Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 341
November 23, 2011
The Mobile Imperative
There's a sad truth about mobile, but I don't want to hear it.
Smartphones are becoming more and more popular and the same can be said about the meteoric rise of the tablet (with the iPad as the clear leader), but even with all of the impressive numbers, we're still looking at a penetration rate amongst the general population of anywhere between 25% - 35% (depending on which research group you want to believe) for smartphones. Beyond the low penetration, it's also important to note that within that small percentage, it's even smaller when it comes to people that are paying for apps, downloading apps and actually using apps (we've all seen the depressing stats surrounding this in a myriad of different places). Making things even more complex are the telco companies who are still charging confusing fee structures for mobile data. As you'll note, text messaging is not the same as mobile Web and different devices use different amounts of data (and we're not even talking about the complete confusion or price gouging that happens when you roam beyond your country of origin). Beyond that (as if that's not enough!), it's hard to get adoption of smartphones to become ubiquitous if consumers are locked into three-year contracts, etc...
It's too small for most Marketers.
It's not only too small, but it seems like faster adoption may not be happening if all of those spokes can't get the tire to spin faster and much smoother. It's hard to convince a large brand to think about mobile when they just don't see the uptake and motion from the consumer. It's an ever bigger challenge to stop brands from thinking about mobile as a strictly transactional type of advertising ("ping the consumer with an offer when they're near our stores!") and get them to see mobile as a consumer platform instead of an advertising channel (or to think about mobile from a utilitarian marketing perspective). The cost, effort and general stress of transitioning their current digital ecosystem over to mobile is also a daunting task. While HTML5 could well cure a lot of the woes, it's still an expensive endeavor to get everything they're doing "mobile friendly."
Don't let purgatory get you down.
I often lament this moment in time as being one where us Marketers are trapped in media purgatory. It's not heaven... it's not hell... it's somewhere in the middle. The challenge is what we all do at this unique moment in time. The skeptics see the data above as half-empty... I see it as half-full and rising. The reason why I don't want to hear the woes of low smartphone adoption or the challenges of data charges and long-term phone contracts is that I believe - beyond the shadow of a doubt - that mobile is everything and that mobile is our future (and that future is not as far off as the data may lead us to believe). Fixed screens will simply be places that we toss our cloud-based content, marketing and advertising to for convenience. I believe that smartphones (and devices like the iPad and others that have yet to be created) will be the source of our ever-growing connectivity, and that everything else will just be a big dumb terminal or a piece of glass for viewing (for more on that: The One Screen World).
How long will mobile ubiquity take?
Some are stuck on trying to figure out if this is "the year of mobile"... I am not. It's not relevant to me (it probably already happened... who knows?). I'm more curious to see how mobile connectivity benchmarks and trends with the ubiquity of other utilities like electricity, phones, home heating and beyond. What I am convinced of is this: mobile ubiquity is coming fast (very fast). If you think that most brands still struggle with the Web, e-commerce and Social Media, I'm proud to state that I think mobile - and how it will connect us - will make everything else look like a joke... a blip in time. This doesn't diminish or change what's happening for marketers in-market now. Brand advertising is (and will be) important going forward. The same for loyalty, analytics, data, and every other media channel we're currently engaged with (my saying, "everything is 'with' not 'instead of'" still rings true), but the majority of media will (without question) be consumed and created on some type of mobile device.
The question is: do you get going now, wait for it to take more hold or try and catch up after it's too late?
Tags:
advertising
analytics
app
brand
brand advertising
cloud computing
connectivity
consumer
corning
data
digital ecosystem
ecommerce
glass
html 5
ipad
loyalty
marketer
marketing research
media channel
media purgatory
mobile
mobile app
mobile data
mobile friendly
mobile web
one screen
roaming charges
smartphone
sms
social media
tablet
text messaging
the year of mobile
utilitarian marketing
youtube
November 22, 2011
Newsjacking Turns You Into The Expert
Newsjacking.
As news broke last week that Amazon started selling its long-awaited entry into the tablet (and iPad led) market (Kindle Fire), many eyes were raised, waiting to see what those who would get their fingers on it would think. Would this coming holiday shopping for tablets be (once again) dominated by Apple's iPad or did Amazon develop a truly worthy contender? Amidst the reviews, anticipation and excitement came a secondary story: best-selling business book, author, David Meerman Scott (author of The New Rules of Marketing & PR, Marketing Lessons from the Grateful Dead, World Wide Rave, Real-Time Marketing & PR, etc...) was launching his latest book, Newsjacking - How to Inject your Ideas into a Breaking News Story and Generate Tons of Media Coverage, in digital format only, with a major book publisher (Wiley), for under eight dollars, and it is fully-optimized for Kindle Fire (including hyperlinks, color, images and more). It's no coincidence, either...
The concept of newsjacking is to interject your businesses' story into breaking news to generate media coverage for what you're doing.
And, what better way for Scott to test his concept than to make him (and his book launch) a living petri dish? "You're a very clever man, Mr. Joel," laughs Scott from his home near-Boston. "That perception is exactly correct. I wanted to newsjack the Kindle Fire news. I try my best when I write a book to use the techniques and lessons that I am trying to impart on my readers. This book is about showing businesses how to get their story inserted into the news that's happening, and I'm proud to say that it's actually working pretty well for the launch of Newsjacking... and interviews like this are a testament to that."
The concept of newsjacking is not a new or novel way to get media attention.
Smart companies have been doing it forever. Look no further than the royal wedding between Prince William and Catherine Middleton that took place this past April. How many instances did you see in the news where wedding gown designers were given prime media coverage for either their perspective on what Middleton would wear or to show off what's currently en vogue for brides to be? Those "experts" were simply better than their competitors at riding the wedding gown train of a hot news topic, and were able to newsjack the royal wedding for their own exposure and attention.
The difference between these black belt level public relations tactics and the concepts that Scott uncovers in Newsjacking is that now, anybody can do it.
"Public relations people have been doing similar stuff, to a certain degree, for years," admits Scott. "What makes it possible for anybody now is that Google works in real-time. If I publish a Blog post right now, Google is indexing it... right now. So, when there's a breaking story about some topic and the whole world is really focused on it - like when Kate Winslet saved Sir Richard Branson's mother from a burning fire when his house in the Caribbean went up in flames - all of the media is covering the story, but they're writing it for the online editions first because they don't want any of their competitors to scoop them. Because of this, they wind up copying each other with the sparse details that are available. These reporters are looking for something new and different and that's the opportunity to newsjack. These reporters are on Google and they're searching for a different angle from their competitors. In this instance, the London Fire Brigade newsjacked that story by offering Kate Winslet fire fighter training. They posted the offer on their website two hours after the news broke. Now, all of those reporters have something for the second paragraph of their stories. It will have all of the primary details about Sir Richard Branson's fire in that first paragraph and then it will shift into the London Fire Brigades safety tips. That is the opportunity. The London Fire Brigade probably generated over a million dollars in free advertising and PR. I believe that anybody can do that, too. Anybody can now create content that can draft off of what everybody in the news is already talking about, especially in a world where reporters are looking for something different."
Newsjacking is a quick and simple read.
Like most business books, the hard part is neither in buying the book or reading it, the truly difficult part is in putting the concepts into action. Businesses need to be both active in the Social Media spaces, aware of the opportunities and act with a "first-mover" type of advantage to truly make it work. In concept, the notion of newsjacking seems simple enough (and Scott's book details how Hustler's Larry Flynt has mastered the art in a pre and post Social Media world on multiple occasions). Remember, the big difference between Flynt, your business and Scott's sage advice is that the best examples of newsjacking are often lined with both good judgment and good taste. And, like all great moments that require strong judgment and good taste, they usually seem to come in very limited supply. The true masters of newsjacking never make it look like they did anything much except for offer up their own opinion on a news item that seems to be capturing the world's attention.
So, do you think you have what it takes to newsjack the news?
The above post is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:
Montreal Gazette - Make the news all yours.
Vancouver Sun - not yet published.
Tags:
amazon
apple
attention
blog
book publisher
breaking news
business book
business column
catherine middleton
david meerman scott
exposure
google
holiday shopping
hustler
ipad
kate winslet
kindle fire
larry flynt
london fire brigade
marketing lessons from the grateful dead
media coverage
montreal gazette
news
newsjacking
newspaper column
postmedia
prince william
public relations
publishing
real time marketing and pr
royal wedding
sir richard branson
social media
tablet
the new rules of marketing and pr
vancouver sun
wiley
world wide rave
November 20, 2011
There Is No "Buy" Button On The Brain
Episode #280 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.
What's going on up there? I mean in your brain. Is it possible that our marketing efforts can embed themselves so deep in our psyche that it makes Inception look like The Sound of Music? You may have heard about neuromarketing and how major companies leverage things like brain scans and more to better understand how a brand resonates with consumers, well Roger Dooley is here to show us how every business (small, medium and large) can leverage this information (and it doesn't cost much!) to better brand and market their wares. Dooley is best know for his Blog, Neuromarketing, and just recently released his first book, Brainfluence - 100 Ways to Persuade and Convince Consumers with Neuromarketing. If you're curious to know how deep a brand can go, this Podcast is for you. Enjoy the conversation...
You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #280.
Tags:
advertising
bite size edits
blog
blogging
blue sky factory
book oven
brainfluence
cast of dads
cc chapman
chris brogan
christopher s penn
digital dads
digital marketing
facebook
facebook group
hugh mcguire
in over your head
inception
itunes
julien smith
librivox
managing the gray
marketing
marketing over coffee
media hacks
neuromarketing
new marketing labs
online social network
podcast
podcasting
pressbooks
roger dooley
six pixels of separation
social media 101
social media marketing
strategy
the sound of music
trust agents
twist image
November 19, 2011
Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #74
Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?
My friends: Alistair Croll (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person "must see".
Check out these six links that we're recommending to one another:
If You're Busy, You're Doing Something Wrong: The Surprisingly Relaxed Lives of Elite Achievers - Study Hacks . "What makes the prodigious different from the merely talented? This Study Hacks piece looks at a study in Berlin that compared how music students practiced. It wasn't so much how many hours a day they devoted to the work--rather, it was the intensity and focus of their study periods. As the study suggests, there's a difference between hard work and hard-to-do work." (Alistair for Hugh).
11-Year Old Explains His Take On The Food System - Food Matters . "I spoke at an Ignite in Sebastopol last night. Events like Ignite, Pecha Kucha, and TEDx have revolutionized public speaking, acting as modern-day Toastmasters and making presenters out of people who might never have spoken up. Here's eleven-year-old Birke Baehr at TEDx Asheville, denouncing Big Food." (Alistair for Mitch).
GE Filed 57,000-Page Tax Return, Paid No Taxes on $14 Billion in Profits - The Weekly Standard . "No comment." (Hugh for Alistair).
How the world is learning to speak in tweets - cnet . "A map of the languages of Twitter . I wonder: are we talking across these languages/cultures any more than we used to? That is: does Twitter mean we are more likely to engage with people/ideas/events from other places?" (Hugh for Mitch).
Jeff Bezos Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think - Wired . "I have always loved Amazon as a company and Jeff Bezos is one of the most inspiring business leaders out there. If you're not impressed with their e-commerce business, you may be impressed by everything they have done with the Kindle brand (including the just-launched Kindle Fire ). If you're not impressed with their cloud-based business, perhaps you're impressed by all of their acquisitions (like Zappos and beyond). In the end, they're massive but they maintain a very healthy start-up attitude coupled with a deep understanding of analytics and data. This article highlights their genius... and it's well-worth reading." (Mitch for Alistair).
The Public Library, Completely Reimagined - Mind/Shift . "I've been spending a lot of time with my family at the local public library. It's an amazing institution that I don't think I appreciated enough in my younger years. Books, magazines, newspapers, CDs, DVDs, toys, games, puzzles and even events. It makes you wonder why anybody would buy any of that content when you can get it for free? That all being said, my digital mind can't help but wonder, 'what a waste!' If it were all digitized, we could not only save the space and the hard work or organizing all of this content, but you could also link all of the libraries together, share all of this content'... and my mind continues to wander. So, is there a point to having a physical library? Well, if the notion of a library is a public space that offers our citizens the ability to gain and share knowledge, then this article shows a very different... and fascinating path." (Mitch for Hugh).
Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.
Tags:
alistair croll
amazon
big food
birke baehr
bitcurrent
cloud computing
cnet
complete web monitoring
food matters
ge
gigaom
hugh mcguire
human 20
iambik
ignite sebastopol
jeff bezos
kindle
kindle fire
librivox
link
link exchange
linkbait
managing bandwidth
media hacks
mind shift
pecha kucha
pressbooks
public library
public speaking
start up
story
study hacks
tedx
tedx asheville
the book over
the weekly standard
toastmasters
twitter
wired
year one labs
zappos
November 18, 2011
The Next Internet... Perspective Is Everything
November 17, 2011
Walk It Off
What were some of the best business meetings you have ever had?
Were they in a boardroom when you won a big client or when you sat across someone in their office? Was it during a lunch meeting? Or at an off-site? I'm nearly through reading the biography of Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. If you've had a chance to read it, you'll know that it's a rich and complex biography. Jobs is a tough man to like/get along with. It's not a personal judgment based on my opinion of how his story unfolds, but rather thematic throughout the book (from family and friends to co-workers and business partners). His decision making process in business is almost as complex to understand as where all of the technological innovations came from. The one consistent pearl you get out of the book is that Jobs held meetings while walking with people outside. This was his preferred arena for business conversation and negotiation.
That's a pretty powerful concept to wrap your head around.
The other day, I tweeted, "Sitting will give you cancer? Wha?" It was based on an a Blog post from Gawker titled, Now Just Sitting Still Will Give You Cancer. It's become a (sad) but running joke that nearly everything will give you cancer (remember the song by Joe Jackson, 'Cancer'?). Meetings on the go make a lot of sense. The motion creates emotion and the flowing of the blood, clearing of the lungs and the very action of being active must help fire different pistons in the mind. Besides, do you really think that sitting at a desk all day is good for your general health and metabolism?
It makes perfect sense.
We often take a break from our desks to clear our minds. Why not take a break from our desks to help us think different about the work we're doing? CNN published a news item a few days back titled, Silicon Valley's different kind of power walk, that really got me thinking about just how much our work spaces and how we work is evolving before our very eyes. Laptops and connectivity have fundamentally changed the way we work and maybe this type of untethered work environment is also manifesting itself in how we physically think about the definition of a meeting. I know, that walking isn't exactly new technology, but hearing that more and more business leaders are conducting meetings during walks feels like a new-ish trend to me. I was reminded of an article that I read back in 2008 in The Economist titled, The New Oases:
"The fact that people are no longer tied to specific places for functions such as studying or learning, says Mr Mitchell, means that there is 'a huge drop in demand for traditional, private, enclosed spaces' such as offices or classrooms, and simultaneously 'a huge rise in demand for semi-public spaces that can be informally appropriated to ad-hoc workspaces'. This shift, he thinks, amounts to the biggest change in architecture in this century. In the 20th century architecture was about specialised structures--offices for working, cafeterias for eating, and so forth. This was necessary because workers needed to be near things such as landline phones, fax machines and filing cabinets, and because the economics of building materials favoured repetitive and simple structures, such as grid patterns for cubicles... Buildings will have much more varied shapes than before. For instance, people working on laptops find it comforting to have their backs to a wall, so hybrid spaces may become curvier, with more nooks, in order to maximise the surface area of their inner walls, rather as intestines do. This is becoming affordable because computer-aided design and new materials make non-repetitive forms cheaper to build."
Too bad for Dilbert.
We have untethered connectivity (laptops, tablets and smartphones), we are moving towards more open and collaborative work spaces (death to cubicles and the corner office?) and now, more and more business leaders are conducting their meetings while take long power walks. Perhaps this will lead to another business evolution that births a different type of business ethos and - more importantly - maybe a new age for how we conduct ourselves in a business to be more human... more evolved.
Hey, a boy can dream...
Tags:
architecture
boardroom
business
business ethos
business evolution
business leader
business meeting
cancer
cnn
collaborative work space
connectivity
dilbert
gawker
innovation
joe jackson
laptop
office
power walk
silicon valley
smartphone
steve jobs
steve jobs biography
tablet
technology
the economist
the new oases
untethered
walk
walter isaacson
work environment
workspace
November 16, 2011
Legacy Thinking
It's easy to post to Twitter or update your Facebook status. Not much to think about, right?
Just because something is easy, it doesn't mean you shouldn't think about it. In my last Blog post, Liar's Remorse, I wrote about having one, cohesive reputation (and the struggles/challenges that come with it). I'm often asked why I don't post more personal information in the digital channels about my life (marriage? children? etc...?). The truth is that my work and my business are intensely personal. I spend the majority of my waking days working, growing Twist Image, trying to build my ever-changing vision of how I define "success." I use these digital spaces to focus on that area of my life (and, believe me, I take it very personally). In the creation of content (Blogs, Podcasts, articles, videos and beyond), along with having a vision (much like the editor at a magazine) of how I see/feel the content flowing, I often not only think about who will read, but - more importantly - how it will be perceived long after I am dead.
Legacy thinking.
Personally, I don't tweet "in the now" (I don't Blog or write in that vein either). Before anything gets published I ask two questions:
Will this content stand the test of time?
Will my children (and their children) be proud of their father (grandfather) when looking at this?
Time is the true test of great content (and reputation).
This is why I don't (or try not to) use bad language, attack individuals, beat brands up and more. It's not the reputation I want... it's not the legacy I want to leave. This is particularly true of my Podcast. Think about it this way: in 40 years any one of your future family members will be able to go back in time and chronologically see everything (Mark Zuckerburg is on to something with the Facebook timeline) in sequential order... Blogs post, podcasts, tweets, updates and more. It won't just be a shoebox of pictures and memories... we're talking about a rich trove of content in text, images, audio and video. Everything. These future generations will, literally, be able to know you - how you were feeling at a moment in time - and parlay that against major moments in our history (think: 9/11, the Arab Spring, Occupy Wallstreet, and beyond). Wow... it kind of blows your mind when you really start to think about it.
Legacies mean something.
How often do you think about how your cumulative online persona is this reflection of your true character? We're going to be the first generation to have this kind of documented, individual history that is online for the world to see. Most of the great leaders in our history don't have this kind of raw documentation available for the masses to view and review. I don't know about you, but I take that very seriously. That doesn't mean that I'm busy trying to manipulate things to create a manifestation of the reputation that I want (that would be somewhat inauthentic). It does mean that I respect the publishing medium. I respect the value of your time (right here, right now) and would like those who may be reading this decades or centuries from now to have an understanding of what was happening in the marketing industry and what this change means.
Imagine.
Imagine if we had these kind of tools in biblical times? Imagine the kind of discourse we would have had around emerging religion and conquerors. Imagine if we had these kind of tools as the industrial revolution took hold? Imagine the kind of discourse we would have around the power of communications and media. Imagine that we - each and every one of us - has this power right now. We do. It's in the palm of your hands (literally, because now you can create, publish and stream from a smartphone). The true power comes from understanding the legacy this leaves. Odds are, it will stack up to more credible and important content that evolves and finds its voice over time.
The easy thing to do is to dismiss the legacy (and power) and simply turn it into an engine of mindless spam . The hard thing to do is to create content that creates a legacy.
Tags:
911
arab spring
article
blog
brand
communications
content
digital channel
digital spaces
facebook
facebook timeline
industrial revolution
legacy
magazine
mark zuckerburg
marketing industry
media
occupy wallstreet
online persona
online reputation
podcast
publishing
reputation
smartphone
spam
twist image
twitter
video
Liar's Remorse
What you do online is easy to see in the offline world and vice-versa.
It seems obvious enough, doesn't it? Yet, with each passing day, I see more and more examples of people who believe that their actions in the offline world won't blend online, or things they do online won't blend into the offline world. It's a staggering realization that most people are simply not media savvy enough to realize the huge indiscretions that they're engaging in. On top of that, they're not self-aware enough to realize the serious ramifications that all of this entails (more on that here: Get More Media Savvy).
A few examples of liar's and other silly activities that damage your reputation...
Ever have a meeting cancelled by someone only to later find them hanging out on Twitter or Facebook at the time that the meeting was scheduled for? I'm not talking about having a scheduled tweet published during that time. I'm talking about tweets and status updates that are centered around live, social moments. Do these people actually think that the people they cancelled on don't follow them on Twitter or Facebook, etc...?
I've been seeing and hearing stories of individuals leaving their jobs for another position and giving their former employer one reason for the change only to see online chattering that tells a very different story. While bravado and self-promotion is a natural part of the online personal brand building experience, it's sill amateur to think that employers aren't networked and connected and seeing these stories.
In a similar sense, I've been regaled by industry peers with stories of employees quitting and saying that they're going to a certain type of company only to find out a couple of weeks later (due to an updated LinkedIn profile or the like) that they were - outright - lying about the new position and company they're moving to.
Exaggeration and shielding oneself is a normal posture.
As an employer, it's heartbreaking to see the lying online. You put your trust in people and hope (even if it's an awkward or a difficult moment in time) that they're going to be a good, kind and responsible human beings by telling the truth. As someone who was once an employee (and, in truth, I guess I am still an employee to my book publisher, talent bureau, newspaper publishers, etc...), I understand how hard it is to quit. Our natural instinct is to shield ourselves from that panic and stress. Once it's done, that feeling of freedom pushes us to scream about it from the mountaintops, but a reputation does not have an online and an offline life... it's simply a reputation.
Lying is as lying does.
We're quick to call out brands that exaggerate, change the rules (and yes, some of them lie too), but it's a much murkier situation when it's an individual. The challenge here is in understanding that the world is full of instances where any one individual "doesn't know what they don't know." When a meeting is cancelled and the person is futzing around on Twitter, perhaps the person who they cancelled on knows and speaks to this individual's other clients (what does that do to a reputation?). When a person tells an employer that they're leaving for one reason but the truth is uncovered via their tweets and online updates, maybe the former employer is actually friends with the senior managers of the new company? (what does that do to a reputation?).
We have to be careful. We have to be vigilant.
This isn't about figuring out how to cover the tracks of your lies both online and offline. This is about understanding the dynamics of an online persona and how it blends so completely with who you are. There is no offline and online "you"... there is only "you." And, in the dark of night, when you're lying in bed, you have to think long and hard about whether you're doing your best to be your best or if you're spending your time weaving webs of complexities that is doing ultimate damage to your reputation (and no one else). In the majority of the examples above, I'd guess that the individuals don't realize how much true damage they're doing to their own reputation (and their future)... because the people they're doing it to will never tell them that they got busted.
It may sound scary, but the world needs more cautionary tales.
Tags:
book publisher
facebook
hr
human resources
linkedin
media savvy
newspaper publisher
online persona
online reputation
personal brand
reputation
self promotion
talent bureau
twitter
November 15, 2011
Is PowerPoint Making Us Stupid?
How many mindless presentations have you sat through in business and life?
How many numbing slides have you had to endure of pie-charts or ones littered with hundreds of words? How many times have you sat through a presentation where the speaker was, literally, reading aloud the content on the slides that are right in front of you? How many times have you sat there while someone read (poorly) a speech while stammering behind a podium. The amount of content (both in traditional media and online) about death by PowerPoint is staggering.
Why do we - as a society - put up with up?
It's probably one of the last media frontiers that we need to take a serious look at, implode and re-invent. Yes, presentation software (be it, PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi or others) are simply tools to help a message get communicated, but it's gone beyond that to the point where the presentation software is the message... and not the true message (it would make Marshall McLuhan cry). In the recently published Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson, Jobs discusses how he re-invented Apple during the iMac phase by abolishing the use of presentation software in meetings. He felt that people were relying on the creation and presentation of a slide deck instead of actually thinking about the business problem and how to solve it. On page 337 of the telling biography, Jobs says, "People who know what they're talking about don't need PowerPoint."
It's the content, stupid.
It seems obvious enough, but the idea that a presentation is only as good as the content being presented has become a lost art. It's so fundamental (and obvious), but it's true. Ultimately, people use bulletpoints because they're worried they may forget something (which means, they don't know their content well enough) or they use fancy charts (which means that they can't explain something simply enough without a visualization) or they use fancy images or video (because it acts as a diversion to the fact that their own content is not as compelling).
There's one simple and easy way to create and give great presentation...
Know your content (inside and out). If you don't, ask yourself this: "should I really be presenting this material as a subject matter expert if I, myself, truly don't know it and have to hide behind bulletpoints or bar graphs?" Here's the thing: amazing images, hilarious videos, powerful infographics, bulletpoints and bar graphs are all incredible components to integrate into any presentation so long as the presentation can be done - 100% in its entirety - without them. Think about some of the best presentations you have seen to date. Most of them used some form of multimedia but all of that media was a bonus. It acted as a vessel to simply push the speaker's message out there in a brighter and more powerful fashion.
The problem is that many presenters feel that the presentation is the presentation. It isn't.
The presentation begins (and ends) with the content and how the presenter delivers it. You don't have to ditch PowerPoint, but you don't need it. If you can augment your presentation by sprinkling it in, by all means... go for it. If software, audio visual, the type of microphone, etc... dictates how your presentation will be perceived, you need to return to the roots of what you're presenting and why you're presenting it, in the first place. Here's an easy way to think about it...
The 3 C's of a great presentation:
Content. What am I being asked to present? What is the story here? How can I tell it in a simple way? How can I create a simple story that pulls it all together?
Compelling. How well do I know my content? How well am I using my body language and words to deliver my content? What else can I do to make my presentation both memorable and actionable? How well have I practices this material be compelling in my delivery?
Compassion. How can I get people to emotionally connect to me? How candid am I being with the audience? How much do I care about the audience? How much do I care about the content? How much emotion can I deliver?
Great presentations don't happen by accident.
People forget that the best presentations are also a performance. They are art. The best presenters (like the best actors, artists and musicians) commit to the practice, study and performance of presentations. It's not an easy art to master (it takes years for some...with proper coaching, mentoring and instruction). Steve Jobs didn't wander out on to a stage and hope for the best (and if not, rely on his PowerPoint slides to deliver the message). He worked obsessively on everything from the core message to how the lighting in the room was set. He felt that those who didn't put the time and effort into this were bozos (granted, he felt that most people were bozos). Steve Jobs was a master presenter, and you can be too if you're willing to focus on the content and step away from the PowerPoint.
What presentations tips would you add?
The above posting is my twice-monthly column for The Huffington Post called, Media Hacker . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original version online here:
The Huffington Post - Is PowerPoint Making Us Stupid?
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November 13, 2011
The Future Of Books And Publishing
Episode #279 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.
I wish more people would read (more) books. In a world of Blog, Podcasts, Twitter, magazines and more, I still get the most value out of reading and thinking about a good book over anything else. If you've been playing along at home, you'll know that a frequent guest on the show (and one of the Media Hacks co-host) is Hugh McGuire. Along with starting one of the most interesting open source projects, LibriVox (for audio books based on books in the public domain), Hugh also works on book and publishing start-ups. He's currently got iambik and PressBooks rolling, but hasn't stopped there. Just recently, he launched a new book (which he co-edited with Brian O'Leary) for O'Reilly called, Book: A Futurist's Manifesto. The book publishing industry is going through dramatic change and digitization. With that comes some fascinating lessons for marketers and marketing. Enjoy the conversation...
You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast #279.
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