Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.
Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week. This week’s High Five is a special edition: It lists my top five TED presentations for inbound marketers.
The first rule of inbound marketing is Creating Great Content (PDF). Since you won’t get far without it, and because so few people provide advice on exactly how to create remarkable content (except for this guy), I thought I would share my five favorite talks to help and inspire inbound marketers.
#5: Jacek Utko designs to save newspapers
What happens when an architect is hired to redesign a newspaper? He treats the pages as a canvas for creating posters that tell stories. The inbound marketing lesson is to pay attention to design. And by “design” I mean creating something the world did not know it was missing (Paola Antonelli). This means fully leveraging the form, fit, and function of all of the electronic canvases available to us.
#4: Rory Sutherland: Life lessons from an ad man
Think “45 degrees.” In this talk, Sutherland discusses how to add product value by changing perception – in one case by turning something 45 degrees – and hilarity ensues. It’s worth watching for the entertainment value alone, but the inbound marketing lesson here is that remarkable content can actually add value to your products and/or services by changing their perceptions.
#3: Scott McCloud on comics
Fasten your seatbelt for this one. Scott McCloud whooshes down his road to discovering the answer to the question, “What does a scientific mind do in the arts?” He describes how comics funnel words, pictures and symbols through the single conduit of vision. The inbound marketing lesson in this talk is… well… there isn’t one, there at least a dozen but he covers them so fast you really need to buy his book, “Understanding Comics” to get the full picture (pun intended). I think his lectures and writings are pure marketing and advertising gold for our highly visual Age of Content.
#2: Steve Jobs: How to live before you die
OK, I cheated a bit because, technically speaking, this isn’t a TED talk. But I don’t care because it’s important enough. History will remember Steve Jobs for many things, and his communication skills and persuasiveness will likely be very near the top of the list. In fact, there was a terrific book written on this skill - The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs (highly recommended). His commencement speech at Stanford is well known and has been watched by millions. The inbound marketing takeaway in this talk is simple: it’s simplicity. After a quick, self-deprecating joke about never having graduated college, Jobs gets right to the heart of the matter by saying, “Today, I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.” In all of his presentations and speeches, Jobs is ritualistic about setting expectations up front. He tells you exactly what he’s going to say, continually reminds you where you are in that continuum, and always manages to under-promise and over-deliver. His presentation style is an entire encyclopedia on being remarkable.
#1: Seth Godin on standing out
Who better to teach how to be remarkable than the guy who wrote a book titled “Purple Cow” and marketed it by giving it away in a milk carton? Godin is Remarkable Royalty, the Earl of Extraordinary, the Duke of Different, the King of Compelling, etc… The inbound marketing lesson from this talk is that success “is not always about what the patent is like or what the factory is like. It’s about can you get your idea to spread.” At the end of the day, that’s what it’s all about.
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous spam,
Or to take arms against a sea of multi-level marketers
And, by opposing, unfollow them.
How many people should you follow on Twitter? And should you automatically follow any one who follows you? If not, how do you decide? I’ve been asked these questions many times and so it is finally time to write a post about this topic.
How Many Is Enough?
This is not a simple question and there are several schools of thought. In one corner, we have the “less is more” camp who believe that a smaller group of higher quality connections works better. Seth Godin recently endorsed this approach in his blog post “Bullhorns are overrated.” And in the other corner, we have the “strength in numbers” camp who believe that if 100 followers is good, then 100,000 followers is, well, a thousand times better. Chris Brogan spoke about what he calls his “serendipity engine” in his post, “Depends How You Define Value.”
Personally, I come down more on the serendipity side of the fence. I will follow back just about anyone who is a real person and seems to be using Twitter in a genuine manner.
Is There Any Risk?
There is no overt risk in following someone. It’s not the equivalent of granting them access to your computer in any way. However, it does give them the ability to send you a Direct Message (DM), which could conceivably contain a link to a malicious web site. I never click on a link in a DM from someone I don’t know. And in most cases, I will immediately un-follow anyone who sends me an unsolicited DM with a link to a web site.
How Do I Decide?
I have a two-layer system for deciding whether or not I will follow someone back. In the first test is to analyze a few metrics directly from the email notification.
Click to view full image
The name is obviously the first thing to look at. If it is something like “Porn Galore” then it’s a pretty quick decision. Conversely, it could be a company or brand you don’t necessarily have an issue with, but neither are you particularly interested in what they may have to say.
I look at their follower ratio (number of followers versus number they are following). In this example, there are no particular warning signs, as people with new accounts will frequently start by following a bunch of people. If this ratio is more like 4 (followers) to 800 (following), this is a warning flag to me because it suggests this person is trying to quickly accumulate followers (and likely is using a computer program) and not looking to form connections.
The second metric is the number of tweets compared to the number of followers. The idea here is that I am looking for people who have built a following over time, not over night. In this case, there’s no particular warning flag either.
If none of these three metrics presents any show-stoppers, then I will click on the person’s profile and take a look a little more deeply. Keep in mind that between the time when you received the follow message and then visit the profile, those metrics in the email could have changed dramatically so I will take a second look at those first.
Click to view full image
Case in point – notice that now the follower ratio has changed to 12/625. This is now screaming, “Spammer!”
The next thing I look for is real profile information, like a bio and web page. Taking the time to fill out this information is an indication that the person is genuine. If a web page is there, it can be another warning flag if it looks suspicious.
Last, but not least, I will examine their Twitter updates to see what they are saying. In this example, we have an obvious spammer who is trying to con people into signing up for programs that may or may not be legitimate. Many of these scams will hijack your Twitter account and send out spam messages.
If you have any other tips or tricks, please leave them in the comments for everyone’s benefit!
PowerPoint doesn't kill people, bad presentations kill people.
I used to think I was pretty good at creating presentations. I took a business communications class in graduate school and learned the same old rules; limit your fonts, three to seven bullet points, don’t read your slides, blah blah blah. I withstood others’ horrible presentations, invisibly smirking and silently mocking the 250 word novels slides with their horrifying color schemes and monotone, stammering presenter. I congratulated myself on not being “that guy.” But the truth is that I was just as guilty of Really Bad PowerPoint as anyone else.
Then I read Presentation Zen by Garr Reynolds and everything changed. My goal in this blog post is nothing short of paying forward that same change, and so I’m using myself as a case study to show what my presentations used to look like, what they look like now, and what I aspire them to be in the future.
But before we go down that road, in case you’re dubious about whether or not really bad PowerPoint is a problem, here is a presentation that Guy Kawasaki put together that was used as the forward to Presentation Zen.
The Presenter As Storytellter
The number one lesson I’ve learned is that “slides do not a presentation make.” Rather, they are simply a prop for the story you’re telling. The following slide show contains a series of before and after shots from the same presentation, which I completely overhauled after reading Presentation Zen. They illustrate the first major change; move the narrative off of the slides and into the oratory.
Once the presentation is transformed from a distraction to a storytelling prop, the burden of communication falls on the story itself. Based on the recommendation in Presentation Zen, I also read “Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive And Others Die.” This indispensable book presents six principles that make stories “sticky.” It’s invaluable to crafting messages of all sorts, not just creating presentations. Whether writing an email, composing a blog post, or crafting a memo outlining your thoughts on your organization’s next mission statement this book will help you do it more effectively and memorably. These six principles can be represented by the acronym “SUCCESs”:
Simplicity
Unexpectedness
Concreteness
Credibility
Emotions
Stories
The Presenter As Designer
Duh. That’s the one word that best describes how I felt while reading Presentation Zen. Reynolds eloquently and convincingly makes the case that design is important, poorly understood, and badly implemented (by and large). Those were the “duh” moments, as I realized that those are all true and that I had never realized it or paid much attention previously. But next came salvation, as basic design principles and techniques are presented that make it possible to learn how to improve design. Imagine that – you can actually learn how to design! Looking back, I can’t believe that design wasn’t part of the core curriculum for my engineering degree or any of the computer science tracks I’ve seen. And now that we live in the age of Web 2.0 where we are all content producers, it seems to me that it should be required in all college programs. But I digress.
Reynolds begins by stressing simplicity, balance, noise suppression, and space. These are all related and as I look back on my old presentations it seems as though I was deliberately violating as many of these guidelines as possible on every slide. Take the slide shown below, for example. This is not simple at all; there are too many ideas at once and even the screen shot, while appropriate was still complex and distracting. The layout is completely unbalanced and top-heavy. The slide template is noisy with lines and the “ISA” logo implanted in the corner of every slide. Finally, there is a small amount of empty space on the slide, but it is concentrated in one corner and looks more like something is missing. They eye darts around this slide searching for meaning with no help provided from the design.
My personal design renaissance has begun with what Reynolds calls “The Big Four:” contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity. I’ll now provide examples from my own presentations on how I’ve implemented these principles.
This slide uses contrast in two different ways. The first is the color contrast between the dark gray background and the pure white text. The words jump off the page in way that bullets never can. The second use of contrast is the emphasis of the words “interesting” and “boring” by changing the font size. For some reason we seem to be afraid to make things BIG enough or bold enough.
One of the central themes of this particular presentation was the abundance of free tools available on the Internet in our Web 2.0 world. Therefore, I made use of design repetition by placing the “Free” price tag graphic element on eight consecutive slides in the exact same spot. I also made sure to emphasize this in my delivery by asking the audience to guess how much each solution cost. Of course, the answer was the same and the audio and visual repetition made sure that this point would be driven home. Plus, the audience had fun with it.
Alignment stresses the importance of making objects appear as if they were placed in a particular place deliberately, rather than simply thrown anywhere there was space available. This slide aligns the letters of an acronym quite deliberately to show their relationship. While this is a good example of alignment, I’m not sure it’s a great example of contrast, balance, or noise. I’m sure there is a better way to present this idea, so I will keep tinkering.
This title slide demonstrates the use of proximity. The graphic and title are strongly related and so they are grouped together in close proximity. My name, company, and position are also grouped together and separated from the title in order to distinguish and de-emphasize them. You can also see elements of contrast and alignment in play here as well.
The Presenter As Heretic
Alas, as much as I believe all of this makes sense, it remains heresy to create a PowerPoint presentation that does not utilize the prescribed template or can’t be used as a handout. If you look at most of my presentations now, they are completely useless without the presenter and that’s exactly as it should be. Nonetheless, many conferences are still beholden to the same formula of “Email me your presentation three days in advance so that we can print them out.” Adopting this approach means that you need to create your own handouts that contain the substance of your presentation and not just the props. This all takes more work, but it’s worth it for you and your audience. My recommendation is to write the document in Word, then upload it to Scribd (or Posterous or other similar service) so that you can embed it in web pages and blog posts and also increase your online visibility. Leveraging Social Media & Internet Technology (Handout)
Looking Ahead
While my presentations are a night and day difference from what they used to be, the one thing for certain is that I still have a long way to go. I’m continuing to hone my public speaking skills (which I still think are not very good) and currently enjoying “Confessions of a Public Speaker” by Scott Berkun. I’m simultaneously thumbing through Nacy Duarte’s “Slide:ology,” which is not merely informative; it is incredibly beautiful, mesmerizing, and inspirational. I now look upon each public speaking engagement with excitement and optimism of not merely meeting the challenge, but improving each and every time. I’m looking for an end result that comes close to something like this…
Photo credits:
“death-by-presentation” from HikingArtist.com on Flickr (Creative Commons)
Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.
Welcome to the “Threats and Opportunities” version of the High Five. This week’s links describe some things to be concerned about in 2010, and some trends to be excited about. The last link is an absolute must watch video!
#5: Hackers are defeating tough authentication, Gartner warns
Another day, another scary article about how online identities are being compromised. The takeaway here is to become a more intelligent Internet user and take responsibility for your online accounts (for more information on this subject, see “How to Spot Phishing.”
From the “Big Brother Is Watching” department, Australia is considering forcing Internet service providers to install web site filtering to remove criminal content. All the same questions apply here. Who decides what’s criminal? How do you implement it? The reality is that this very easily thwarted and kids, criminals, and deviants will be able to get around it within hours of the filters being put in place.
#3: The 12 Days of Christmas: Website Disaster Style
This is a very creative and effective article that describes some fundamental yet all to common mistakes that are being made with regard to web site design and architecture. It makes them very understandable to the noob (newbie).
Meaningless coincidence; last week’s #2 position was also a post from Seth Godin. This is a free e-book that is a compilation of observations and advice from scores of the leading thinkers of our digital age. I don’t even know where to start with this, as there is so much information, advice, and inspiration in this document. You must check it out.
#1: Forecast for 2010: The Coming Cloud ‘Catastrophe’
This is a really unfortunate title that appears to be a typical “least common denominator” appeal to fear mongering. However, this video and article provide ten predictions for next year that are fascinating and extremely thought provoking. In fact, the cloud catastrophe prediction is just on of ten, and in my opinion the least interesting. There is one prediction about journalism and the media with which I completely disagree. However, I’ll be authoring a post soon on the trends that are predicted in this story, and many of them can be summarized with this recommendation; “THINK SMALL.” This is a must view video!
Weekly High Five lists the most interesting, compelling, and/or useful links of each week.
This week’s High Five highlights social media trends and how they are affecting the enterprise.
#5: Enterprise 2.0 explained to our managers in 10 principles
This is a great article, but I’d argue the title is a little misleading if not a lot condescending. It lists ten principals of social media, but those articles are a dime a dozen. I like this one because the ten principals are contrasted against their diametrically opposed status quo principals.
#4: LinkedIn users: the most rich, young, educated, and powerful
Guy Kawasaki observes some interesting demographics when you compare users of LinkedIn to subscribers of the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Business Week.
“If we’re in the idea business, how to protect those ideas?” Seth Godin is oft-quoted in this blog (and many others for that matter), and here’s one more. Godin discusses traditional mechanisms for intellectual property protection like patents, trademarks, and copyrights offers a new approach to protecting ideas… don’t.
#1: Clay Shirky on journalism’s future: Revolutions get worse first
Clay Shirky is another thought leader whom I often quote. In this short interview, Shirky provides insights and predictions on how the digital age will impact journalism.
