum posts or any other online service
• New Sparrow and Postbox AppleScripts for emailing PDF documents
• Easily split Clarify documents

Easily prepare screenshots for presentations

A couple of weeks ago we were preparing a lot of screenshots for a presentation we were doing. Getting the screenshots out of Clarify was kind of a pain since we had to export the files to disk, drag them into Keynote, etc.

So we made it better. The export image button will now just copy the current image to the clipboard. This makes pasting images into Keynote, PowerPoint or any other application super fast.

Here is a full tutorial on how to insert screenshots into PowerPoint or Keynote.

If you still want to export the image to disk just hold down alt (Windows) or option (Mac) key when you click the button.

Insert Clarify documents into wikis, project management software, forums or any other web app

When you share a document to Clarify-it.com you get a URL back that you can insert into emails, forum posts and social media channels. In Clarify 1.0.4 you now also get an option to copy HTML from Clarify-it.com.

Why is this a big deal? It makes embedding your Clarify document into other web services super simple.

For example, you can embed the contents of your Clarify document into a Basecamp message, a forum post or into a page on your company wiki. 

Sparrow and Postbox integration

Sparrow and Postbox are two popular email clients. They now both show up as options for creating new email messages with Clarify. Just select your desired email client in the Clarify preferences.

Note: Sparrow and Postbox integration is only available for Mac. 

Split a Clarify document

We found that sometimes we would accidentally capture images to the wrong document or that we would decide that we wanted to take part of a document and split it into a new one.

It was kind of a pain before but in Clarify 1.0.4 we really simplified the process. Just select the steps on the left, right click and select Create New Document Using Selected Steps. Done.

Get the latest version

You can get the latest version of Clarify through the Mac App store or by selecting Help > Check for Updates. You can also download it here:

http://www.clarify-it.com/download 

Evernote export beta

We are also hosting a public beta that features the ability to to export Clarify documents directly to Evernote. If that sounds like something you would like to try out then you can download the beta here:

Download the Clarify – Evernote beta

Bouncing around is bad. We wanted to make it dead simple for our customers to get the information they needed to be successful. That is why we created our new “How to Create Killer Documentation” site. This guide takes you through everything you need to know to create and benefit from great documentation.

Who is it for?

The site is targeted at two types of businesses:

• Businesses that use documentation to communicate with their customers (customer support)
• Businesses that use documentation to improve their operations (process documentation)

What does the site contain?

The site contains information assembled from our best articles and videos over the years. We have organized it so that you can start at the beginning and quickly learn:

• How documentation can make a difference in your organization
• What goals you should set for your documentation in the short and long term
• How to know what to write and when to write it
• How to properly structure help articles
• How to make sure your documentation gets used

So, go check it out. We hope that you find this “road map” helps you transform your business with a better, simpler documentation methodology.

The key to creating great docs is to abandon projects and instead establish a documentation process.

I explain the details of how you can accomplish this in the short video below. The tips I share in this video are what our most successful customers use to make software documentation a key part of their business strategy.

Free eBook: 5 Keys to Successful Documentation

Learn how to get better results out of your software documentation:

Download our free eBook »

Unfortunately it is all too common. How often do your update your docs? What if you GPS was only updated as often as your documentation?

Here are three simple tips for keeping your documentation up to date:

1. Make it simple to know when docs need updating (pictures really help)

If your documentation only has text it becomes really, really hard to figure out what needs updating. You literally have to read everything. But if your docs use a lot of screenshots then you can quickly scan the documentation to see what needs updating.

2. Remove the barriers to updating your docs

If you have cumbersome authoring or approval processes then your docs will stay out of date. Make sure that your authors can quickly get access to source material, especially the original images used for your screenshots. You should also make sure that your review processes are not overly draconian. The more barriers you can remove the better chance your docs will have of staying up to date.

3. Make sure your docs get used

This is the single best tip. If you and your customers are using your documentation on a regular basis then your docs will stay up to date. The best way to get your docs used is to include your documentation in the customer support process. Your customers will instantly tell you when something is out of date and you can get it taken care of right away.

How do you answer customer questions in 140 characters or less?

The answer is that sometimes you can’t. Some answers require more detail. The trick is to optimize your online content for Twitter support. All you need is a Twitter account and a willingness to rethink how you structure and deliver your online documentation.

Optimizing your responses for 140 characters

If customers are going to ask for support in 140 characters then you need to respond in 140 characters. Let’s say your customer asks, “How do I integrate my account with x service?” on Twitter. You obviously can’t explain every detail in 140 characters and responding across multiple tweets can get really tedious. That isn’t what Twitter is good at.

But Twitter is really good at sharing links. So, instead of trying to provide all of the details in your tweet you need to share a link to your online documentation that has the answer your customer needs. On Twitter you need to point customers to the answer they want instead of trying to write that answer in 140 characters or less.

Do your docs pass the Twitter test?

But this won’t work if your online documentation isn’t optimized for use on Twitter. How do your get your online documentation ready for Twitter? They key is to have many small help topics that focus on specific questions your customers have.

Take this test. Look at the last 20 or so questions you’ve received in your support queue. How many could you respond to with a single tweet? Your tweet should look something like this:

@customer Here is how you do that: http://link_to_your_answer_in_your_online_help_system

If you can’t respond with a link that points exactly to the answer your customer needs then your online documentation has failed the Twitter test. It doesn’t matter if the answer is in your documentation “somewhere”. If you can’t send a url that points exactly to that answer you fail the test.

Many organizations fail the Twitter test because they clump too many help topics onto a single help page. We call this connecting your documentation with cement. What you want to do is connect your documentation with velcro.

If you want to learn a little more about what it means to connect your docs with velcro so that they can easily be pulled apart then watch this video, “Connect Your Software Documentation with Velcro”.

Offering customer support on Twitter doesn’t have to be hard. If you take the time to organize your online documentation you will find that you will be able to quickly answer questions and thrill your customers.

Free eBook: 5 Keys to Successful Documentation

Learn how to get better results out of your software documentation:

Download our free eBook »

• The worker told you they “thought” it was somewhere around aisle 8.
• The worker escorted you to the exact location of the tool or part you needed.

Obviously we all prefer to be given the exact information we need, not just general directions of where to look. This is especially true of software documentation.

You need to optimize your software documentation so that you and your support team can deliver exactly the information your customers need, when and where they need it.

The best way to do that is to create documentation that is attached with velcro. In today’s Docs that Rock Whiteboard video I explain exactly what connecting your content with velcro means.