InfiNET Marketing

PowerPoint Presenters - The Good, The Bad & The Class Clowns

When it comes to PowerPoint presentations, I’m no expert, but I have sat in the audience too many times and been bored to death, entertained to the point of silliness, or been wowed at what I learned and experienced.

PowerPoint - The Bad

Droning on and on for a 45 minute monotone while they bombard your eyes and brain with endless bullet points that repeat their words word for word, the bad powerpoint presenters need to be taken out back and subjected to Chinese water torture - that’s pretty much what they are doing to the audience.

PowerPoint - The Class Clowns

Some people never grow up and others have absolutely no sense of style, form and function. Filling their powerpoint presentations with a constant cacophony of fades, spins, and star burst transitions; zooming, twirling, dive-bombing text; and enough silly animated gifs to entertain any three-year old trapped in the room, these clowns sacrifice the message for psychadelic effects.

PowerPoint - The Good

And then there are those who get. Who know how to marry images and messages in a powerful combination that breaks through the white noise of our brains. These master story tellers draw us into little by little into a fascinating story that leaves an indelible impression on our consciousness and a powerful message that can be reduced to one simple line.

My guess is that most of the real masters of powerpoint presentations have read Cliff Atkinson’s book Beyond Bullet Points and Gary Reynolds’ “PresentationZen”.

What a delight in learning these two books are. I highly recommend them.

Made to Stick by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Made to Stick is/was a very popular book in the realm of marketing and branding. Subtitled - Why Some Ideas Survive and Other Die, the book explores just that - what makes an idea stick in the minds’ of people.

Made to Stick is a book as much about psychology as it is about marketing. In fact most, most of marketing is about psychology. Oh sure, there are the nuts & bolts of marketing - do this, do that, monitor this, monitor that, but in the end marketing is about getting people to buy or use your product or service. And that is all about what motivates people to make the choices they do.

Made to Stick is an easy read and full of anecdotes. The book reduces “sticking” to six principles:

• Simple
• Unexpected
• Concrete
• Credible
• Emotional
• Stories

Evidently, stickiness is a key to SUCCESS.

Internet Riches by Scott Fox

Anyone can be a millionaire with these powerful proven strategies! So shouts the golden star burst on the cover of Internet Riches. Subtitled - The Simple Money-Making Secrets of Online Millionaires.

I read a lot of books and blogs dedicated to Internet Marketing. I’m a person who believes money is well spent if I only find one good idea in something I purchase. Value rises if I find more than one.

The Internet evolves faster than traditional historic marketing channels. Keeping up with it is a full time job. It’s one of the reasons it makes a lot of sense for small business owners and corporations to have an Internet marketing coach, mentor or consultant. Who has several hours a day to devote to keeping up with it all except the specialists?

Internet Riches is more a book of examples and an exploration of objectives and strategies than a step-by-step, how-to book. It’s a good read for those wanting to open their eyes to the possibilities of what the Internet has to offer the entrpreneur or savvy business person.

Strategies & Tools for Corporate Blogging by John Cass

Savvy business owners and corporation are reaping the rewards of blogging and social networking. These proactive social marketers are carving out their niche market real estate on the Internet while their competitors remain asleep at the wheel.

The Internet with it’s awesome database of information and search capability has changed the way people around the globe locate the information they need to make purchasing decisions. The yellow pages aren’t dead, they’re just losing ground and significance like many other forms of print advertising and marketing. Fewer consumers pick up the phone to dial 411 now that their phones can access the Internet.

In Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging, John Cass addresses the power of corporate blogging. He lays it all out for the beginner and the skeptic.

The big barrier to corporate blogging that we see is ignorance. This ignorance seems to fall into two major areas:

• Unfamiliarity with the medium, half-baked ideas about it based on more uninformed opinions
• Unjustified, even irrational, legal and liability concerns

John Cass addresses it all and presents you with the factual foundation needed to engage the power of blogging and social networking to help bring your branding and sales efforts into the most powerful marketing medium to ever hit the planet - the Internet.

If you’re not on the Internet, you don’t exist.

Facebook Fanatic by the editors of Bottletree Books

Facebook Fanatic was, I believe, the first book of any significance on the market about Facebook. The subtitle - Explode Your Popularity, Buzz Your Band and Secure Your Privacy on Facebook should have read - Explode Your Popularity, Buzz Your Brand and Secure Your Privacy on Facebook. It’s amazing what a single “r” can do.

Facebook, Myspace and other social networking sites are still a wildcard for most businesses and marketers. Very few businesses have seen any significant measurable financial results from social networking efforts. The social capital return and branding results are a different story. Facebook and other social networking sites have been instrumental in helping ot create buzz and awareness.

Facebook Fanatic is still a good place to start to get a basic overview of Facebook.

Landing Page Optimization by Tim Ash

Landing Pages are specific web pages built to optimize your site for search engine ranking. The point is to have your web page come up as high in the search results returned as possible, preferably number one.

SEO (search engine optimization) is supposed to be the science of making this happen. Unfortunately, what we find these days are a host of pretenders, bunch of SEO charaltans. If you’ve had a website for more than 6 months, you’ve probably been approached by a dozen or more experts that want to sell you their services to get you to the top of Google.

Most of these “SEO experts” want you to pay them several hundred dollars a month for them to optimize a 3 or 4 word phrase for your site. The more words in a phrase, generally the easier it is to get it to the top of the search engines. The question is - how many potential clients will search on that phrase?

Landing Page Optimization by Tim Ash is a book for serious SEO masters. Tim lays it all out in detail which is why he can subtitle the book - The Definitive Guide to Testing and Tuning for Conversions. A degree in marketing dynamics and statistics will help.

The book is not for the casual reader, it’s for those serious about search engine optimization, funneling website visitors to a take action page, and converting those visitors into clients or customers.

Biz Blog Marketing by Doug Williams is a good read for any business thinking of starting a blog to connect with customers, clients and communitiy. Every business should be blogging!

Some quotes from Doug:

• Blogs allow us to reach our targeted marketing niche.
• Blogs are the most trusted media source for useful information according to a BlogAds survey of over 35,000 readers.
• A business blog is meant to promote, establish a relationship with readers and potential customers, to build anticipation and to generate buzz. They separate you and your company from the pack.
• Blog marketing has also become one of the best ways to learn and transmit industry news.

Business blogging is being recognized as the most powerful and most economical ways to drive a targeted Internet marketing program.

Contact John (925) 895-2694 if you are interested in exploring the power of blogging.

LinkedIn is a business networking site that we recommend to most of our clients.

Here is Craig’s profile on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn allows you and others to leverage the power of search and six-degrees of separation to increase your business revenues and network.

I’m On LinkedIn, Now What? is a great little book by Jason Alba that can help you customize your profile to make it more effective. The book als explains how LinkedIn can be used to support your business efforts.

I found Word of Mouth Marketing by Andy Sernovitz to be a little disappointing. I don’t think this is Andy’s fault. The book would be a great read for someone new to marketing.

I like to highlight excerpts and dog-ear page corners to mark items that provoke me. In Word of Mouth Marketing, I had two pages dog-eared and those were at the front of the book.

Though disappointed, I don’t consider the book a waste of time or money. It was a good refresher. The longer in tooth I get, the more valuable I find it to rototill the gray matter and bring old ideas back into the light of day for review.