Two for One PowerPoint

Organizations spend a great deal of money, time, and resources developing Microsoft PowerPoint presentations. However, many miss an opportunity to get even more mileage from this investment by using the presentation as the basis for both a webinar and a video.

Webinars vs. videos
Both webinars and videos offer benefits, albeit different ones:

• A webinar's strength lies in its immediacy. Webinars offer customers an interactive, high-energy experience. Attendees usually have the opportunity to ask questions of expert presenters. Companies gain a valuable connection with contacts and potential customers.
• A video is a polished, visually appealing way to educate or excite viewers. Videos often reach a broad audience and can be used in a multitude of ways.

Webinars and videos also have differing requirements and restraints:

• Webinars, which have fairly simple production values, should have low bandwidth demands; video usually incorporates more complex graphics and recorded audio tracks, so it requires more bandwidth.
• Webinars are given by live presenters that interact with live audiences. Videos are not live, and thus no interactivity takes place.
• Webinars' pacing can be slower than that of videos.
• Viewers experience webinars from beginning to end but often jump through videos to find desired content.

So how can an organization use one presentation to create such diverse products? Planning is the key.

Four steps to success
By thinking ahead, companies can head off expensive and time-consuming revisions and develop a base presentation that can form a foundation for both webinars and videos.

1. Start with the basics. The first thing to understand is that webinars need toned-down animations and embedded objects; videos should pump up animations, add transitions, and take advantage of embedded objects. Therefore, the first step is to build a deck with high-quality, carefully chosen professional graphics and animation. Avoiding embedded video or other bandwidth-greedy objects at this stage is important.
2. Plan for the future. During development of the deck, the organization should be thinking about the "bells and whistles" that will be added for the video: animations, transitions, video overlays, and so on. Planning these components at this stage will help ensure they fit seamlessly with the existing style of the presentation.
3. Think before speaking. Speaker's notes are fine, but organizations should be aware that these notes in their entirety aren't likely to be suitable for videos. Many educational webinars contain pages of notes. Pacing of the audio is not hurried because the emphasis is on learning. The audio of the finished webinar is a great resource for the video creation, but organizations will want to trim this audio first. Furthermore, if the webinar audio wasn't professionally recorded, the sound quality may not be adequate. Good audio is vital for a successful video.
4. Provide a roadmap. Especially when transitioning a webinar to an educational video (for use in an education library), companies should either provide chaptering so that viewers can easily find the content they want or consider creating multiple, smaller videos.

More collateral for less cost
By planning for both webinars and videos when creating PowerPoint presentations, companies can reduce production costs by leveraging elements in both versions. The result is an integrated, cohesive set of materials that can be used for a variety of purposes, from educational to promotional.

Increase Interest with Video Brochures

Integrated marketing has taken over the communications landscape. Online technologies, Web video and direct-response marketing are increasingly interconnected. This trend allows producers to communicate a message in multiple ways and increase audience interactions through a variety of touch points.

How can organizations make the most of the online bandwagon? One way that successful marketers are extending their message is by embedding video into their other marketing collateral, creating interactive video brochures.

Create compelling stories
Video brochures combine text and static graphics with embedded video to create a story that pulls in readers. These brochures — or other integrated collateral, such as white papers, data sheets and case studies — go beyond a static description of a product or success story.

• After reading about a new product or service, customers can click to watch a quick demo.
• Instead of just viewing quotes from a satisfied client, readers can watch a testimonial — from within the case study.
• Interest in learning more about a service or product can be immediately satisfied through embedded video.

Brochures that integrate video encourage viewer interaction and response, making it easier to capture and measure information about viewer activity and response.

The business benefits of this type of brochure are numerous. Incorporating video allows you to

• Highlight important features and benefits of your product or service;
• Illustrate how and why your product or company is superior to the competition;
• Enhance the image and credibility of your brand; and
• Motivate the audience to take action.

Learn more about your readers
At the same time that video brochures offer a more satisfying reading experience, they can help companies learn more about readers. Video brochures are versatile tools:

• They can be distributed through email, websites, blogs or social media.
• Video brochures generate higher response rates than traditional email.
• They provide an actionable, interactive message through audio/visual content and direct calls to action.
• They can be pushed to target viewers.
• Embedded mechanisms can collect viewer activity and response data.

Furthermore, the audio/visual content in the brochures works in a variety of materials, saving marketing dollars and tying together a cohesive messaging strategy.

How Can Video Be Embedded in a Brochure?

Typically, marketing collateral are created and distributed in PDF format. Adobe’s Acrobat software can embed Flash video directly into a PDF file. However, given that video makes PDF files very large, an alternative would be to host your video on a special page on your site, so the video can be played back via a browser. Added benefits would be that website analytics can track the video playbacks and changes can be made to the video page without having to change the PDF.

What you need
To be effective, the audio/visual elements of your brochures must include some interactive elements. For example, you can give readers some level of playback control. The format of these elements should, of course, be compatible with multiple platforms and devices so that the brochure can be distributed online and will have maximum portability.

It is also important that reader action can be measured in a meaningful way. Successful video brochures feature a means to capture and store viewer interactions. These data can then be used for analysis, feedback or sales purposes.

Five factors are required to create an effective video brochure:

• Engaging content
• Portability and universal accessibility
• Intuitive viewer controls
• Viral capabilities
• Ease of use and modification for marketers

You can maximize your return on investment (ROI) by using professional content development. Doing so reduces the strain on in-house graphic- and content-creation resources, and working with a single provider to create multiple elements of your marketing collateral ensures a consistent message throughout.

At Digital Dazzle, our experts can create both the collateral and the video for powerful presentations that will inspire audiences to take action! Contact us for a no-cost consultation on what makes videos work. Call us at 415.937.1791.

Video Stat of the Week: Video Marketing Usage Increases Rapidly in 2012

According to a new report released by Social Media Examiner last month, YouTube and video marketing top all other social media for investments this year.

Why Online Video?

There are several reasons why online video's popularity has increased:

1. Access to audiences is much easier, esp. via YouTube
2. Online video creation has come down in cost, although professional creation is still very important
3. Video helps improve SEO rankings and searchability of marketeers' content

Given these facts there is no reason why you should not utilize online video as part of your Marketing mix.

Easily present your Powerpoint presentation on an iPad

Moving your Powerpoint presentation to an iPad is not an easy feat, since Microsoft never released a Powerpoint viewer for the iPad. But Slideshark has - and it's surprisingly useful.

Upload your presentation to your iPad

Uploading your presentation is very straight-forward:

1. Create an account on Slideshark.
2. Upload your presentation.
3. If you have not done so yet, download the free iPad app from the AppStore.
4. Log into the iPad app and download the presentation from the Slideshark's website.

That's it - you are ready to present.

Presenting from your iPad

On your iPad, use AirPlay or Apple's HDMI adapter to connect to your screen and present directly from your iPad. Even better, Slideshark supports a special presentation mode where your audience sees your presentation, but you see the slides, your notes, the prior and next slides. There's also a timer that allows you to keep track of the elapsed presentation time.

All of this works straight out of the box - we did not have to fiddle with fonts, colors, images or animations. Everything was preserved.

What's not supported

There are a number of Powerpoint features that are not supported:

• We could not play back any embedded videos.
• slide transitions did not work, either.
• According to Slideshark, advanced animations might not work fully either. Neither will hyperlinks or any 3rd-party components.

Verdict

Slideshark has instantly become our favorite Powerpoint presentation tool on the iPad. If we need video, we use Keynote. We don't miss the lack of transition support - less is often more when it comes to presenting. And everything else Slideshark handled well.

Highly recommended!

Powerpoint in Motion

Click on the image above to download the sample PowerPoint presentation.

Many people have seen presentations that incorporate animations. But if it has been a while since you explored Microsoft PowerPoint’s animation capabilities — either because you think they are too complicated or because you have experienced a less-than-professional animated presentation — take another look. Professional, well-executed animations can bring a presentation to life and keep viewers’ attention.

Easy as 1, 2, 3

PowerPoint provides built-in animation capabilities. Some visual effects are easy to implement:

• Entrances and exits of graphic elements and bullets
• Changes in size, color or rotation of text or objects
• Movement of elements You can hide items to focus viewer attention precisely where and when you need it. In short, animation allows you greater control over your information.

Advanced animations

Suppose you want to explain to your audience what is involved to get a new version of a product launched, including all the various tasks that your company, its suppliers and third parties have to perform. It’s not trivial to explain this succinctly, so that your audience will be able to follow along.

Rather than creating pages of pages of text bullets, an animation might be a much better way to tell the story. Just take a look at the image sequence above. Do you want to see the full animation in PowerPoint? Simply download the presentation from our website.

Of course, quality graphics and text are the basis of a well-animated presentation. Professional content development is the first step and can take the pressure off internal resources.

At Digital Dazzle, our experts can create and package powerful presentations that will inspire audiences to take action! Contact Digital Dazzle for a no-cost consultation and to learn how our talented presentation specialists consistently deliver excellent corporate presentations, cost-effectively and on tight deadlines. Call us at 415.937.1791.

Why to use Video for Social Media Marketing

The Social Media Examiner recently conducted a survey of over 3,800 marketers with the goal of understanding how they are using social media to grow and promote their businesses. The information derived from the survey was summarized in the Examiner’s 2012 Social Media Marketing Report.

Here are two of the report’s primary findings:

• Marketers still place high value on social media: A significant 83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.

• Video marketing holds the top spot for future plans: A significant 76% of marketers plan on increasing their use of Youtube and video marketing, making it the top area marketers will invest in for 2012.

Based on these findings, here are tips to help you effectively include videos in your social marketing campaign and keep up with your marketing peers:

1. Increase your 2012 budget for videos.
2. Add links to videos in your social media communications. These links should lead to an appealing landing page, where the video is embedded.
3. People want to access social media wherever they are. So, make sure your videos can be viewed on any device (desktop, notebook, mobile device) without losing production quality. This also means they should be optimized for small screens.
4. To draw customers from Youtube to your site, embed a link and a call to action in your video.
5. Add a sharing function to your video so that prospects can pass it along to colleagues and other decision makers via social media and other channels.

The experts at Digital Dazzle are very familiar with optimizing video for social media. If you would like help, contact us by email or at 415.937.1791.

Video Stat of the Week: Video Viewership

Mark Hosbein, a vice president with Nielsen, recently presented a series of video-focused stats and observations in a meeting with marketers from the greater Los Angeles area.

To nobody's surprise, video viewership has increased over the last years and will certainly continue to do so this year as well. The surprising statistic was the rapid increase in mobile video viewing, by more than 200% in the last 3 years. Corresponding with that number was a decrease in desktop viewership.

This has implications for video marketeers:

• Serve up your video as HTML5 video, not Flash.
• Make sure that your web design allows for viewing of videos on small screens.
• Optimize for small screens - use lightbox overlays that support different sizes for your videos based on the device that a video is viewed on.
• Similarly, ensure that your video content doesn't break down when the video is viewed at Half Size.
• Embed analytics that differentiate between mobile and desktop/notebook viewing.

If you follow these guidelines, you can be assured that your intended audience will be able to watch your videos, not matter what devices they are on.