16 Dec

My Letter to Santa

Dear Santa,

I know it’s been a while since I have written. I have a new found faith that you may be able to help me with a few things on my Christmas list this year. In my opinion, aside from a few small incidents, I have been pretty good in 2011. Because of this, I would like to see a little ROI on some of my good deeds. It’s no secret that your approval numbers are not what they used to be. I have been hearing a lot of buzz about people doubting that you can deliver on your advertised services. I have a proposition for you. Let me help you. If you are able to meet the needs of my list below, you will also see a return for your efforts. You see, I have a killer social media team. They can help develop a campaign around your success in 2011! I really believe that if we work together you will see a huge shift of positive opinion towards your brand. Below is my wish list for this holiday season. I look forward to working with you. By the way, I will include the milk and cookies at no additional cost or commitment.

  1. Guaranteed 100 percent conversions from at least one campaign for every client
  2. Create a great Google+ business page for me, and a month’s worth of content for the page would be a nice add-in
  3. Free inflight Wi-Fi on every flight I take this year
  4. A years-worth of one-shot coffees for my Kurig
  5. Peace on Earth

I think this is a reasonable list as I have left off several other requests. I would also like to mention that I have a good working relationship with the Easter Bunny, so if this is not doable for you we would be happy to take our proposal to him.

What is on your list this year?

 

 

23 Nov

Thank You Technology!

I don’t know about you, but this holiday season has pretty much snuck up on me. In true Thanksgiving spirit, we would like to give a big shout out to some of the technologies we are thankful for. How many are on your list?

  1. Free WiFi (Thank you Starbucks for getting in the game)
  2. Mobile GPS apps
  3. Online flight check in
  4. Pandora radio
  5. Coffee – Okay, it’s not a technology, but it keeps us all going.
  6. Skype international calling
  7. Keyless entry
  8. Fast forward buttons
  9. Rear defrosters
  10. Microwaves – yes, still
  11. Charlie Sheen – Tiger blood infusion has to be a technology
  12. Calendar invites – preferably sent by someone else
  13. eBooks
  14. Facebook
  15. Listerine strips – Possibly the most technologically advanced breakthrough
  16. Massage chairs

The above lists just a few things that have come to mind. I have no doubt that I will use ten more on the way home today. We live in a fast paced world and I am thankful for the innovators of this day and age that have made our lives easier with their technologies. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

28 Oct

How Much is Too Much?

It’s so easy to spam your customers. Especially when you’re hearing constantly how much more content you should be disseminating and how many different kinds of content to boot. I can see how a marketer might feel they need to put out a certain amount of video, articles, presentations, white papers, tweets, Facebook posts, blogs, questions, comments, and links to all of the above.

You can choose to make yourself crazy trying to play this game or you can choose to take control of it.

The Content Marketing Institute put a great article this week on simplifying how content is disseminated. You can check it out here. The gist of it is to embrace simplification and it actually breaks down the content creation, management, and execution process in a very tangible way. The whole article is insightful, but I think this sentence about sums it up: “No. 1 way to simplify? Start small, see how it goes (track it), and then add on when necessary.”

Even the best guidelines, however, can still leave some of your customers and prospects feeling a little spammy. In that case, just ask them what they want! Here’s a great article from Ramon Ray of SmallBizTechnology on how to give your customers choices when it comes to how much content they receive from you.

21 Oct

Trend Spotting

What’s the value of an On-Demand Content Sharing Platform? If you’re IDG, Around $40K. IDG Enterprise, the prominent publisher of business-to-business technology media such as Network World and major events owner, has caught on. The company announced earlier this month a new platform that allows their clients to deliver content – videos, case studies, white papers, decks, etc. – in one, easy to manage and totally on-demand system. It’s called Knowledge Vault. It’s a shift from the traditional webcast the company, as well as many others, relied on as a lead generation tool for clients.

The platform was created when IDG realized that the traditional live webcast was no longer efficient. According to reviews of the platform, Knowledge Vault was created as a tool for customers to group meaningful content in one place, provide an on-demand interface, and have analytics build in to measure the effectiveness and reach.

We call this validation.

IDG is an incredible brand and their enterprise customers, such as Dell, have shared that they like using such a platform and it’s generating leads.  We, of course, think this is brilliant. And if you don’t have $35,000 to $52,000 lying around, you could take advantage of NextSlide’s free platform.

Here are three ideas for getting started on a similar program using NextSlide. Testing the meaningfulness of your content is a lot less stressful when there’s no price tag.

1)   In the spirit of Halloween, resurrect content you thought was dead. Most businesses have pieces of content stashed away that they didn’t do anything with, or only saw the light of day once. Those decks, white papers, videos and microsites might have legs after all. Take a look at what’s in your stash and choose two or three to update. Then upload the refreshed content to your NextSlide channel.

2)   Record video or audio over the pieces of content. Pretend you’re giving a live webinar using the zombie content as your visual material.

3)   Post one link to your social sites, email another with a short explanation of the video, and embed the third to your website. Then measure.

You can play with where you place each piece of content, measure the viewership and engagement of each placement, and then make decisions on how you’d like to tweak that piece or develop your next piece.

12 Aug

Privacy in a Social World

Remember the uproar among users when Facebook changed its privacy policies a few months back?

“Facebook will be moving forward with a controversial plan to give third-party developers and external websites the ability to access users’ home addresses and cellphone numbers in the face of criticism from privacy experts, users, and even congressmen.” (Huffington Post, January 2011)

Well, it seems the privacy saga with our personal pages continues. Just this week, Forbes came out with a piece titled, Facebook’s Privacy Issues Are Even Deeper Than We Knew.

“Questions about what social networks mean for personal privacy and security have been brought to a head by research at Carnegie Mellon University that shows that Facebook has essentially become a worldwide photo identification database.”

The piece went on to describe how we not only need to worry about what Facebook and other social sites do with our personal information, but what these public platforms enable others to do as well. Combined with such personal information as birthdays and hometowns, the facial recognition software could make it easier for hackers to crack the code on Social Security numbers.

Yea, that nine-digit code that is supposed to be the most private and secure piece of personal property? That’s the one.

Writer Chunka Mui ended the piece with this: “Will [social tools like Facebook] step up to address the larger risks to which their customers are being exposed?”

Chunka asks a very important question.  And, in addition to personal risk, what about business risk?  Brands are following the crowds to their social networking sites, and many such platforms do not allow businesses complete control over their content. Who is viewing the content and whether it is secure are common concerns.

So is there such thing as privacy in a social world?

We like to think there is.

Having privacy and security doesn’t mean you can’t be social, too. It is possible to have both, but it’s simply not what we’re used to seeing in the marketplace.  Most social tools offer privacy as an add-on feature—or in other words, they place privacy second in the list of priorities.

And second just doesn’t cut it when it comes to our customer’s information and business identity. Whether it’s our phone number or start-up’s investor presentation, the ability to protect and secure our content should be the expectation, not the add-on feature.

4 Aug

Four Ways to Use LoopLogic

We love when we get asked where the idea for NextSlide came from, because it’s a very simple answer: We created a tool to fulfill our own business needs. We wanted to amp up our videos and keynote presentations without having to upload in a public space. We wanted to store our corporate presentations on a platform we could be proud of and so on…

So, here, four ways you can use our tool to answer a few of your own:

1. Investor Presentations. Explaining your vision clearly to investors is key, but that doesn’t have to mean a lackluster slide deck, and it doesn’t have to mean you’re both at the mercy of each other’s schedules. You want to be memorable. The investor wants to see your pitch when it’s convenient for them.

Expert Tip: Making it a private presentation allows you to cover everything investors may need to know, without sharing it with the masses. Plus, LoopLogic analytics help you see which investors actually viewed it and for how long.

2. On-demand Webinars. Never heard of one these before? You’ll likely be seeing these used more and more, as on-demand is becoming the norm and the expectation.

Let us explain.

The first—and many times, most important—advantage of this kind of webinar is that it doesn’t have a $500 price tag attached to it like your typical webinar software.

What’s more, you have complete control over your product. Turning on the privacy setting allows you to easily monetize the event. Recording your video beforehand minimizes those um’s and ah’s, and the branded channel reinforces your messaging to conference-goers. Also, integrating video and audio allows for more content to be shared at once.

All you have to do is set a date and time for everyone to meet and it becomes a pretty turnkey solution.

Expert Tip: Allowing attendees to add questions underneath the presentation makes it interactive and gives you, the host, time to create a well-crafted answer.

3. Tradeshows and Events. There is a lot of time and work that goes into preparing for events—not to mention the money spent on tickets, parking, personnel and on and on… Then there’s the buzz from events—sometimes you get it and sometimes you don’t. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could guarantee getting some extra eyeballs on your business by sharing your event presentation after it’s all said and done?

Expert Tip: Using sophisticated analytics lets you see how your presentation is performing and drill down to the nitty-gritty about who’s showing interest, and what topics are most attractive for subsequent event planning.

4. Inform New Recruits. Taking a peek into corporate presentations of the past used to require time travel. And a lot of new-employee instruction requires an HR person present and yet another meeting on the calendar. Now all you need is a NextSlide channel.

Expert Tip: Adding chapters updates presentations without having to completely redo important material.

27 Jul

Using Presentation Gestures

Andrew Dlugan provides some timeless information about using gestures in a presentation. Here is the skinny:

First, he defines the “size” of a gesture:

What is meant by gesture size? Just as your voice can be loud or soft, your gestures can be large or small. For example, consider the spectrum of hand and arm gestures.
- Gestures involving your fingers only are small gestures.
- Gestures pivoting at your wrist are a bit larger.
- Gestures pivoting at your elbow are larger still.
- Finally, gestures pivoting at your shoulder are large.

He then defines 3 criteria to consider when choosing your gestures:

1. Distance

In general, the farther your audience is from you, the larger and more pronounced your gestures need to be. Small audience = small gestures. Big audience = big gestures. For example, when seated at a board room table, you might use a small hand gesture. When speaking in an auditorium, you need to use full arm gestures.

2. Sight Lines

In general, if sight lines are clear, you can make smaller and more intricate gestures. If sight lines are partially blocked, you need larger (and higher) gestures.

3. Cultural and Contextual Factors

Cultural and contextual factors may impact the appropriate size for your gestures. A few examples are:
- The culture of your audience members may dictate more subdued gestures. (In general, beware the use of large gestures if you are not familiar with your audience’s culture.)
- When delivering a eulogy or news about layoffs, your gestures should be subdued.
- When speaking to children, your gestures can probably be magnified.

Applied to oopLogic

When mixing a presentation with video recorded via a webcam, remember that you are basically talking with a person one-on-one — thus, use small gestures. If you are archiving a presentation given at an event, then (appropriately) gesture away!

This guy is a rock star. Need to add him to my (far too lengthy) list of people to follow up with!

27 Jul

The Solution to The Anti-PowerPoint Party

This is creeping into my lunch date with a club sandwich. Is that proposal still sitting in my drafts box? I swear I pressed send…

How many times have you walked out of a presentation with a dozen thoughts running through your head—none of which have anything to do with the presentation? Well, to be honest, that’s because the presentation really wasn’t tailored toward your specific needs.  You’re not even sure why you had to be there.  You are sure, though, that it was an hour of your time during which you could have gotten a lot done.

It seems you’re not alone in this. The Swiss have apparently had one too many of these poorly planned and presented meetings, and they’re doing something about it with… The Anti-PowerPoint Party.

The Anti-PowerPoint Party claims that the use of the presentation software costs the Swiss economy approximately 2.1 billion Swiss Francs a year (US $2.5 billion). They base their calculation on reportedly unverified assumptions about the number of employees that attend PowerPoint presentations weekly, and the assumption that these presentations hold no value for 85% of attendees thus costing companies money from the loss of productive work hours. (Source: PCWorld)

Switzerland might have a point.  We are using too much of our precious time shuffling to meetings to see a boring deck that runs on someone else’s timetable. Last time we checked it was 2011, right? We live in an on-demand world, why aren’t our corporate presentations, well, on-demand?

But where we differ from the Swiss opinion is: We’re not so sure the problem lies with the tool. PowerPoint is simply a way to organize information—something every meeting needs. And more importantly, it is a tool that we are all familiar with.  Learning a new tool takes training and time—or in other words, costs money.

The point we should all take away from The Anti-PowerPoint Party debate is that there should be a more powerful and efficient way to present that information.  A way that doesn’t reduce productivity by an alleged 85 percent.

So before you plan your escape to Western Europe, consider this for your company’s next meeting…

NextSlide gives you the ability to:

• Create presentations with the tools you’re already comfortable with (PowerPoint, Keynote, OpenOffice or any tool that can export to Adobe PDF) and improve upon them easily with NextSlide’s tools and features

You can do things like splice audio and video to create interactive and engaging presentations.  There is no need to take time to learn a whole new technology.

•Build on-demand presentations that employees can access on their own time so it doesn’t cut into their urgent work deadlines

Scheduling an in-person meeting at a specific time and date is often unnecessary. It might be scheduled at a time convenient for  the speaker but can disrupt workflow for much of the office, cutting into productivity. If the meeting is archived online in the company’s private channel, employees can not only access when it’s most convenient for them, but share with those internally with whom the message might pertain to or even reflect on important points.

•Update to make information current

Presentations can quickly become outdated, and time spent creating an entirely new presentation is often out of the question. This is where having the ability to add chapters (i.e. create an ongoing seminar for your workforce) or record new audio over an existing presentation becomes important.

•Use free analytics to gauge activity on channel from workforce

One thing that is easy to do with meetings is know the attendance rate, but that shouldn’t be a main reason for holding one in-person. You can get an accurate reading of employee engagement through sophisticated analytics.

• Manage one or several channels at a time to allow employees from different departments to work independently or as part of the larger team unit

We’ve all had that I’m-not-so-sure-I-need-to-be-here-for-this-meeting moment. The multi-channel function deters from including too many department heads just in case something might pertain to them.

 

Presentations are supposed to encourage productivity in the workplace. (Psst, Anti-PowerPoint Party…)  Maybe our behavior toward presentations needs to be where the change lies, and not in the technology.