Brainshark Ideas Blog RSS

A Ken Burns Solution to a Small Video Problem

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 12:16:00 -0500

We recently sat down to record our CEO Joe Gustafson’s annual Brainshark State of the Union interview, to provide it on-demand rather than in a live webinar. Instead of going through the production antics of shooting and editing video, we did an audio recording and used it as narration to a series of PowerPoint slides illustrating what was being said. Brainshark software does handle video just as well as PowerPoint, but we decided to use PowerPoint slides this time. The interview went really well and was very engaging. But we wanted to bump the engagement-factor up to eleven. We realized it was important to add an even more personal touch for something like this.

How could we get a video feel without the burden of taping and editing?

We asked ourselves: what would Ken Burns do? He didn’t have much video for his Civil War series, but it is arguably the most engaging documentary in history. So in the great tradition of ‘good artists borrow, great artists steal’ credo, we put together a quick and informal photo shoot of Joe and interviewer Irwin Hipsman, converted the pictures to black-and-white

(which you can do in PowerPoint 2010 by right-clicking the photo > Format Picture > Picture Color > Saturation = 0%),

and interspersed a few into our presentation. Add in a few slow fades from one picture to the next along with some titles, and voila.

Adding personality to presentations is an effective way to set yourself or your organization apart from others, and we already know that adding voiceovers make presentations more engaging. Being the visual creatures that we are, we often want to see who’s behind the microphone. We found that visual personality can be as simple as adding a few photos, if you don’t want to go through all the trouble of adding a video. Just keep it short, sweet and conversational.

Here is the finished product:

View the presentation in a separate window.

The Challenges of Tablet Adoption

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 09:51:00 -0500

Last week, I introduced some findings from our Executive Roundtable event late last year which centered on the driving factors of rapid tablet adoption across businesses. Yet, in that same study, we also came across a few speed bumps in the road for some enterprises trying to go mobile. Many of these challenges have to do with potential security issues.

When executives expressed a challenge with their mobile strategy, almost 80% of them cited security concerns. For one respondent, security issues will likely drive his company to adopt RIM's Playbook, which is seen as having more security capabilities. The lack of strong security infrastructure is driving a wedge between IT and departments who see tablets as the answer to achieving key goals. We heard multiple examples of departments, including the C-suite, using their own budgets and finding other ways to get around IT to acquire and deploy tablets!

One of our attendees reported experimenting with tablets in a large store that had no desks or computers, but because of security issues and the inability to integrate fully with their Exchange system they had to go back to square one.

Other challenges discussed:

Many mobile apps, even some popular CRM solutions, are not yet mature enough or work effectively in a mobile environment and need to be improved. Lack of good integration between tablets and CRM solutions was also mentioned.
IT departments don’t have system monitoring and reporting tools to manage the usage and performance of these devices. IT also lacks control over what software is pushed to these devices so they can’t provide adequate or consistent support.
Without a clear mobile strategy, organizations may have to support all popular tablet platforms, increasing IT costs and reducing efficiency.
Tablets introduce a lack of protection for consumer privacy. This problem is especially significant in the healthcare and finance industries, where federal regulations require that organizations take comprehensive measures to protect consumer data.

Despite these understandable concerns, tablets continue to fly off the shelves. We plan to continue blogging the findings from our Roundtable event. Next, we’ll cover the different business functions that tablet adoption is serving as well as what the current status of adoption really means for mobile business strategy.

New Resources for Informal Learning

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:31:00 -0500

Are you involved in online training these days? Now you can improve your efforts with our free Training Resources page in the Helpful Resources of the Community & Events section of the Brainshark site. This page is designed to help you perk up your training methods in every aspect. It features a variety of webinars that cover informal learning strategy, mobile learning, and the creation of training content.

If you work with a team that builds content from scratch, then these resources on the Help & Training site can be of use as well. Be sure to leverage this portion of our site, as well as the Training Resources page for best practices around creating content.

The Training Resources page also includes information on creating a recording studio for your training videos as well as a free research report from Forrester on Informal Learning.

If you’ve come across any other training resources that you lean on, please share them with us in the comments.

Brainshark February 2012 Newsletter

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:04:00 -0500

Below is the Brainshark newsletter for the month of February. This month, we share a little fireside chat with our CEO, Joe Gustafson, as he looks ahead to 2012. We also highlight this year's city tour as well as our new SlideShark Team Edition and showcase Matt Gambino's presentation on how to make impactful presentations, even when you can't be there in person. All of this, plus your usual quick links to resources and more in this month's newsetter.

Click on the screenshot below to be taken directly to the newsletter:

Large Manufacturing Company Gets Sales with Brainshark

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 15:51:00 -0500

To be honest, I was a little hesitant to use Brainshark at first due to a bad past experience with (what I thought was) a similar service. After giving it a chance, I have to say that Brainshark has totally changed how we conduct our database marketing. In my opinion, the true benefit to Brainshark is that everything is kept in the Brainshark page, enabling our customers to access multiple resources we have put on our portal. Additionally, the integration of Brainshark with our database reporting tool has been seemless, making my life that much easier when it comes to metrics reports at the month’s end - it now takes two clicks versus the hours it used to take with the past system.

The best part is that Brainshark has already paid for itself. We recently sent out a Brainshark email featuring our newest product, and two of the emails got immediate responses leading to a sale. After some research, we determined that these sales would not have originated or taken place if the Brainshark email did not go out. A lot of companies assume their customer base is up-to-speed on that company’s entire product line. This couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s that company’s utmost responsibility to keep its customer base educated and up-to-date on its product offerings and proposed value of those products. This can’t be done at a trade show (due to the limited % of customers typically attending), nor can it be adequately accomplished with magazine ads. The best way to effectively do this is via emailing your customer database with a tool like Brainshark. This keeps you in front of your audience, keeps them updated, and most importantly gives you a reason/excuse to “touch” that customer. One of the two sales we made was a direct result of the customer “not knowing we also offered that product”.

Lastly, we’re very much looking forward to using the Mobile App capabilities of Brainshark soon. We have a lot of customers who use iPhones and Androids on the manufacturing floor and it’s a benefit to us to be able to direct training videos and presentations that they can access from their Smartphones. This is also a great tool for us to use when training our outside salesforce who can’t be in front of a computer at all times. We recently used the mobile app at a trade show when running a give-away. All folks who stopped by our booth could enter a contest via their Smartphone by signing up for our Brainshark. We had 120 people sign up and can’t wait to try it again at our tradeshows in 2012!

Measuring Loyalty: What is a Net Promoter Score?

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 15:28:00 -0500

You may have heard about the popular customer satisfaction metric, the Net Promoter Score. Developed by loyalty expert Fred Reichheld, Bain & Company and Satmetrix, the Net Promoter Score, or NPS®, is a straightforward way to gauge your customers’ loyalty.

The concept was first popularized in Reicheld’s 2006 book The Ultimate Question, which suggests that customer satisfaction is best measured by one simple question, "Would you recommend this business to a friend?" Based on answers to this question, customers are categorized into one of three groups: Promoters, Passives or Detractors. The percentage of Detractors is then subtracted from the percentage of Promoters to obtain a Net Promoter score (NPS). NPS can be as low as -100 (everybody is a detractor) or as high as +100 (everybody is a promoter).

To give you an example of how different companies score, in 2011 Satmetrix surveyed more than 22,000 US consumers nationwide to arrive at Net Promoter Scores for 170 individual brands across seven industries.

Here is a sampling of those results:

Financial Services:

USAA’s direct banking operation led the banking sector with an NPS of 87%.

Insurance:

USAA dominated both the auto insurance sector at 73% and homeowners insurance at 78%.

Airlines:

JetBlue Airways (60%) and Southwest (59%) dominated the airline rankings.

Telecommunications:

Metro PCS took the top spot in the cellular phone service sector with a score of 41%.

Technology:

Apple continued as the top performer in the computer hardware sector with an NPS of 72%. In the consumer software sector, Symantec earned top position with an NPS of 44%.

Online Services:

Amazon.com led the online shopping sector with an NPS of 70%. In the online search and information category, Google and Facebook led again with scores of 53% and 52% respectively.

Retail:

The grocery and supermarket sector achieved the highest average NPS of all industries examined, with Trader Joe’s increasing its score by 14 points to 82%. And Costco led among department, wholesale and specialty retailers with an NPS of 77%.

Since 2006, the Net Promoter approach has been adopted by many companies, including E.ON, Philips, GE, Apple Retail, Allianz, P&G, Intuit, American Express, and Westpac Banking Corporation.

So how does Brainshark fare?

We’re very happy to report that in January, 2011 we surveyed our customers and based on their responses to the Net Promoter Score question, Brainshark has an NPS of 70%, placing us in the top ranks with companies like Amazon and Apple!

Since a company’s NPS is linked not only to customer satisfaction, but also to profitable growth, we’re extremely grateful to have so many passionate advocates!

You can learn more about the Net Promoter Score here:

Webinar Replay - Evolving Your Webinar Strategy for 2012

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 14:22:00 -0500

Last week, we hosted one of our most highly attended webinars in Brainshark history. Ken Molay, President of Webinar Success, gave a 45-minute presentation on how to approach your webinar program this year and yield better results. Ken covers registration & attendance, reaching global audiences, engagement, and social media throughout his presentation. Also, since this is in fact a webinar on webinars, just watching it should give you a good handle on how to put these tips into practice.

Beyond his expertise in producing and delivering webinars, Ken has a background in marketing, software development, acting, and public speaking.

This replay comes with a free whitepaper, “Re-examining Your Webinar Strategy”, available for download in the attachments tab of the Brainshark player.

Click the link below to register for the free, on-demand version of his webinar to learn about the practical steps for promotion, delivery, and follow-up to increase response to your webinar programs, create more impactful experiences, and increase revenue.

Evolving Your Webinar Strategy for 2012

There's a SlideShark YouTube Contest and Everyone's Invited!

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:42:00 -0500

The moment all of our SlideShark fans have been waiting for has finally arrived. Contest. Prizes. Free T-Shirts. That’s what I’m talking about. Air high-fives to everyone.

As you may have caught in the title, it is in fact a YouTube contest -- winners will receive a brand new ZaggMate Keyboard Case for their iPad. If you don’t win the drawing, we plan to hook every submitter up with a SlideShark T-shirt too because everyone’s a winner in the SlideShark family (some will be bigger winners than others).

The contest rules are pretty simple. We’d really love your help in spreading the word about SlideShark on YouTube, so we’re asking that you post a video following these simple guidelines:

1. In it, tells us in 60 seconds or less:

a. About yourself

b. What you use SlideShark for

c. Your favorite thing about SlideShark

2. Give it a catchy title like “My SlideShark Story” or “How I Play PowerPoint on my iPad with SlideShark”

3. Follow us on Twitter @SlideSharkApp (so we can DM you your T-shirt web code)

4. Tweet it us the link @SlideSharkApp with the hashtag: #SlideSharkStory

The Important Guidelines:

It MUST be a YouTube video
“SlideShark” needs to be somewhere in the title
Tag the video with “slideshark” and “slideshark story”
Don’t use Twitter? Send the link to gpraysman@brainshark.com – but please do use Twitter if you have it!

The contest starts today and ends March 26^th so whip out those cameras!

Once we have everyone’s submissions, we’ll randomly pull 5 for a ZaggMate case, another 3 for an iKeyboard, and be sure to send everyone who submits a promo code so they can get a SlideShark shirt from our store. Winners will be announced the week of March 26^th – so stay tuned to the Blog!

myBrainshark February 2012 Newsletter

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:17:00 -0500

Boy do we have a newsletter for you this month. Not only do you get access to two stellar webinars from renowned guests on improving the impact of your on-demand presentations and PowerPoint creation, respectively, but you get a look at a fresh customer example and Tim Riesterer's replay of "How to Break the Status Quo Barrier" too. Also, another peak at our #ShareTheLove contest. All this great content (and of course more) in this month's newsletter!

Click on the screenshot below to be taken directly to the newsletter:

3 SEO Ideas for Video Marketing

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 09:28:00 -0500

Search engine optimization (SEO) for video content is not without its share of challenges. After all, Google can’t exactly read the lips of speakers on a video when crawling for keywords, and even if it could (which would be awesome), many presentations use audio voice-overs with no lips to be found.

The result has led some to falsely believe that SEO for video is a waste of time. But video can also present certain opportunities for optimization that should not be overlooked, most notably sharability. As Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz points out in this short video, “Video is a medium that earns a lot of links, and a lot of link juice.” With search engines placing more emphasis on external backlinks and social media sharing, video marketing is easily a check worth cashing.

But before people can share your content, they have to find it. Here are a few simple SEO ideas for increasing the inbound traffic to your best video content.

#1. SEO for Video: What’s in a title?

In a word – everything. Say you’ve created a new Brainshark presentation to embed on a corporate blog post. The usual tricks of the SEO trade still apply, but since the body of the post is likely to be short on keyword-rich text, the quality of your title is more important than ever.

Here are some basic tips:

- Understand what your target keyword phrase is. Some people use the Google Adwords Keyword Tool or something similar for keyword discovery. Others simply rely on the search engine’s auto-fill for longtail phrase ideas. But no matter what you do, it’s important to identify the target phrase that is most likely to drive your audience to the content on your site and include it in the title.

- Keep your keywords close to the front of your title. While it won’t necessarily kill your search position if your keywords are loaded near the back, most folks will tell you that the titles with the keywords close to the front are in the best position to rank. With titles being so important when it comes to SEO for video content, this is certainly worth the effort.

- Keep your title under 70 characters in length. Anything longer creates a poor experience for search engines and users alike.

#2. Does more text make sense?

While search engines can’t crawl video presentations for keywords, there is still the option of transcribing your content and including it right there on the page. Of course, there are pros and cons to this strategy.

The benefits here are pretty straightforward. First, transcribed videos generate more unique text for search engines to crawl, increasing the SEO potential of the page. It’s also easy to do. At Brainshark, we recommend writing out a script for all video presentations ahead of time, so all you’d have to do is take that script and drop it right into your blog post. Then again, if you decided to wing it, there are always reasonably inexpensive transcription services like Speechpad (which charges $1.00 per minute of audio) that can do it for you.

But there are cons to consider as well. For example, depending on where your video is featured, transcription doesn’t always make sense. Blog posts are great, but what if you’re embedding it on one of your main site landing pages? Or even your home page? There’s also no guarantee that the transcribed audio will include enough keyword juice to have any effect on your rankings at all. In the end, it could potentially serve to discourage people from viewing the actual presentation, which is the last thing you want.

My advice, in most cases, would be to simply create unique, keyword-rich text for the page that teases the video and entices people to view it. That, combined with a good title, meta description and internal linking strategy, should be enough.

#3. Should your content live on YouTube?

The easy answer is yes, but again, it depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you’re targeting the greatest possible viewership and reach for your video content, than YouTube is probably the way to go. It’s one of the most popular search engines on the planet, and of course, holds high authority in Google search results.

It’s simple to upload Brainshark presentations to YouTube, but remember to include calls to action in the summary section to encourage clicks back to your company website. Also, while Brainshark makes it easy to add clickable links and surveys within your videos, these will no longer work once uploaded to YouTube. As a result, it might be a best practice to take advantage of YouTube’s annotation features to add calls to action and links back into your presentations.

Then again, if the ultimate goal of your video is to drive more traffic and higher conversion rates to your website, then YouTube might not be the right option. Because of its authority in search, chances are if you posted the same video with the same title on your own site and on YouTube, the latter would likely rank higher.

As far as SEO goes, a better option might be to use your keyword-rich title for the video that lives on your site, but a different (and possibly more compelling) title for YouTube. That way you might find yourself celebrating the best of both worlds.

Did You Know? (What Brainshark Did in 2011)

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 12:06:00 -0500

Like every other company, we took a look at everything our product and team accomplished over the course of 2011. Our Director of Customer Community, Irwin Hipsman, recently blogged on several benchmarking statistics to give Brainshark authors some better direction during their creation process. We decided to pull some other cool, interesting, and fun statistics we found and make a quick video infographic! I bet you didn’t know this about your friendly neighborhood Brainshark software:

View this video infographic in a separate window.

Here are some statistics that weren’t included in the presentation, but still good to know:

The average Brainshark presentation has 16 slides
The average duration per slide is 46 seconds
Almost 45% of Brainshark presentations include an attachment
33% include a guestbook
Over 26% of presentations include at least one question

Have you used Brainshark in an innovative way this year, already? Please share your link and comments with us!

SlideShark Now Supports PowerPoint Shows (PPS/PPSX)

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:13:00 -0500

Thanks to many of you for informing our SlideShark Support Team that you regularly receive PowerPoint Show (PPS and PPSX files) rather than the traditional PPT/PPTX files. The latest update to SlideShark (v.1.4.1) supports the ability to upload these kinds of files. You can send these files to your account via the web or directly from your iPad via “Open In” on a variety of apps (e.g. email attachments and cloud storage services like Box.net and Dropbox).

WHAT? A BUG? SQUASH IT!!!

Ok, so not every development release can be as pristine as the prior. We’ve been REALLY good, but after our SlideShark Support Team got a few emails from people who were experiencing logout issues when not online, we aimed to squash the bug as fast as possible! This latest update fixes that problem <insert gross bug-squishing noise here> .

Thank you SO much for getting in touch with us about the issue! Getting those emails really helps us to better cater (and in this case fix) the product to your needs.

So continue to give us feedback, enjoy the product, and look out for new features!

Also, if you left us a concerned review in the AppStore because of this bug, we always appreciate an updated, positive comment if you believe the issue is resolved.

Cheers,

David

What's Driving Tablet Adoption?

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:04:00 -0500

Recently, our CEO hosted a roundtable series and had the pleasure of meeting with over 70 executives from a cross section of industries (see the chart). These executives shared their experiences, plans, challenges, and advantages gained by using tablets in their businesses. Although the findings we’ve compiled are not scientific, they provide some insights on how tablets are shaping our business communications strategies. Of the participants who are using tablets, there’s a wide variety of usage and adoption.

Trends and factors driving tablet adoption

When asked why their companies are adopting tablets, our participants discussed the following:

Since organizations are now accustomed to smartphone usage among employees, acceptance of tablets may be simpler.
The continuing trend in workshifting – working away from the office and working outside of “normal” business hours – is motivating tablet adoption and acceptance. Workers in this environment are seeking replacements for bulky laptops, and smartphones aren’t quite meeting their needs.
With the availability of hundreds of thousands of apps, there’s a solution for almost everyone, for business or personal use.
Independent reps are using iPads and are demanding mobile content from their partner organizations.
To bring down costs, retailers are looking for ways to reduce space, and are replacing training kiosks with tablets.
By providing employees with tablets, companies can significantly reduce the use of paper and improve their efforts to "go green".
Organizations are always seeking the "leading edge" for their sales reps – a way to enhance the perception and positioning of their solutions. The “cool” factor associated with the use of a tech forward device like the iPad may provide this edge.
Tablets are easy to deploy because there’s no need for IT involvement, resources or budget.
Tablets are a solution for situations where there’s no assurance of Internet access.

Are there other instances that you can think of that are propelling tablet adoption forward?

From the findings, it’s evident that these driving factors have pushed tablet usage across a range of business functions, while at the same time there remain challenges that contribute to the slowing of tablet adoption and strategy in organizations. We plan to blog about tablet usage in different business functions as well as the challenges that organizations are facing next.

Brainshark for Training with Incentives

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 10:14:00 -0500

As a recognition and incentive solution provider, we are often asked to help increase training participation rates for our clients. Our own experience has demonstrated that providing an incentive can dramatically help this metric – upwards of 30 to 40% in participation rates. However, how this is actually executed makes a big difference in the overall user experience and perception, and the results are not nearly as good if instant gratification isn’t met.

In a nutshell, the challenge is in providing an effective and visually compelling training experience with an immediate and automatic reward behind it. We chose Brainshark because it provides the great training and presentation interface, and their awesome APIs provide us with all the capabilities needed to pass results back to our reward platform where we can add points to the viewer’s account in real time. I love that it works with the mobile app!

We love to present this capability to our prospects and clients, who have used it successfully for everything from call center training programs to dealer/distributor loyalty programs!

Why Blogging Isn't Going Anywhere (Despite the Reports)

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:39:00 -0500

Any corporate blogger who visited ReadWriteWeb last week might have had their heart skip a beat. As it turns out, the Inc. 500 saw a large drop in corporate blogging in 2011, while the Fortune 500 seemed to have leveled off. The study suggests that companies are “pivoting” their social strategies away from blogging to focus primarily on core channels such as Facebook and Twitter.

This really got me thinking. What the study doesn’t mention is why we are seeing this decrease. Yet, after bouncing it around in my head for a while, it seems pretty clear to me.

The fact of the matter is that good blogging is hard to do. Let me rephrase that – it’s damn hard to do. In order to be successful, a blog needs to be “high quality quantity”. It needs to consistently provide relevant, valuable, and engaging content over and over again to the point where people take it for granted like it’s a free product or service. Corporate bloggers need to constantly create or procure good content from a variety of different voices from within the organization when, often times, blogging is far outside the job description of these contributors. It’s a delicate balancing act between time, resources, audience needs, and corporate goals. You constantly need to be on point to stay competitive.

On the other hand, there exist tools like Twitter and Facebook. Two giant link and multimedia economies where being timely, frequent, and resourceful are comparatively easy to do. Why waste my time and energy on the complex, multi-part behemoth that is corporate blogging when I can streamline and be more efficient with Twitter?

Because it’s worth it, and firms that blog successfully know it all too well. In fact, the most successful companies that I’ve seen are the ones who build a strong bridge between their blogs and the rest of their social channels, allowing them to feed off each other. Blogs have incredible SEO potential and are a convenient gateway to corporate websites as they can house numerous customer or follower resources, testimonials, news, etc. But despite the clear value of blogs, this shift makes sense. 2009 – 2010 marked the surge of the content marketing and inbound marketing philosophies into their Golden Age. Companies rightfully jumped on board to claim a piece of inbound pie and suddenly the blogging space got really noisy. When things get noisy, you have to be that much better in order to stay ahead of the pack.

What this study shows is that the less competitive companies are being weeded out of the blogging game. It was inevitable that some would fail at delivering the goods, building a good bridge between their channels, and captivating their audience. They’re moving on to a different section of the social spectrum either because they simply don’t get blogging or, more likely, need to find something that is a better fit for the resources they have to work with. After all, blogging can take a lot of time and energy before dividends become patently visible. But make no mistake, when it comes to companies that are continuing to blog, they’re only ramping up their efforts as those that flee make more room. If you’re jumping off the blogging bandwagon, I wish you luck and success. But if you’re staying on, I hope you’re as encouraged as I am.

What Can YouTube Teach Brainshark Authors?

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:30:00 -0500

As part of our on-going series of blog posts related to benchmarking your Brainshark presentations, we recently wrote about the length of presentations.

I just came across the YouTube Creator Playbook. Updated fairly recently (November 2011), it is a resource that compiles tips, best practices, and strategies that help build an audience on YouTube. There are many ideas related to Programming/Producing, Publishing/Optimization, and Community/Social Media. One of the more relevant topics for a Brainshark author is the First 15 Seconds, or what we would call, the First Slide.

First Slide Length

It is no surprise that the first slide is critical in that it hooks your viewer into the rest of a presentation. Our research shows that if your viewer sees the first 30 seconds of a presentation, they will spend 14% more time with it. According to the Playbook, “viewers decide whether they are going to keep watching your video within the first 10-15 seconds. Attention spans can be short and they are just one click away from abandoning your video. The videoʼs content - “What am I Watching?” - should come across in the first few moments and hook them early to give them a reason the stick around.”

Our best practice for the length of audio per slide is 30 seconds (it was 46 seconds across every presentation created in 2011). Regarding the first slide, we agree with YouTube and the best practice for the opening slide is 15 -20 seconds (it was 40 seconds across every presentation created in 2011). It is worth the extra half hour to break the opening slide into two and write the script with the hook in mind.

Analytics can be a very helpful guide to increasing viewer retention and to determine how long your audience is viewing a presentation use the Viewer Retention Report in Brainshark.

First Slide Look

The first slide is also important because it is the visual introduction to your presentation and with some thought can complement to the script’s first 15-second hook. In Brainshark, the first slide is also used as the thumbnail for presentations embedded on a website or portal. If all of your presentation’s first slides look the same, it may be hard for your audience to find a presentation and the portal may look repetitive and boring. Another first slide consideration is the default location of the play button, which can easily get in the way of the text. If you are using a thumbnail, we recommend the font size be larger than what you might normally use. Below are some excellent first slide thumbnails:

To download the 73-page Creator Playbook from YouTube click here.

Lead, Follow...or Fail

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:46:00 -0500

For the past year and a half, I have been building a sales territory in the Houston, TX area. As you can expect, most of my prospects are in the oil/gas/energy industry – either oil companies themselves or companies providing services and products to the industry. The majority of my initial conversations with these companies include comments such as “we are old-school, most of our employees are in the field/on a rig”, “there’s not enough bandwidth to reach them” and even “but I like taking helicopters to the off-shore rigs”. I can argue with a few of these (like enough bandwidth) but most of these objections are ideological and philosophical, not empirical. With the price of oil hovering around $100/barrel and record-breaking profits, there is little executive incentive to look for new communication techniques.

The corporate cemetery is filled with those who failed to lead their industries, to anticipate what’s coming or at least to follow the leaders quickly. These include Wang (“Open software? Nah? Proprietary is the way to go”). I’m pretty sure anyone under 30 doesn’t even know who or what Wang was, even though they enjoyed huge market share in the 1980’s and were huge charitable benefactors in the Boston area. Another one is Kodak (remember, they owned 90% of the photographic film market as late as the late 1990s). Of course it took them much longer to fail but they have been dying for so long we mostly forgot about them until they recently made the news (finally) for filing for bankruptcy.

In this world of fast-paced technological advances, and with the “end users” and consumers forcing IT to adapt and adopt quicker than ever to their demands, it’s corporate suicide to not be looking ahead. The “Great One” Wayne Gretsky once said,

“A good hockey player plays where the puck is. A great hockey player plays where the puck is going to be.”

Corporate America has to take the same approach - it’s not good enough to be operating in the “now” it must be looking for the future – where technology will be and where its users will want their brands to be. For many companies, taking the lead is difficult and may not even be critical (Microsoft always mostly followed Apple) but you can’t lag too much. Lead, follow or fail --- as I look at many of these companies I speak to on a daily basis, I want to give them this advice but alas, I think they believe they are too big to fail. Just don’t tell that to the Wangs. Or Kodak. Or sadly, maybe even RIM.

On Kyle Brinkmann's Drive to NASCAR, Brainshark Rides Shotgun

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:19:00 -0500

“When we make our follow up calls to potential sponsors it is amazing how educated they are on the concept and goals of the partnership vs. when we provide just written materials.”

- David Brinkmannn

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with David Brinkmann, father of Kyle Brinkmann, one of today’s most successful rising stars in the ARCA stockcar circuit. While Kyle handles the turns, David and Kyle’s racing team are responsible for the marketing side of motorsport, which is just like any other business. In this interview, we learn what it takes to reach prospective sponsors, educate decision makers, and sign partners that benefit from the marketing opportunities that Kyle’s success provides. David also provides some great tips at the end that you as a marketer or sales person can use right away.

Before reading the interview for the full backstory, I recommend taking a look at Kyle’s excellent partnership overview presentation:

View the presentation in a separate window.

J: Hi David, tell me about Kyle’s racing career and what you need to accomplish on the business side to make it all work?

D: Kyle is celebrating his tenth year of racing even though he’s just 17 years old. Starting in 100cc sprint karts at age 7 to his current ARCA stockcar, Kyle has been successful in every level of the sport. To continue his path to NASCAR takes support beyond what a family-based team can provide. While Kyle is now contracted to drive for one of the top teams in the sport, it takes marketing partners to help offset the travel and upkeep costs of racing.

J: How did you hear about myBrainshark and when did you start using it? Which edition do you use? (Free, Pro, or Pro Trainer)

D: My company uses myBrainshark Pro Trainer. I started by creating logistics training presentations for our customers at work. I opened a free version account to work at home on Kyle’s racing program.

J: What kinds of myBrainshark presentations have you created thus far?

D: Corporate training (work) and motorsports marketing (home).

J: What makes myBrainshark different from or better than other marketing efforts you’ve engaged in?

D: Getting your message to the decision maker is difficult at best. Typically you stuff pages and pages of written material into a folder and hope they read it. myBrainshark creatively allows us to introduce ourselves and our program without a bunch of clutter and cost. The audience is allowed to take in the information when they are ready to watch and listen. When we make our follow up calls it is amazing how educated they are on the concept and goals of the partnership vs. when we provide just written materials.

J: How do you reach your audiences with your presentations? (social, email, website etc.)

D: We do them all. Short cuts on Facebook, Twitter, our racing website, and a site called RacingIn.com which is a social media hot spot for racing enthusiasts.

We also created an “easy to remember” URL mask called KYLE2ARCA.com. By going to KYLE2ARCA.com you are brought directly to the racing Brainshark presentation. We also created business cards with the URL to hand out. You never know when you have the opportunity to network and open up a conversation. The card with the brainshark info is a nice way to convey a little info and then just say; “Here’s our card…check out KYLE2ARCA.com when you have time to learn all about why the program will benefit you”.

J: How do measure your success with myBrainshark?

D: One goal is how well the audience grasps an understanding of the program and how they can benefit from becoming a partner. We have found that the decision makers are far more motorsports savvy after watching our Brainshark than after reviewing printed marketing materials. The real key, however, is signed deals. We are ahead of marketing partnership signings since launching myBrainshark than this same time last season.

J: What kind of feedback have you gotten?

D: We come in with that WOW factor that keeps us ahead of the pack. Brainshark has given us an edge against the competition that is also out there seeking support to go racing. While not every conversation ends in a marketing partnership, every call does include; “What is Brainshark? How did you do that?”

J: What ideas can you give readers to try in 2012?

D: Having the business card that carries either the Brainshark link or creating an easy to remember URL mask really pays off. Also invest in a quality microphone. Computer microphones are generally inexpensive. Clean, crisp audio makes a world of difference over phone recordings. Learn from others. The talent level at Brainshark is unbelievable. Watch other presentations to get ideas for your Brainshark.

J: Great tips. David thanks so much for sharing your insights. Best of luck to you, Kyle, and the whole team in 2012!

D: You’re very welcome. Thanks for a making such a great product. We’ll keep you posted on this year’s successes!

Want to connect with Kyle? Here’s how:

Website

Facebook

Twitter

Strategic Content Marketing: Video Content with a Purpose

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:42:00 -0500

“Either make something impactful, or don’t bother.”

That was the message Sally Hogshead, speaker and author of FASCINATE, delivered during her keynote presentation at Content Marketing World last year. In other words, when it comes to content marketing, the focus should always be on creating content with a purpose.

This is as true for video content as it is for eBooks, blog posts, whitepapers, or any other formats you’re looking to utilize. But not everyone does a great job of developing a content marketing strategy around the needs and pain points of their target audiences, and as a result, their efforts often fail to return the desired impact.

I recently read a post by marketing blogger Daniel Kuperman in which he advises folks to stop worrying so much about the challenges of content marketing and “just do it.” He reasons that if you don’t already have a content strategy in place, then essentially, anything you put out there is better than nothing.

While I’m all for the spirit of the post (content marketing does indeed rock, after all), I can’t get onboard with the whole “any content is better than no content” philosophy. In the worst-case scenario, a potential customer will see some sloppy, poorly thought-out video that reflects negatively on your brand. The best-case scenario? No one sees it at all and whatever resources you devoted to creating it are wasted.

To be fair, Kuperman notes that the goal shouldn’t be to publish lousy content, but rather to remove the stress and time of developing a fully-baked content strategy and just go for it. It’s an interesting idea, but I’d argue that companies (especially small ones) are better off choosing a single aspect of content marketing and focusing their efforts on doing that one thing really well. And with the technology at our disposal today (and with YouTube being the second largest search engine in the world), video content has become an increasingly valuable place to start.

Video Content Marketing that Matters

At Brainshark, the first thing we advise folks to do when embarking in video content marketing (or creating video content in general) is to identify their audience and the goals they want that content to achieve. When putting together a video presentation (or any other content type), first ask yourself – why am I doing this? For example:

- Are you trying to reach a specific segment or a broader base of potential customers?

- Is the purpose to simply increase the reach of your brand through thought leadership content? Or is it more specifically geared toward informing others about your product or service?

- Is this information that people are actually searching for? If so, how and where are they looking?

- If the video isn’t about something that your targets are actively engaging in, how will you deliver it to them in a compelling way?

Content and inbound marketing is more popular than ever these days. But it’s not popular because “videos are cool” or “blog posts are fun to write.” It’s because, when done right, a solid content strategy actually brings value to your business as a whole. That said, creating something “just because” without clearly defining the goals and objectives behind it is unlikely to yield quality results. You’re busy enough as it is – “just because” won’t cut it.

Of course, not every video you create will go viral; that’s not what this is about. But understanding the purpose – no matter how big or small – behind everything you create is what separates successful content strategies from otherwise fruitless endeavors.

There are numerous techniques out there for ensuring the content you have has the greatest possible impact (presentation best practices, SEO, social media marketing, etc.), but none of that matters much without this first step in place. It might seem like your content machine is rolling, but you’ll really just be spinning your wheels.

That’s what we call negative impact – and who wants that?

Guest Post: Does Your Company Have a Mobile Strategy?

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 09:35:00 -0500

I heard Crossing the Chasm author Geoffrey Moore share that the most important moment in mobile adoption was December 25, 2010, when executives around the world opened up the new iPads their families had given them for Christmas. Suddenly, mobile made the corporate agenda, because the iPads made it personal, in ways that even smart phones hadn’t.

One year later, we all know the pervasive role of mobile in our own lives. No surprise that mobile is one of the top focus areas in 2012 marketing plans. Cannes even announced a new mobile category. Yet mobile is often treated as a standalone, fragmented campaign, as we’ve all experienced when we follow a QR Code only to land on a corporate home page that isn’t optimized for mobile devices.

Arc chief creative officer William Rosen wrote an interesting piece in AdAge, “All Marketing Roads Lead Through Mobile“.

“As mobile becomes a key conduit through which people connect with each other and the world — from managing calendars, finances and social networks to navigating online, on the road and on the path to purchase — many are still treating it as ancillary to their marketing efforts. While the technical requirements of mobile force it into the realm of a specialist expertise, the key to winning lies in realizing that mobile actually represents the confluence of four key marketing disciplines: social media, shopper marketing, promotion and CRM.”

The potential of mobile is not only integral to marketing, it is integral to operations, merchandising, and other business functions. That level of integration holds incredible promise, but also incredible complexity.

Mobile is far more than a shiny new toy. I’d love to hear your examples of mobile done well.

We'd love to hear those examples too. For more of Tom's cartoons and posts, visit his site - marketoonist

A Quick Note on Commitment Versus Work Ethic

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:38:00 -0500

Commitment versus work ethic seems to raise the overused comment of “you need to work smarter, not harder”. In the world of sales, commitment is measured in terms of how close or over quota you are. When you look around there are generally two groups of salespeople. The first group is comprised of those that work 60+ hours a week and struggle to make their number. The other group, who I'm very envious of, seem to work very little but consistently exceed their number. You want to say it is because of a great territory or the fact that they've been around a long time. But when you look deeper, they really are working smarter. They are good at deciding which opportunities to work and which to cut loose. They have built a strong network of contacts who provide references for them, making that first cold call not so cold. And they come up with creative ways to use the product or service they represent to solve a customer’s problem.

Having that little extra edge in each of those aspects really makes a huge difference.

When you really think about what it takes to get that extra sales edge, you find that commitment and work ethic aren't necessarily the same thing. In this article from a few months back, Dave Kurlan suggests that commitment has little to do with how many hours you work and more with how far you're willing to go beyond your comfort zone. Both scenarios still mean going the extra mile, but in somewhat different directions. Figure out what things you need to improve in your sales process to make sure you move the extra mile forward and not laterally. Then you'll start to close more deals in less time.

CommonAngels Shares with Brainshark

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 11:02:00 -0500

James Geshwiler is one of the two Managing Directors at CommonAngels. James discusses how he uses Brainshark to solve the communication challenges of his angel network and accomodate the schedules of many c-level executives. The ability to repurpose content into an easily consumable, on-demand format has been key to CommonAngels' communications success.

View the presentation in a separate window.

Stories that Sell Tour Announced - Webinar Replay Included

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 10:48:00 -0500

In conjunction with the inaugural webinar of 2012, the Brainshark Customer Community team announced the Stories that Sell Tour. This is the third round of “City Tours” in which customers and prospects get to meet each other and hear from thought leaders in business communications.

Joining us on the webinar was Tim Riesterer, co-author of Conversations that Win the Complex Sale . Tim will also be the keynote presenter on the Stories that Sell Tour. He is a master story teller and Brainshark author who reveals how you can transform your marketing messages and sales conversations into compelling stories that inspire your customers and prospects to action.

View the presentation in a separate window.

Following Tim’s morning presentation, attendees will have their choice of joining us for lunch and participate in a User Group meeting or an Introduction to Brainshark/Product Demo. Click here to learn more or register for any of the Tour cities.

Attendees will learn how to:

Find your “value wedge” to determine true differentiators that move the prospect past “no decision”
Deliver messaging in engaging content formats – such as video – that stand out
Train your sales team to have conversations that break through the status quo

In addition to the Stories that Sell Tour, we are repeating last Fall’s very successful Presentation Revolution Tour in Los Angeles/Orange County and Denver. Joining us again will be Carmen Taran from RexiMedia.

The #1 App for PowerPoint on the iPad - Now for Individuals and Teams

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 14:58:00 -0500

Our latest update to SlideShark is primarily focused on enabling this great tool for organizational teams, but also includes a few cool new features for presenters.

Team Edition

Organizations create and distribute valuable PowerPoint content to internal people. SlideShark has already solved the problem of how to present that content on the iPad. The challenge lies in how to control and centralize the distribution and gain insight into its usage. With SlideShark Team Edition, we’ve made it easy.

SlideShark Team Edition provides organizations with powerful, multi-user functionality – including administrator controls, team-wide access to content and valuable usage analytics. Read more about it here.

Team Content: Quickly tap between your uploaded content and the content that has been shared by your Team.

Team Visibility: Users with permission to share content with the team can use the Team Visibility switch. By toggling this button, the presentation will appear under Team Content for Team members.

Administration: Administrators have the ability to add/modify users, view all content, and review content analytics.

Analytics: Administrators can view a dashboard of account and content activity, including most active users, most viewed presentations, aggregate viewing data, and detailed downloadable reports.

A Team Edition account is obtained with a 60-day trial - either by registering directly or clicking Try Team Edition in your individual account. Please note that you will need to create a new Team Edition Account to ensure a separation of corporate and personal content.

More Presenter Tools

All SlideShark users can take advantage of great new features:

Autoplay with Looping: Set your presentation to advance automatically, (e.g. kiosk mode). Set the slide delay you want placed after the last animation of each slide. Optionally, have it loop back to the first slide when done. Looping can also be implemented outside of autoplay. These settings can be adjusted from the Details screen or from the slide tray when presenting.

iPad no longer sleeps: If you’re in the middle of presenting, or have it on autoplay, SlideShark ensures that the iPad will not go to sleep.

New Layout: We’ve changed the design of the presentation Details page. From the Details screen, you can get additional information on the presentation, adjust the autoplay settings, access the hide slides screen, or jump directly to a slide and present.

Earn more free storage: Now from the App, you can easily take part in the SlideShark Referral Program. By referring your friends to register for SlideShark, you and your friend obtain an additional 25 MB of free storage. Refer up to 20 friends and add 500 MB to your account.

Preview from the Web: If you’re perusing your catalog from the web and want to quickly preview the slides, clicking on the presentation thumbnail will display a slideshow of images.

Enjoy the update and please continue to tell us what you think and what you’d like to see in future versions.

And of course, if you love it (and we hope that you do), please log a good review on the AppStore.

Cheers!

David Klein

Product Director

Recap of Macworld | iWorld 2012 - Scenes from San Francisco

Sat, 28 Jan 2012 19:50:00 -0500

This week, the SlideShark team traveled to the annual Macworld (now being renamed to iWorld) conference, designed for the ultimate Mac fan. Users, creators, and lovers of Apple products of all shapes, sizes, and ages gathered from far and wide to heartily drink from the raging Apple-flavored river of accessories, apps, and art at this 3-day event. Our visit this Mecca of Macdom coincided with the release of our Team Edition, but there was no shortage of other impressive offerings from the other exhibitors.

Reporters were quick to jump on what was hot!

The accessories were largely dominated by cases. Cases for your iPhone, cases for you iPad, cases for your Macbook, cases for your cases, etc. Seriously, if you’re ever in need, this is the place. Others tried to practically solve pain points like iKeyboard, a $35 thin-layer keyboard that allows you to type more “handily” on your iPad.

Exhibits were coupled with stunts that ranged from the interesting to the eye-popping. Some demonstrated the reliability of their headphone product by mounting skis and jumping on trampolines:

Others decided to do a Kung-fu routine while painting large portraits to demonstrate….well…I’m actually not quite sure, but it was still cool:

Children as well as seniors who have been devout Apple followers since the company’s beginnings stopped by the SlideShark kiosk. Although some had a hint of nostalgia for the good ole days when the conference was twice as big and had an entire hall dedicated to Apple itself with Steve Jobs doing presentations, most were actually quite thrilled that Macworld is becoming more diverse. Many sought solutions that found ways to bring together their Apple and non-Apple products while others stuck around mostly to find out about better and more creative ways to use their products. A fair number of people who weren’t Mac adopters at all came by to get a taste of what they were missing too.

One theme I noticed is the resurgence of the little guy. Some of the media I had a chance to chat with confirmed that they were seeing some of the smaller, lesser known exhibitors make good headway with smart, reliable products. Nothing against the extravagant booths and stunts – they certainly had the best draw. But those that came with a solution that did what it promised, whether it taught your kids to play chess or recharged all of your tech tools at once, made just as much of an impression with iFans.

Overall, it was a great event for fans of technology, entrepreneurship, and those looking to get a little taste of San Francisco. When SlideShark goes next year, we’ll have an even more impactful product, but in the meantime, I’m looking to order a portable shark tank so we can have the best of both worlds.

myBrainshark January 2012 Newsletter

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 18:49:00 -0500

Here is this month's myBrainshark newsletter, which is in the process of going out to our customers. We're kicking the year off in the loving spirit with the myBrainshark "Share the Love" Contest. Write a review of myBrainshark on your blog and we'll link to it so we're all sharing some of that highly coveted traffic love. You could also win $250 in the process! For more on the contest, as well as your usual assortment of quick links and resources check out the newsletter.

Click on the screenshot below to be taken directly to the newsletter:

PowerPoint Bullet Points: Do we need them?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:50:00 -0500

“Never use bullet points in your PowerPoint and Brainshark presentations.”

We often hear this advice from presentation experts, but like most directives, it doesn’t apply to every situation.

When you’re giving an important, high stakes presentation, or you’re creating a marketing piece, or you’re delivering an internal presentation that needs to stand out from your day-to-day communications, bullet points won’t generate the impact you seek. For these types of communications it makes sense to invest the time to develop a great script and, together with a talented graphic designer, create attention-getting visuals that complement your story.

But what about for every day, routine business communications? Let’s say that you need to create a Brainshark presentation to update an internal audience. And you need to get it done quickly. Like most of us, you may have limited design skills and you can’t ask the graphics team for help with this task. What do you do?

Turn to a more text-based approach using bullet points, but follow these key guidelines:

1. Show no more than 6 words per bullet point and no more than 6 bullet points per slide – so says the rule of thumb. That’s a total of 36 words on a slide! Try bringing it down to 3 words and 4 bullets per slide. Use them to summarize your statement and let your narration expand on the topic. The objective is to have your audience listen to your presentation, with the bullets acting as guides to the main points. For more insights on using bullet points, read David Paradi’s brilliant article “How to Write Powerful Bullet Points". The 1080 Group also has some great advice in their presentation entitled Bullets into Visuals: Four Steps to Greater.

2. Keep your slides moving at a pace of no slower than 30 seconds. If you need more time to communicate your idea, add another slide. Or add animation to the slide to give a sense of movement. Check out this Brainshark presentation for more tips.

3. Add relevant images for visual interest. For example, when I’m discussing a specific web page, a marketing piece, or a product feature I’ll use the Windows Snipping Tool to grab an image off the page or a screenshot and include it in the slide. Don’t use clipart or random images just to have a graphic on your slide. A picture is worth a thousand words, but if it’s the wrong picture, your words will be wasted.

4. Go beyond the PowerPoint bullet layout. We’ve provided some creative examples and eye-catching designs in this Brainshark presentation. Download the deck from the attachments section and use these designs in your own presentations:

View the presentation in a separate window.

Do you have bullet point slide examples that have worked especially well for you? If so, please send me a copy (pcrerar@brainshark.com) or leave us a comment. We’d love to share them with our readers.

If you're looking for other PowerPoint templates and ideas, be sure to check out our free presentation with materials you can download.

Announcing the "Share the Love" myBrainshark Contest

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 09:30:00 -0500

Valentine’s Day is approaching! With that in mind, we’re offering a fun new contest to all myBrainshark users to “Share the Love” about myBrainshark on their blogs. It’s easy to enter and we’ve got some really great prizes to give away – in addition to the SEO love you’ll get back from us for your blog.

Here’s how the "Share The Love" Blog Contest Works:

Just use your blog to post an honest review of the myBrainshark solution and we'll link to your post AND enter you into a sweepstakes to win $250 and other prizes!

Prizes:

One 1^st Place Winner Gets $250 cash!
Nine 2^nd – 10^th Place Winners Get $50 in SharkBucks for the New Brainshark Online Store
Everyone Gets Link-Love back from myBrainshark.com for their Blog

The 1-2-3 of how to enter:

Write an honest myBrainshark review on your blog
Tweet us the link to @myBrainshark with hashtag #ShareTheLove on Twitter (or email to jaywilder@brainshark.com if you don’t Tweet!)
You’ll then be automatically entered to win 1 of the 10 prizes, drawn at random

Don’t delay…Time’s ticking:

Time is off the essence! You only have until 2/14/2012 (Valentine’s Day) to enter!

Blinking Cursor? Need some inspiration? Follow this simple format:

i. What is myBrainshark?

ii. What do YOU use it to for?

iii. How do you like the results?

iv. What's your favorite part?

v. End your blog’s final sentence with the following with “the Easy, Free Way to Make Online Video” and link it to www.myBrainshark.com

Don’t have a blog yet?

The hardest part of starting a blog is deciding what to post first…With this contest, that problem’s solved! You can easily start a free blog today in minutes on Wordpress, Tumblr, Blogger or any of the other free blogging services.

The fine details:

Remember to end your blog’s final sentence with “the Easy, Free Way to Make Online Video” and link it to www.mybrainshark.com
You must be over 18.
You must have posted a myBrainshark within the last 12 months.
You must submit your review by 2/14/12

Good luck and don’t delay! Odds are you’ll be in the money!

How to Speak to Your Audience and Get Them to Hear You

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 11:09:00 -0500

A few years ago, I had the unique privilege of producing a wish for the Make a Wish Foundation. A young girl wished to chronicle her life and illness through film. By telling her own personal story, she shed light on the importance of organ donation and exposed the hidden world of children living on dialysis. She didn’t need to spell out these issues to get her point across. She wove a simple story of her experiences and goals to impact her audience.

If you have the freedom to really engage and inform your audience, why not take a chance and change their perspective on your company, product, or course?

A descriptive case study or engaging personal story can prove transformative. As you craft your story, truly think about the emotional response you wish to illicit from your audience. Why should this particular presentation be important to them? The ability to weave a thoughtful narrative through your message can spur dramatic results. Isn’t it about time that you gave your audience a little credit? Be bold and change their perspective through your storytelling. Speak to their emotions, intellect, and general entertainment needs. Give them something different.

Show the audience a world where your services and goals have impacted the life of someone they consider a peer. Use this person as a guide through your messaging with vibrant words and moving photos. During our documentary, we emphasized her words with white text on a black background next to her face. What may have seemed like an overused tactic became new and fresh again through her story and words. You can bring your design to life with moving content. Even the most exciting design can remain flat and unaffecting without good content. Be proud of what you put out to your audience and what you want them to take away from your messaging.

A motivated and appreciated audience will swarm your call to action. A good case study, that supports your content, might spur the viewer to want to read attached material, buy your product, visit your website, or supply feedback.

To this day, that one video goes out daily to the Children’s dialysis floor at Boston’s Childrens Hospital. Good stories never get old and they never get boring.

Don’t hesitate in using these types of examples to strengthen your messaging. Stand up. Stand out. Tell your Story.

Opening Your Presentation Like a James Bond Movie

Sun, 22 Jan 2012 01:38:00 -0500

I wanted to see if I could replicate the experience of opening a presentation like a James Bond movie. I spent a while licensing legal stock photography images and a stock music clip, then went to work on adding PowerPoint animations. Everything came together nicely and works great as a big, brassy opening to a Brainshark recording. Kind of fun to see what you can do without violating copyrights or doing video production!

View the presentation in a separate window.

How to Create a PowerPoint Template

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:31:00 -0500

Using a PowerPoint template is so much more than just a background image. A proper template is the easiest way to create a consistent design scheme for your presentations. A well-designed template can make PowerPoint production much faster, and really helps portray a professional image of the presenter.

There are many free PowerPoint templates available to download online, and you even have a choice of standard Microsoft designs from within PowerPoint 2007 or 2010 itself. But if none of these take your fancy, or if you want to use specific company colours, you may wish to create your own bespoke template.

What do you need for a bespoke template?

There are two basic components of a template: title slide and main body slide. The title slide usually contains the name of your company, the name of the presentation, and the name of the presenter. The main body slide should have a contrasting title bar area, which will help differentiate titles from the background information.

The Master Template

Templates are created using a master template. To access the slide master, select View > Slide Master.

When you’re in the master area, PowerPoint provides you with default automated template options. Slide 1 is the master slide. Anything you do on this slide is replicated on all of the slides underneath it. So, while it may seem logical to use slide 1 for your title slide, it should in fact be used for your normal background, for use on all of your main body slides.

Layouts

Beneath the master slide (slide 1) are the layout slides. These slides take design features from the master, but can be edited individually. Some of the layouts are unnecessary, so rather than complicate things, it’s best practice to delete the ones you’re not going to use. At m62, we delete nearly all of them, as we believe that they can hinder creativity and encourage the misuse of PowerPoint.

To build your own layout, select ‘Insert Layout’ from the Slide Master tab. You can edit the design, and add placeholders via ‘Insert Placeholder’ for objects such as images and charts. These placeholders will hold onto the template design features, and so can be useful for e.g. creating graphs quickly. You can rename layouts by right clicking the layout, and selecting ‘Rename Layout’.

From normal view, selecting Home > New Slide will bring up the list of slide layouts available. Designers can select the most relevant layout for the slide they wish to create.

Colours

Selecting the right colour palette is usually the first thing presenters and presentation designers address when designing their template. When in the Master area, select Create New Theme Colours – you’ll be given 8 choices. PowerPoint uses RGB colours; these can be taken from your company branding colours, or you can create your own.

It’s important to select colours that will go well together. A good website to help you select a new colour scheme is kuler.adobe.com. And whether you have an existing colour scheme or not, make sure you pick some opposing colours to help differentiate fonts and certain design elements. We’d normally pick six colours for a palette: three strong colours, and three derivatives. If you don’t have enough colours in mind to fill the 8 possible colour slots, you should fill them by duplicating the colours you have chosen. This ensures that you won’t end up with rogue colours in your scheme.

One great feature of PowerPoint 2007/2010 is that if you select a colour from normal view, the menu automatically gives you different gradients of each of your chosen colours. This gives you lots of options for your contrasting colours.

Set your main body slide background

Set your main body slide design features from Master view. Change the background colour of your slide by right clicking on the thumbnail of the slide and then selecting Format Background. Change the background itself to gradient fill or normal fill, depending on your preferences, and select the chosen colour from your palette. To add a picture to the background, use the same process from the same menu, where you can select picture or textured fill. Remember though that your audience must be able to clearly see content on top of your background image. And be warned: if the image you are using is large, you could end up with a huge file size for your presentation. Make sure you compress your pictures first!

It’s also a good idea to add a title bar to your main body slide by creating a shape at the top of your slide, and adding a text box. This is also the perfect time to add a logo to your slides.

Within the Format Background menu of a layout slide, you can toggle off ‘normal background graphics’ to get rid of the title bar and other additional features, if you don’t want them displayed on that slide.

To create a title slide background

The first slide below the master slide should be the title slide. Change the background colour using the same method as detailed above. The background colour should be a different colour to your main body slides, to get your audience’s attention when the presentation starts.

Selecting fonts

Some companies also require presenters to use particular fonts. In Office 2007 and 2010, the default font is Calibri. To set a default font for your slide deck, select the ‘Fonts’ button, which is below the ‘Colours’ one. PowerPoint provides default setups for headings and text. We would recommend Arial, as it’s a font every computer has and it’s easy for audiences to read. If you want to add your own particular font, select Fonts > Create New Theme Font. We strongly recommend using the same font throughout all text in your presentation for unity.

Animation

If you’re going to add animation to your template, it’s best not to do so on the master. Master-embedded animations won’t work in PowerPoint 2003, or on Internet-based software. Best practice is to create two layout slides for title bars: one that animates, and one that doesn’t. These should cover both needs without any problem.

That said, something important you should also do on the Master is make sure that transitions are set to ‘Fade’, not ‘Appear’ – click ‘Apply to All’. This will keep your presentation flowing smoothly.

Using your template

Now you have this fantastic template, how do you use it?

First you need to save your template as a template, and not as a PowerPoint presentation. Template files are in a .potx (or .pot for PowerPoint 2003) format. To save yours in the correct format, go to Home > Save As… and select the .potx file format from the dropdown options. Voila! You’ve created a template.

And to use your template, simply open it up and get started!

This post was originally written on the m62 blog here. For more PowerPoint tips, tricks, and resources, be sure to check out our new PowerPoint Resources page as well as our Presentation Accelerator Services!

Content Marketing Resources at Your Fingertips

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:12:00 -0500

Last quarter, Brainshark sponsored a webinar with the Content Marketing Institute (CMI) on using video, mobile and social to generate leads and revenue. During the Webinar, Joe Pulizzi, Executive Director of CMI, said that the biggest challenge that marketers face today is in creating engaging content. In fact, 41% of marketers responding to CMI’s 2011 annual survey cited this as their primary challenge - a 5% increase over the year before.

What type of content attracts people, holds their attention, and compels them to SHARE? Overwhelmingly, it’s video! Video is enjoyable, educational, engaging, accessible on mobile devices, and is frequently shared across social networks.

To help marketers meet the challenge of creating engaging content, specifically video presentations, we put together, Content Marketing Resources including tips, techniques and “how-to” instructions.

You’ll find animations templates, webinar replays including “How to create a content factory”, instructions for creating a video infographic, a link to CMI’s Content Marketing Playbook, and more. From one place, you’ll have access to tips and tools to help you rapidly create content that helps you grab and sustain an audiences’ attention and move them to action.

Have a really good Content Marketing Resource you want to share? Share it with us on Twitter or Facebook.

Customer Interview - Dialing for Dollars and Brainshark

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 10:16:00 -0500

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting Stefany Koslow, a myBrainshark user and sales expert at a SalesForce.com event in New York City where we were exhibiting our new SlideShark App for PowerPoint on iPad. Afterwards, she followed up with a great video presentation explaining the impact of myBrainshark on her business. It piqued my interest and which led me to reach out and learn more about Stefany’s business, Dialing for Dollars, and her experience with Brainshark. In this post, I’ll share the video and resulting Q&A.

An example of making video for a single recipient or small group

Video is traditionally associated with costly, time consuming projects with broad messages for large audiences. I believe Stefany’s use of Brainshark is a great example of how video can be used for fast, targeted messages that effectively speak to a specific person or a small segmented group. Take a look and consider how you can use brief messages like this to set the table for your most important conversations this year:

View the presentation in a separate window.

Q & A

J: Tell us more about your business Dialing for Dollars.

S: Dialing for Dollars started 7 years ago with the goal of “helping customers find new customers”. It was the absolutely perfect job for me- I love figuring out why two companies might benefit from working together and then sharing that idea with my prospect. I consider myself a Corporate Matchmaker! For me, prospecting is the most exciting part of the sales process - it’s all strategy and potential.

J: How did you find out about Brainshark?

S: I found out about Brainshark by attending a sales conference early in 2011. The minute I saw it I realized it was a new, interesting tool that my customers and prospects would really respond to and that I could actually check my gut with metrics. When my company added a sales training component to its offering, I knew people were going to want to get a sense of me, what I’m about and whether I could truly help their sales teams in their new business development efforts. I had options: I could write a white paper. I could create an eBook. I could design a brochure. Send out standard emails. None of these things appealed to me and that means they wouldn’t work for my intended audience either. I wanted something substantive but brief, meaningful but not requiring a ton of reading.

J: What kind of presentation(s) did you start with?

S: I created a Brainshark piece called Prospecting & LinkedIn. It highlighted 3 manageable points for viewers: how to brand yourself on LinkedIn, how to prepare for strategic calls and meetings, and how to grow your existing lead base. There was zero fluff and no buzz words and my network loved it. Some watched it multiple times, others sent me notes full of compliments. Most importantly, unlike a standard email piece, this presentation was opened and watched by well over 20% of my contacts immediately! And the majority of those who watched, stayed all the way through.

J: What’s came next on your video checklist?

S: Since it was so easy to create, I asked myself how else I could use this tool. Here’s what I’ve been doing:

Created a Brainshark with key take-aways from a special meeting/event I attended that I wanted to share with my client’s sales team.
Reused my Prospecting & LinkedIn content for my website.
Shared an idea with a key vendor about how I use their product and other ways to use it. (Ex. Brainshark! And note how they are now having me champion their business, rather than telling prospects how great they are themselves.)
Make seasonal pieces with mass appeal: like, this holiday season I created a piece for my whole network on Networking Tips for In-Person Meetings and Events.

J: I like the content marketing approach. What tips would you share with other users?

S: My key suggestions to anyone thinking about creating a Brainshark would be:

Keep it brief! (What’s your attention span? Create accordingly.)
Keep it focused!
Keep it customer-centric! Ask yourself if you are giving your viewer something new to think about or useful to their business.

J: Great advice. Thanks for sharing, Stefany!

S: My pleasure! Thanks for such a wonderful product! It’s really helped my business.

Some Images to Make Your Presentations the Value of Zero

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 06:19:00 -0500

Earlier this month, I wrote about the Imagin8tion Project and included 8 photographs from the Canon Imagin8tion photo contest. That was the first of my New Year’s presentation resolution efforts to “collect great images and find a way to use them in presentations”.

There are many places to look for images and I just came across a 60-second TV advertisement by Nissan. Called the Value of Zero, it was released in 2011 and contains more than 60 images that visually relate to zero, the amount of emissions from the Nissan Leaf. Some of the images were automotive in nature, others were environmental, beautiful, creative or clever. The advertisement is very well executed and features both video and still images. Even though it is fast-paced, it is understated and watchable.

Below are screen shots of some of the most impactful images. They should provide food for thought when thinking about how to portray a concept in your next Brainshark presentation. Here is the spot.

The Value of Zero was created by TBWA/Chiat/Day Los Angeles, narrated by Robert Downey, Jr. and shot by Malcolm Venville. These images have not been licensed and cannot be used without the permission of the photographers.

Mobile Presentation Advice: Test Your Presentation (4 Tips)

Sun, 15 Jan 2012 21:06:00 -0500

I know I’m not the only one who has experienced that split second of panic after sending an email to my entire company, wondering if I should have given it another look, first. Well, fear no more, at least when it comes to your Brainshark presentations! Here are some tips to make sure all your t’s have been crossed and all your i’s have been dotted prior to distribution, so you can catch any mistakes before your audience does.

With more and more professionals becoming glued to their smart phones, your Brainshark presentations will likely have more mobile views. Covering these bases on creating mobile friendly presentations will ensure your mobile audience has the same viewing experience as those viewing from a computer.

1. Make sure you can actually view the presentation on a mobile device. In my opinion, this is the most important tip for creating mobile-friendly presentations, so be sure to test it out first. Often times, it’s a matter of making sure your presentation is simply enabled for mobile viewing.

2. Is the audio clear? Be sure to use simple audio and avoid loud background music that may distract your audience, and be mindful of where your mobile viewers may be when watching your presentation.

3. Did the speaker follow the script? The audio will be more effective if your speaker follows a script. This will help to minimize the um’s and ah’s that may distract viewers from the presentation’s key message. Consider having an audio talent record your audio to ensure the best recording.

4. Do your visuals display well on a PC, a laptop, AND a mobile device? To be sure of this, refer to the other elements of this Mobile Blog Series:

Good Things Come in Small Packages: Designing Content for Mobile Devices

Designing Slide for Viewing on a Mobile Device

Replace Words with Images in your Mobile Communications

The 3 C’s of Mobile Presentation Audio

Less is More When it Comes to Mobile Text

If you have access to a variety of smart phones and tablets, view the presentation on each one to confirm consistency.

Taking this extra time to test your presentations before sending it out to your audience will be well worth it, and you will no longer feel overcome with panic after hitting that send button!

Customer Idea - Commenting and Rating on Private Presentations

Sat, 14 Jan 2012 18:40:00 -0500

We would like our private presentations to have the functionality of Comment and Rating options to get feedbck and improve our end user experience. I understand they are available to the viewer if the public portal is turned on and they access the presentation from there, but we don't wish to have our presentations public. We are currently linking our users using the Stand-alone player URL. TY!

My Sales Plan for 2012? Slow Down!

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 10:22:00 -0500

Reading all of these New Year's resolution posts got me thinking about my own self-improvement resolutions for the new year. And I think I’ve got it: SLOW DOWN!

Well, the boss might not like the sound of it, but hold on a minute—it’s not what you’re thinking.

We’ve all become accustomed to getting more done in less time, whether it be through multi-tasking or just pushing ourselves to move as fast as possible. While there is no question that this leads to increased productivity, it has a downside. When we try to rush things or fail to pay full attention to what we are doing, we can miss important things along the way OR even worse, get into an accident. I was reminded about this myself - quite literally - recently while driving. I got sideswiped by another driver who was apparently not willing to wait his turn behind me at a traffic light. What did he gain by doing this? In addition to a time-consuming encounter with three police officers, I suspect that he’ll be facing some hefty insurance premium increases as a result of the $1800 of damage he inflicted on my car. But what consumed my thoughts the most in the hours and weeks after the accident was this: I am really glad that I was focusing completely on my driving that evening, and that I wasn’t in as much of a rush as I usually am.

The career benefits of this approach came to me recently while searching online for some inspiration and advice for sales professionals. Two articles grabbed my attention. As it turns out, there is some sales merit to this strategy:

The first was an oldie but goodie titled “Top 5 Tips for New Sellers” by Jill Konrath on the site Selling to Big Companies. Check out Tip #2 (as well as the rest of the article). The second was a July 2011 article titled “10 Tips for Salespeople Tired of Losing Sales” by Kevin Davis on the American Express Open Forum site. See Tip #10. It seems like there's nothing wrong with pumping the brakes.

Good food for thought. I think that I’ll slow down and smell the roses right now. Hope you do too. Happy New Year!

Brainshark January 2012 Newsletter

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 11:16:00 -0500

Start the new year off right by taking a gander at this month's newsletter which was just mailed to our users. This assortment of content challenges you to think about what you'll do differently in 2012. We highlight our new tour with Tim Riesterer, who teaches how to create compelling stories to win sales as well as ways to evolve your webinar strategy with expert Ken Molay. Also, check out the Sharkie Awards contest, which is in full swing, as well as some of the Quick Links, which include our new PowerPoint Resources page. All this and more in this month's newletter.

Click on the screenshot below to be taken directly to the newsletter:

Honest Discounts Saves with Brainshark

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:05:00 -0500

Chris Jacobs, Chief Card Giver at Honest Discounts, gives a rundown of how his company uses Brainshark. Honest Discounts specializes in prescription discounts and keeps its own costs low through the savvy use of Brainshark technology. Learn how Chris and his organization use Brainshark to train reps, create interactive content, and save time and money on travel:

View this presentation in a separate window.

Are You Too Busy to Improve?

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 09:48:00 -0500

As a salesperson, I make phone calls to prospects all day long. The biggest challenge is always making that first connection to determine if there is a need for my product and services. We all know the common objections - no money, bad timing, no need, maybe later, etc.

This knee jerk reaction is understandable considering the barrage of incoming messages we receive throughout the day.

The second biggest challenge is getting the prospect to commit the necessary time to evaluate your solution. I cannot count how many times I have started a conversation with a prospect, shown them the value of my solution, only to have them drift off into oblivion, because they are too busy with their daily tasks.

I keep a cartoon posted on my desk of a king preparing for a battle with a sword, he is telling his lieutenants that he is too busy to speak with the sales guy who is selling...…a machine gun!!!!

My point is that we are often too busy to evaluate things that might make our lives easier. Every business should evaluate their biggest pain or issue, and then set aside some time to listen to 2-3 vendors to see if they can offer a cost-effective solution with a strong return on investment.

It has always been about being bigger, better, and faster, and everything we do works toward these goals. However, we can’t always do it alone, and we need to periodically take the time to evaluate different tools that will make us more successful. If you are not willing to commit the necessary time, then you are not serious about fixing the problem.

Work smarter, not harder!

Less is More When it Comes to Mobile Text

Mon, 09 Jan 2012 09:45:00 -0500

I certainly didn't coin the phrase “Less is more” but I'll apply it to mobile multimedia content because it captures the essence of what should be guiding your content development when building for mobile distribution. On a mobile device your viewer will have less real estate for the visual aspects to appear. This makes your use of text critical, and your reduction of the use of text even more critical.

The key is that your visuals supports the narration and not the other way around. The power in the presentation comes from the audio delivery and messaging, not the visuals. Think about having a story read to you as a child. You sit and listen to the story and then periodically you get to see an image that supports your vision of the message. This should be the experience of your viewer. Not only will they appreciate that they did not have to use brain power to decipher 10 pt. font on a smartphone, the will recognize the method and appreciate the ease with which they can absorb the content. Speaking of brain power, it takes both sides of the brain to process images and audio and the key to getting the message across is to not overwhelm the visual part of the cortex while the audio is being processed.

Here are some specific recommendations:

Design for the small screen

Use 32 pt. font or greater to insure easily read words
Use the Rule of 5
1. No slide has more than 5 bullets
2. No bullet has more than 5 words
3. No word has more than 5 letters (whenever possible)
Whenever you can use a single image and no text at all
1. A picture is worth a thousand words
Use contrasting colors so that text is easily viewed
Don’t fill the slide – allow clean empty space to flourish.

Resist the text temptation! Keep “less is more” in mind when building slides for mobile content and you will have a Sharktastic Day!

Customer Idea - Adding a Laser Pointer to Brainshark

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:40:00 -0500

I would love to be able to use a virtual laser pointer while recording my Brainshark presentations. I could point to the features I want to draw particular attention to while I'm describing them. I see that the new "Slideshark" iPad app has a laser pointer. Please create the same feature for Brainshark.

Become a PowerPoint Ninja in 2012 with these New Free PPT Resources

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 15:10:00 -0500

Just in time for your 2012 New Year’s resolutions list, becoming a PowerPoint Ninja in the next 12 months just got a little easier with our new Free PowerPoint Resources in the Community & Events section of the Brainshark site, under Helpful Resources.

You can use these free PowerPoint resources from leading presentation experts to help make your presentations more effective and impactful this coming year. The content is organized into three categories:

Planning Tips for your PowerPoint Presentation
PowerPoint Templates and Tools
PowerPoint Tips and Tricks

Additionally, along the right side you’ll find two of our most popular presentation skills webinars from 2011 from Dr. Carmen Taran, RexiMedia and Microsoft MVP, Ellen Finkelstein.

Under “Planning tips for your PowerPoint presentation,” you will find expert guidance on PowerPoint design, memorable messaging, and ‘setting the hook’ early from presentation thought leaders such as RexiMedia, m62, Laura Foley, and Nancy Duarte.

“PowerPoint Templates and Tools” offers ready-to-use visuals, people cutouts, and animations templates to create stunning presentations today. Check out the free and premium offerings from leading PowerPoint designers Indezine, eLearning Bros, and PresentationPro.

“PowerPoint Tips and Tricks” will help you extend your discoveries through the year by pointing out some of our favorite Tip sheets for online and mobile presentations as well as the ongoing valuable insights you can get from the blogs of EllenFinkelstein, Nancy Duarte and RexiMedia.

Enjoy these new resources as you find your inner PowerPoint Ninja in 2012. If you have a resource that you’d like to recommend, please share it in the comments section!

Office Hours Recap: Personalization and Wrapping

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 14:37:00 -0500

Here is a replay of our previous Office Hours session on the best practices around personalizing and wrapping your Brainshark presentations. In this quick recap (less than 4 min), you’ll learn to keep in mind the flow of your presentation, who will be personalizing it, and the level of usage so that you can effectively manage it and ultimately boost response rates. Be sure to check the attachments tab of this and all other Office Hours replays for helpful resources:

View presentation in a separate window.

*EDIT: next Office Hours session - see below:

Our next Office Hours live session will be in February (Tuesday, February 21st at 11 am ET) and will show you how to host and track mandatory compliance materials as well as test and gauge the understanding of that material. As always, space is limited on these, so be sure to REGISTER for your chance to sit in and engage with Brainshark Support and other users!

A Trip to the Movies Ends with Some Great PowerPoint Images

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 13:10:00 -0500

On New Year’s Day, my family went to see Martin Scorcese’s Hugo. For anyone making PowerPoint presentations, I highly recommend seeing it in 3-D. All great directors make a film that is a tribute to cinema and this is about the turn of the 20^th century French filmmaker George Melies. Melies was an illusionist who, upon seeing his first movie, re-invented himself into a filmmaker. What he realized early on was that unlike a magic show, movies can tell a story. A contemporary of Jules Verne, Melies made one of the first science fiction movies, A Trip to the Moon.

While waiting for Hugo to begin, the theater played a preview of a Ron Howard project, Imagin8tion. In cooperation with Canon, they held a photo contest that is the basis of "When You Find Me", a short film that premiered in December. More than 90,000 photos were submitted and 8 were chosen to be part of the film. You can see the winners and learn more at their YouTube channel.

What caught my eye were the 100 semifinalists and I made it a point to keep in mind if any of the photos were appropriate for a business presentation. I held my own judging and chose eight that could work in a PowerPoint Presentation. First place went to photographer Jude Mcconkey for "Duck". It captures the moment the first gosling leaps into the water. Imagine a slide about leadership or risk taking - what a perfect image!

These photos highlight the Presentation Revolution themes that Carmen Taran of RexiMedia presented at various webinars and events in 2011: harmony, texture, authenticity, surprise and simplicity. Take a look at the photos and imagine what type of slide content they could fit into. My presentation resolution for 2012 is to collect great images and find a way to use them in presentations. Hopefully, the following photos inspire you to find images that really take your presentations to the next level. Please note, these images have not been licensed and cannot be used without the permission of the photographers.

Samantha Manderfield (Light: Speed up or slow down)

Zantez Avanr (Turning a pebble into a mountain. What is your goal?)

Vivien Vitolo (Coffee)

Shannon Piserchio (Head)

Cayton Cox (Sometimes you know the exit but do you want to take it)

John Peterson (Eye)

Chris Wallace (Door)

Announcing the December iPad 2 Winner - Our Last!

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 10:21:00 -0500

It’s been a long time coming, but we’re officially here. Seven months and scores of customer testimonials later, we’ve reached the end of the road of our Customer Success Story contest. Our seventh and final iPad 2 winner is one Rebecca Saunders, the Director of User Documentation at Apex Learning. Her post was actually published yesterday and is definitely one of our favorites! Needless to say, Rebecca was pretty pumped about the win and writes, “I have the best job in the world at Apex Learning, the leading digital curriculum provider of blended and virtual learning for the nation’s public school districts and charter schools.”It looks like it’s going to be a good year.

We all wanted to take a moment to thank every single person who participated in this event. It’s been really encouraging and at times heartwarming to read your stories of how Brainshark has helped play a role in your successes. We’re very happy we made the decision to run this contest until the end of the year and are looking forward to our next one that should be around the corner. On that note, please take a look at our annual Sharkie Awards that have just kicked off for a chance to win $3,500 in prizes. Deadline is February 3^rd – so jump on this and keep your eyes peeled for more events in the future!

The 3 C's of Great Mobile Presentation Audio

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 14:41:00 -0500

Over the last couple of weeks, we've been blogging about some best practices around designing content for mobile devices. An important chapter to mobile content design is the audio! The first thing to consider is that your viewer literally is mobile - they might be in a cab going from midtown to downtown Manhattan; on the train from O’Hare to downtown Chicago; in rental car in the Ted Williams tunnel or sitting in LAX waiting for the next flight. Get the picture? They're busy and on the go, so you have to use the three C’s to make sure they can focus on your audio and receive the message in your presentation despite the surroundings and situation.

The 3 C’s I want you to focus on are:

Clear
Concise
Compelling

Clear

Clarity starts with the script that will become the spoken audio. It is your chance to write and review the material to make sure it matches the flow of the slide so the viewer can easily follow where you are going. To be clear is to focus on a single point per slide in the presentation. Using a construction metaphor, the foundation of clarity is the script and the window dressing is the conversational style with good pronunciation. Build your presentation by using the audio to tie the points together like a good storyteller would and don’t forget that the best stories are the ones that the listener can follow and understand.

Concise

Less is more. If the word, phrase, sentence, or music does not add value to the presentation, then leave it out. Don’t use “objective” when “goal” works; don’t use “repudiate” when “rejects” gets the point across. Cut paragraphs into sentences and sentences into phrases. Do not lose clarity in the process and one way to check this is to review the presentation once it is complete. Your audience will appreciate that you delivered the material in the briefest manner possible and they are more likely to watch your next presentation.

Compelling

There are many compelling features in a presentation beyond audio, but audio is probably the single most important factor. Say it as briefly and conversationally as possible. Keep slides to 30 seconds or less. Do not speak too slowly or over enunciate since this will become a distraction and they will stop watching. Writing a good script will help with controlling the timing of the slides and practicing the script will help you to deliver the material conversationally, which is how people want to be spoken to.

Invite the audience to enjoy the material and digest it by engaging them with your voice and intonation. When it comes to mobile multi-media content like Brainshark, you cannot get away with mediocre audio. If the speaker is average and the material is not required, they will stop watching. Think about the tone in good radio advertising and you will be on the road to a good recording. Your audience can interpret many things based on the tone of your voice. They can sense interest and disinterest, they can sense excitement and disdain, and they can sense enthusiasm and ennui. More importantly – they will be influenced by the emotion they sense through the tone in which the audio is delivered. Enthusiasm is contagious so use it to your advantage.

Put the 3 C’s into your mobile presentation audio and you will have a Sharktastic Day!

It’s Not a Diamond Ring without the Ring

Tue, 03 Jan 2012 09:22:00 -0500

My department was looking to create high quality video content quickly to boost our internal employee training program and to amp up the online help we offer our users. We were honing in on Brainshark in April 2011 when the question of professional services came up. How would we make sure our Brainshark implementation got off to a strong start in order to meet our goals? I didn’t really think about the question at the time. I just wanted to make videos, baby! We proposed to Brainshark in May, 2011. They said yes!

Our pre-nup stated that we would use certain Brainshark implementation services within two months. I figured we’d “attend” a couple webinars and ignore a packet of glossy implementation babble and get to work. Plus, I’d already vetted a lot of the training and support materials that Brainshark offers publicly -- from their certification courses to reference PDFs, the knowledgebase, videos, webinars, and chat. I am a self-directed learner myself, so I figured that was all I needed.

Frankly, the Brainshark services seemed kind of redundant. I work in Client Services for a company that develops digital curriculum for high schools across the country. Let me restate that: I work in Services for a company that makes and helps educators implement digital curricula. I understand the challenge of getting authors to create content under constraints. I get the struggles and successes users have with content and learning management systems. I’ve worked in this industry for over a decade and my team is, well, spectacular. So what in the world could some trainer from a video presentation company teach us?

Enter our Brainshark Client Success Consultant / Project Manager – Merle Johnson. She did an on-site session at our team meeting in the summer that helped clarify, drive, and support our learning and goals. She counseled us when we went astray. Each week, she nudged us just a little bit further. If the Brainshark videos were the diamond, Merle was the ring. She held it all together so our work could shine.

There’s an old adage about how a good teacher is like a quarterback – he doesn’t throw the ball to the receiver – he throws the ball to where the receiver will be. Merle was an awesome quarterback. By the time our hours with Merle were up, the project manager on our side (who, granted, is fabulous in her own right) had set up an authoring certification for our employees and customized for our most common use cases. She offered a presentation review service, just like Brainshark does, in the interest of helping everyone elevate their game.

To date, nearly every department in my company is using Brainshark to develop employee training videos and we’re rolling out a world-class, on-demand user training program this spring.

So let me propose a toast. To Merle – I can’t wait to see what’s in store for 2012!

What's your Presentation Resolution this Year?

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 11:40:00 -0500

From the Presentation Revolution tour all the way to our Presentation Resources page, our year has been filled with ways of getting our customers and readers to find better ways to communicate. In the spirit of the New Year, we asked customers, friends, and employees to share some of their Presentation Resolutions for 2012. They all seem like good ideas to us:

"I resolve to convince more of my clients to stop numbering their slides. Since PowerPoint is primarily a visual, on-screen medium, calling attention to the passage of time by including sequential slide numbering is pointless. To the audience, PowerPoint presentations are measured in the length of time it takes to deliver them, not the number of slides they contain."

~ Laura M. Foley, Cheater of Death by PowerPoint, Laura M. Foley Design

“Say more with less and maximize visuals.”

~ Kathy Doherty, Experience Designer/Developer, Brainshark, Inc.

Expand overall usage of Brainshark presentations across my organization. Train and develop my colleagues across the organization to improve their presentation design skills so their Brainshark recordings are as dynamic as possible. Create and incorporate more video for learning and communication purposes into my recordings. Incorporate more Brainshark recordings into our company intranet portal for communication and training purposes.

~ Mike Schwartz, Project Manager, Training & Development, Cox Media Group

“My presentation resolution for 2012 is to collect great images and find a way to use them in presentations. “

~ Irwin Hipsman, Director of Customer Community, Brainshark, Inc.

"Earmark adequate time to search for and use graphics that are interesting as well as informative. Best take away for me was that the visuals don’t have to be literal, but rather can symbolize the content."

~ Jeanne Cerulle, VIBE Specialist, Staples

“I resolve to continue my Sharkquest for having all Brainshark authors find the great audio delivery that is inside each of them. All it takes is three things: good scripting, familiarity with the script and enthusiasm in the delivery of the message.”

~ Pat Kelly, Director of Professional Services Operations & Solution Delivery, Brainshark, Inc.

"For 2012, I would like to move more from 'what' to 'so what' in any of my presentations."

~ Carmen Taran, Co-Founder, Rexi Media

"I resolve to encourage my Brainshark authors to incorporate animations in all of their presentations."

~ Marlen Johnson, Project Manager - SME, Brainshark, Inc.

"I resolve to use less text on my slides, use better visuals, and write better scripts. I want our learners to have a better experience with our online training."

~ Jim Rocha, Training Manager, May Institute

"I intend to make sure that all my 2012 presentations 'Occupy' the mind.”

~ Abassie Koroma, Active Investor Education, TD Ameritrade

“I plan to make my presentations much more visually stimulating. The training class really helped me see how that can make a huge difference. “

~ Shelby Davis, Broker Services Manager, Structured Financial Associates

What's your Presentation Resolution? Does it sound like any of the ones above?

Happy New Year with a Couple of Gameshow Templates

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 13:22:00 -0500

Hoping that everyone finds joy during the holiday season, and wishing you all a productive New Year. In the spirit of giving, I’m sharing a couple of my “edu-tainment” favorites; PowerPoint templates for “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” and “Jeopardy”. They’re complete with instructions, and feel free to use at your own discretion as I’ve shamelessly “borrowed” screenshots and sounds from the originals. Wishing everyone the best for the upcoming New Year.

View presentation in a separate window.