How to Present like Steve Jobs: Act 2

Post on 05.21.2013 by Joy Scott | Comments (0)

Last week, we explored Act 1 of how to present like Steve Jobs, based on an article by Carmine Gallo titled “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience”. Act 1 explored the act of creating the story. This week, in Act 2, we will learn how to deliver the experience.

Act 2—Deliver the Experience. Once the proper planning has taken place, the actual creation of the presentation comes next. It is essential to create a project that is both visually appealing and makes sense to look at and follow—if it doesn’t, you will quickly lose the interest of your audience. These steps make it easier to create a presentation that will “Wow” your spectators and captivate their attention:

Don’t Overdo It—it may be tempting to make every slide or template complex, diverse, and fancy, but trying too hard to dress it up will only alienate the audience and make it hard to follow. Keep your slides short, simple, and to-the-point as much as possible to convey ideas in an easily understandable way.

Image Is Everything—hardly anyone enjoys staring at black-and white graphs and grids while being lectured on a series of numbers that make their head spin. Dress up your graphs with some color and describe numbers in a way the audience can relate with to make it fun and hold their attention.

Zingers Are Worth It—varied diction is key to making a presentation memorable and creating a lively communication. Spice up the vocabulary with diverse and uncommon phrases to leave a more lasting impression.

Share the Spotlight—try not to make your presentation all about you. Instead of risking coming off as self-centered or obsessed, give credit for ideas and contributions where credit is due.

Utilize Your Surroundings—a great presentation will stand out through its use of props and additional supporting devices. Liven up your communication skills with a demonstration or some tools that may be unexpected or new.

Include a Climax—the traditional story arch had a progression from the beginning, up to a height in the action, that then trailed down to a resolution.

Build your presentation along this line to create a moment of surprise to really impress your audience. Try to craft your project to build for that instance for maximum effect.

End scene.

The last Act of this series, “Refine and Rehearse” will be posted next week.

If you’re in healthcare, insurance, technology or other professional services industries, and need help with public relations, marketing or crisis communications, contact Scott Public Relations.

Like what you’ve read? Like us on Facebook (A PRBI Member), follow Scott Public Relations on Twitter and sign up for the Einsight RSS feed!

Categories: Healthcare, Insights, Insurance, Public Relations and Marketing, Social Media, Technology

Tags: Ahead of the Curve, B2B, brain food, council of experts, Digital marketing, executive intelligence, ideas, public relations, Scott Public Relations, SocialOomph, thought leader, Web 2.0

The Keys to Content Marketing: Part Two (Content Mapping)

Post on 05.16.2013 by Joy Scott | Comments (0)

Blog courtesy of Jacob Seal from Bridge Global Strategies

This blog post is the second in a four-part series, describing the steps to execute a successful content marketing strategy.

In our first post in this series, we described the steps for developing buyer personas to help you understand the unique characteristics of your target customers, where they look for information on products and services and how they evaluate that information in the buying process. When you have completed your buyer personas, it’s time to start strategizing about your marketing content.

Before you produce your first piece of content, you should closely examine the buying cycle of each of your buyer personas and create an informal guide or chart that aligns your marketing content with each stage of the cycle. This is also referred to as a content map, and it is critical, because it helps you to see the big picture of how your content marketing strategy will work before you immerse yourself in developing that content.

The buying cycle of your customers will likely consist of four stages:

Awareness: Prospects become aware they have a need and/or aware that your company is in the business of solving their particular needs.

Research/Education: Prospects better understand their needs and begin to educate themselves about the various solutions available to them, perhaps including your company’s products or services.

Comparison/Validation: Prospects start reviewing their options to see which may best meet their needs and eliminating those that seem to only marginally satisfy them.

Purchase: After narrowing the field, the buyer makes a decision, hopefully to buy from you!

As you conceptualize the buying cycle for your customers, you should identify specific types of content that will be most effective at moving your prospects from one stage of the cycle to the next. While it is true that not all prospects will respond to your content in the same way, studies show that some types of content influence a buyer’s decision more at specific stages of the cycle than at other times.

For example, if your prospects consume a lot of information on the Internet—which they probably do if you are considering a content marketing strategy—you may find that your content maps to the buying cycle as follows:

Awareness: Blog posts and social media updates

Research: Ebooks, webinars, industry reports

Comparison: Case studies, demos, customer testimonials

Purchase: Analyst reports, detailed product information

As you create your content map, remember that this is really a reductionist process, and in reality, there may be a lot of nuances in the buying cycle that are difficult to map. Nevertheless, by taking the time upfront to identify the types of marketing content that you will use and aligning it with the buying cycle, you will be better prepared to execute your strategy and to continue to tailor it to ensure that you meeting your marketing objectives.

If you’re in healthcare, insurance, technology or other professional services industries, and need help with public relations, marketing or crisis communications, contact Scott Public Relations.

Like what you’ve read? Like us on Facebook (A PRBI Member), follow Scott Public Relations on Twitter and sign up for the Einsight RSS feed!

Categories: Healthcare, Insights, Insurance, Public Relations and Marketing, Social Media, Technology

Tags: Ahead of the Curve, B2B, brain food, council of experts, Digital marketing, executive intelligence, ideas, LinkedIn, new media, online communities, PRBI, public relations, Scott Public Relations, Social Media, SocialOomph, thought leader, Twitter, Web 2.0

How to present like Steve Jobs: Act 1

Post on 05.14.2013 by Joy Scott | Comments (0)

The art of the presentation has evolved and advanced into an essential form of communication. Programs like PowerPoint, Excel, and Keynote provide easy-to-use and creative methods for supporting the delivery of your story to enhance the quality of your communication to the audience. While having the tools available is a great asset, knowing how to use them is something else entirely. It takes practice and confidence to integrate these devices into your ability to deliver your pitch, but when you do it takes the story to an entirely new level. Carmine Gallo, in his recent article “The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience”, described how the Apple tycoon, Steve Jobs, adopted the use of media tools into his performance, turning his presentations into a communication experience almost Shakespearean in style.

Jobs’ performance on stage was stunning in its flow, energy and aesthetic appearance. His confidence and ease of use with the tools available created a seamless and flowing project that captivated his audiences. Gallo took one of his performances and reduced it to the bare-bone outline, describing its similarity to a play with three major acts. We have broken this review into a three-part series. Today, we will review Act 1.

Act 1—Creating the Story. In a previous blog, I discussed the five steps to take in creating a successful story as a means of communicating your idea. A good presentation will take the form of a story to be appealing and relatable to the audience. The first act of any good presentation is about the conception and creation. There are several essential steps to take:

Plan, Then Proceed—before you even open the software needed for your presentation, it helps to know what you’re going to do. Brainstorming ideas and laying out plans before beginning the work will make it easier to conceptualize and actual create the project.

Answer the Question—the foremost question that every audience has about any presentation is “Why does this matter to me?” Losing sight of this means losing your audience—don’t ignore it.

Don’t Lose Focus—regardless of your past successes or failures, do not let them dictate how you proceed with the presentation. Focus on the task at hand and nothing else will matter.

Bigger Isn’t Always Better—the power and influence of social media has turned the human brain onto small sound bites of information. Condensing your potential titles into short and catchy phrases will make them easier for the audience to grasp.

Map It Out—a good presentation has a sense of flow and avoids jumping suddenly or randomly from one topic to the next. Take the time to map out how each idea will be created and then progress smoothly to the next.

The Bad Guy—like nearly every story in history, a presentation should have a protagonist and antagonist that drive the plot. Create a relatable or common bad guy that can connect you to the audience to set the stage for the story to unfold.

The Good Guy—the hero creates the link between you and your audience and represents the solution to the problem you created. Oftentimes the hero will be able to do something better, serve as an inspiration, and challenge the accepted norm.

End scene.

For more on how to present like Steve Jobs, stay tuned for Act 2, coming next week.

If you’re in healthcare, insurance, technology or other professional services industries, and need help with public relations, marketing or crisis communications, contact Scott Public Relations.

Like what you’ve read? Like us on Facebook (A PRBI Member), follow Scott Public Relations on Twitter and sign up for the Einsight RSS feed!

Categories: Healthcare, Insights, Insurance, Public Relations and Marketing, Social Media, Technology

Tags: Ahead of the Curve, B2B, brain food, council of experts, Digital marketing, executive intelligence, healthcare industry, healthcare public relations, ideas, Insurance, LinkedIn, online communities, PRBI, public relations, Scott Public Relations, Social Media, SocialOomph, technology public relations, thought leader, Twitter, Web 2.0