Hello from PPT Live in Atlanta.  I have been having a great time meeting the fine people down here.  I have had a couple of chances to meet folks and get some pictures taken which you can check out by watching my presentation below.  Just in case you are wondering the music is called Jump the Shark and was created by my friend Mark.

Have a Sharktastic Day!

Tibby

These are questions that were submitted during our webinar on script writing and recording audio.

Question:  I'm a product specialist, not necessarily a professional speaker - if I use an 'um' or stumble over a word - is it critical that I edit that out?

Tibby:  The goal is always to deliver clean audio.  If you have a good script then you are not likely to have the need for an "um" since this is a pause that we use so that our mouth has something to do while it waits for our brain to give it direction.  Since you can easily re-record a single slide of audio it is usually worth the effort and your audience will be the happier for it.

Question:  You keep mentioning that we must follow a conversational tone...how do you keep abandon rate with a conversational tone when a presentation is 20-25 min long?

Tibby:  Great question.  The answer is value and tone. The first key is value.  If every slide and therefore everythign said on every slide brings value to the viewer then you will have a successful presentation.  Your viewers will respond to perceived value and a conversational tone will help reduce abandon rates by keeping the delivery engaging.  Changes in tones and emphasis are part of engaging the audience and keeping them involved.  Monotone delivery that drones on will quickly lead to departing viewers regardless of the overall presentation length. 

Question:  My group is going to use Brainshark for training on a huge software change. Do you have any advice for training that is going to be lengthy (significantly more than 10 min)? How do I keep the learners engaged?

Tibby:  The key thing to keep in mind is effectiveness.  Current data indicates that our tolerance for long presentations has decreased.  Between ADHD, email, voice mail, meetings, instant messaging and doing more with less we all have less time.  Know your audience and don't send a 30 minute presentation to people who do not have 30 minutes to watch it.  Instead be sensitive to their ability to process the data and break into chewable parts.  Create 3 -10 minute presentations instead.  You will get better viewing numbers and your audience will appreciate the content and retain more because they will have stay focused for each 10 minute block rather than losing focus at 10 minutes and missing 20 minutes of content.

Question:  If slides have good animation, is it OK to have longer narration than 30 seconds?

Tibby:   it is not an animation question it is a consumption question.  Each slide should have one theme with as many as 4 key points that support the theme.  More often than not this can be done in 30 seconds or less.  If your slides are extending to the 60 second range then I would hypothesize that you are trying to cover too much material in a single slide.   Each slide is a page in the book of this presentation.  I stipulate that it is better to have a 20 page book with 20 pt font than a 10 page book with 10pt font.  Viewers like to feel like the content is moving, progressing.  Slides that are too long often lead to what I (to use another metaphor) call "speed bumps" in the flow of the presentation.  Speed bumps lead to off ramps and off ramps are bad.

Question:  Would you say that animation plays a big part in catching the student's attention while taking the course.

Tibby:  While I would agree that animation and visual enticement is helpful in gaining attention; the key to grabbing and keeping the audience is well-delivered, impactful audio.  You can communicate more with your words and intonation in a shorter amount of time then you can do visually or with text.  The audio elicits an emotional response that must be considered, manipulated, planned and delivered by the speaker.   The slide/visual object is the guide for the audio.  The power of the content comes from the audio, which is why scripting and practicing are critical elements to delivering good audio and therefore having successful presentations.

Question:  When creating the script and working with different speakers, how do you reach a consensus on what needs to be stated and the way it sounds best, so that everyone is comfortable and happy.

Tibby:  Another great question.  Just asking this question shows that you are on the right track!   In our 6 Steps to Success^TM communication strategy; the first step to a successful communication is to agree on the objective of the communication.  Once everyone involved is on-board with the objective, then you will need to map out how the objective will be achieved (how the story will be told) and then who is responsible for which piece of the story.  Now whether everyone is comfortable and happy is another question.  At some point you have to build the communication and get the word out.  Consensus is a great objective for each project but not always attainable.

Question:  As a new Brainshark user, I'm not fully aware of its total functionality...as alluded to in a prior question, is there a way to edit a particular piece of the audio without doing the entire slide over again?

Tibby:  Yes.  You can easily download the .mp3 audio file from any single slide, edit that audio and then replace the audio by uploading the new .mp3 audio file.  With that said, this may be more work than actually re-recording the whole slide.   If you write a script and you keep the slide length to the 30 second range then this means you can easily re-record a slide in 30 seconds or less.

Question:  Do you have problems with narrator being able to read the script while also clicking to trigger the slide animations and work the phone recording process? Some narrators seem to be challenged by all this multitasking. Do you usually have someone sit with the narrator who can do animation clicks, etc so the speaker can focus on his script?

Tibby:  This is not a very common concern but I have heard it before and I recommend the solution I use myself when recording.  Set the animations that need to be connected to the spoken word to appear "On Click".  Don't worry the speaker with setting these timings, let them focus on delivering quality audio.  After the slides are recorded, log in and go to the edit slide screen and set the animation timings for each slide.  The reason for the On Click setting is so that you can manage these animation timings in Brainshark. 

Question:  Is there someone we can contact for suggestions who can preview our presentation/course before we enroll students?

Tibby:  We have just released a new free service called Presentation Success Review and Feedback.  This gives you the ability to send your Brainshark presentation to our Customer Success Group where one of our highly qualified Customer Success Consultants will review your presentation and give you feedback on ways to improve it.  All you have to do is send your contact information and the presentation link to CustomerSuccess@Brainshark.com

Have a Sharktastic day!

Hi this is Tibby (short for Tiburon).  I will be making a guest appearance from time to time so that I can respond to questions that have been submitted.  My aim is to share answers and approaches to common issues and ideas.  These will take on a Q&A format and appear here in the blog.  Feel free to comment and/or ask follow up or additional questions at anytime.

This first set of questions came from the people who attended the recent live online session about animations.  I hope you find this information useful.

Question:  In Brainshark does the first animation need to be set to on click? If it's set to on click does the person recording audio have to click on the mouse to see it?

Tibby:  No.  The first animation does not have to be set to on click it can be set to "With previous" or "After previous" This includes animations that you might like to put on the master slides as well.  If the first animation is set to "On click" then yes the person recording will have to click on the mouse to see it during the recording process.

Question:  Is the alignment tool something you put into your custom toolbar?

Tibby:  We recommend turning the alignment on for all presentations to help you with spacing on your presentations.  If you find it easier to access it from a custom toolbar then absolutely include it.

Question: What's the use of adding timing in PowerPoint if you have to add them again once it's converted to Brainshark?

Tibby:  Great question.  If you are using "On click" animations then do not add timings in PPT.  You will add them during recording and be able to modify them in Brainshark without having to modify and re-upload the PPT.  If you are using either "With previous" or "After previous" then the timings for these animations is coming from PPT and is not modifiable within Brainshark.

Question: So if there's narration and animations are coming up at different times, should Start be set as On Click or as After Previous?

Tibby: Using "On click" gives you the most flexibility and ease of use in terms of editing timings after the fact.  However, there are times when I want 3 objects to appear simultaneously and so I would either group them together as one object or assign a "With previous" action to the second and third animations so these all appear (or fade or wipe, etc..) at the same time.

Question: My question is for much more advanced considerations. Looking at his sample Brainshark with many fancy animations, they use copied and stacked objects, each with a few animations. Does he have any tricks for finding the right object in a stack for making changes?

Tibby:  Layered objects certainly present a challenge when you want to make modifications.  The only trick I am aware of is to tab through the objects to find the one I want to manage.  PPT 2007 comes with a feature called the Selection Pane that makes it easy to organize, find and manage objects on a slide. Richard did mention a plug in; I believe it is PPT Extreme that can help with this.

Question: I just watched one of the Brainshark trainings earlier today that said that Brainshark won't support Emphasis animations and will only do Exits if the Entrance is on the same slide. Is this still the case?

Tibby:  No, this is not the case and if you watch that same tutorial today you will not see that slide.  Brainshark supports Entrance, Emphasis, Exit and Motion Path animations.  In fact in the Animation Best Practices tutorial you will see, entrance, exit and motion path animations in Brainshark.

Question:  Does Brainshark support animated .gif files?

Tibby:  This is a little more complicated.  In order for the animated .gif to work you must have at least 1 animation active on the slide.   This can be any type of animation and need not be seen by the viewer.  If it is on-click then it has to have a timing set in Brainshark.  If it is with previous or after previous then it is already timed and you do not have to do anything more.  Watch the brief presentation below for an example of two slides with animated .gif objects in Brainshark.

Question:  Does Brainshark support PP Extreme?

Tibby:  PPT Xtreme is a product that helps you import images/photos into PPT from Photoshop.  The file you upload to Brainshark is a .ppt file and so there is no issue with this product and Brainshark.

Question:  Do you recommend any % for grow/shrink that works best?

Tibby:  The feature in PPT does not give you a lot of options.  The deciding factor is really the quality of the image.  We find that reducing to 50% and increasing to 150% usually produce the best results in terms of not degrading the image quality however this can vary based on the resolution quality of the original image.

Question:  Can you go over last point of making grouped into png?

Tibby:  He was referring to the ability to take multiple objects and create a single image file.  You can highlight multiple objects by holding the ctrl key down and selecting the objects and then right clicking on one of the highlighted objects to group them together.  Then you have a choice, you can either assign an animation to this new group of objects or you can click File>save as and save the group of objects as a single image file.  I suggest that you first group the objects and assign the animation.  If the images are problematic in appearance in PPT when you do this then take the next step and save the group as a new image and this should work.  Brainshark will support the animation action in either case.

Question:  The blue circles on this slide...did he create these in PPT? How do you create the Highlighting feature?

Tibby:  Yes, those circles are auto shapes available in PPT.  The highlighting feature is a combination of using auto shapes and manipulating color gradient and transparency.  These are also standard features in PPT.  You can access these features in the drawing toolbar usually located at the bottom of your screen while using PPT.

Question:  Is there support for Mac's keynote?

Tibby:  We do not support Keynote, but Keynote supports PPT and so all you have to do is use the conversion capability within Keynote to convert the file to a .ppt and them you can upload to Brainshark.

Question:  Can you loop animations for continuous play?

Tibby:  You can not use the repeat animation function, but you can copy and paste the same animation to achieve the repeating effect.

Question:   How can I determine if my screen shots are Jpeg, GIF or PNG?

Tibby:  Depending on the settings on the image too that you are using (we recommend SNAG-IT) you can right click on the image to check the properties or you can hit File>save as and see what file format it wants to be saved as which is usually and indicator of what it is.  IF you are unsure then your can save it as a .png file and insert it back into the slide.  We do recommend .png files because they are the most flexible in terms of supporting text and colors.  Generally speaking, .gif is a superior format for text based objects and .jpg for color based bit they both have weaknesses in the other area.

Question: It would be incredibly helpful if Brainshark allowed exit animation too...right now its only entrance so I have to layer pictures over each other or jump to another slide which doesn't look as smooth.

Tibby:  We do support exit animations today.

Question:  In order to make presentations more interactive is there a possibility of adding a function to branch slides (right now we can only branch a question, but it would be nice to have the ability to put up a question slide, if you answer one way you go to one slide, if you answer another way you go to another slide - I understand this is possible now, but then you get stuck...being able to branch slides would be very helpful. And to get really interactive - will there be a way (soon hopefully) we could make the slide itself interactive - being able to click on the slide itself (outside of a question slide) and directed somewhere.

Tibby:  These are both very creative enhancement requests.  I have sent them to our product manager.  Please keep the creative ideas coming.  We love to get product suggestions.

Question:  Thank you for putting together such a great topic for discussion. I believe it was the presentation featured that sold everyone.  Simply amazing.  The music piece as well as all the special effects would be of interest to me.  I am very proficient in PowerPoint, but this looks like it needs fancy software....but you're saying it doesn't....so I look forward to learning the features you used.   

Tibby:  Thank you so much for attending.  I thought it was Sharkerrific as well!  All the features you saw are standard PPT objects and animations.  On Customer Connection Online (CCO) (http://cco.brainshark.com/) you will find a tutorial on Animation Best Practices that should be helpful.  Background audio is a standard piece of functionality and you can find this explained in our tutorial about the Media Library also on CCO.

Thanks again for all of the Sharktastic questions.  I look forward to the chance to respond to more very soon!

I am currently flying high over Kansas City on my way back to Boston from San Francisco. Irwin Hipsman and I spent the past 3 days visiting clients and partners like Kaiser Permanente, Schwab, Franklin Templeton, VeriSign, Salesforce.com, Intercall and Premiere Global among others. We conducted a couple of Customer Success Forums among our meetings and had several opportunities to discuss Presentation Best Practices. From a high level, users were interested in how to make presentations more appealing and more interactive to increase viewing and knowledge transfer. I know that what they were referring to was the use of animations, questions and video. However, a presentation is appealing only in part because of the use of these design elements. Instead of discussing the ground level design elements lets talk about the high level appeal of a presentation to an audience and how we can achieve this level of success.

The key to making presentations more appealing is to think from the point of view of the audience.

In the Communication Strategy Best Practices delivered by our CSC's, the first step to success is to know and Specify the Objective of the communication; this is your objective. The second step is to Understand your Audience in other words what is their objective. Understanding, who your audience is, how they behave and what is important to them should be the guiding light to the presentation that you develop and distribute to them. Whether your goal is to generate leads, shorten sales cycles, increase benefit enrollment, prepare the channel for a new product or certify a user population probably does not matter to the viewer. Your goal then is to find out what does matter to the viewer.

If you make sure that every slide, every image, every bullet, every recorded sentence, every attachment, every video and every question provides value to the viewer, then your viewing rates and statistics will be through the clouds. For every piece of content that you put on the slide or record on the slide ask yourself this question - What is the value this piece of content brings to the viewer? If you cannot answer that question definitively for each content element then I suggest you leave it out of the presentation and your audience will appreciate that you have sent them a concise communication.

If you are looking for appeal - bring value.

Thank you for visiting and have a Sharktastic Day!

At this time of year we often take stock of where we are and where we are going.  We may rationalize not losing ten pounds this year and once again vow to do it before summer arrives.  We may be reminded of the guitar lessons we were going to take and never seemed to fit in to the schedule. It is the natural process of reflection and evaluation.  Unfortunately this process is not as natural when it comes to business projects.  It ought to be.

The most common scenario that we encounter is a group completes one project or communication and then moves on to the next.   I have no issue with an individual or team moving forward to the next project, but I do consider it a tragedy when we miss an opportunity to learn something that may improve how we do what we do. 

The last step in our recommended best practice methodology is to take the time to learn something.  Don't just run a report and know that the presentation was sent to an audience of 2000 and there were 1500 views.  This only scrapes the surface.  For example, perhaps the presentation you sent to the audience of 2000 only reached 1700 - you learned something and can improve on that number (you also just improved your response rate, because 300 people never received it).  Perhaps the presentation was 18 slides long and the average view was 8.7 slides - you just learned something that you can improve upon.  Perhaps the presentation was 11 minutes long and the average viewing time was 6.5 minutes - you just learned something that you can improve on.  Perhaps you sent the presentation on a Monday and the report revealed that 70% of the views occurred on Tuesday and Wednesday - you just learned something that you can improve. 

If you don't take the time to look at all the data and analyze what it is telling you - then you will not learn, you will not improve and you will not realize better results. So while you are making your New Year resolution to drop ten or twenty - make a resolution not to miss the opportunity to learn, to improve and to realize better results.

Happy Holidays!

Happy New Year!

I had the opportunity to speak to the eCommerce Council of the Mutual Fund Education Alliance in Chicago. I was invited to be on a panel moderated by Dale Line of Sentinel Investments. I was joined on the panel by Michael Stull of Nuveen Investments and Martin Gawne of William Blair & Company. The topic of our panel was Engaging Audiences in an On-Demand World. If you would like to watch a Brainshark version of this presentation click here.

Due to the events of the past weekend with Lehman, Merrill Lynch and AIG, the subplot of the event was how to communicate critical information to the channel and more importantly to shareholders quickly during difficult times. While this was an event for those in the mutual fund business, the concepts we discussed apply to anyone trying to communicate to an audience in today's business world.

The main theme of our panel was how to engage the audience with on-demand communications that satisfy both the salesforce and the compliance department while giving investors the information they need to make sound decisions. We discussed three main ideas which I will summarize here.

1. The Changing Preferences of the Audience

The general population has clearly shown its affinity for multi-media content. Newspaper subscriptions have trended down for 20+ years. According to ACNielsen, Most Americans own at least 3 televisions and watch an average of 28 hours/ per week or 2 months per year AND today's children see an average of 20,000, 30 second commercials each year. We not only like our television, but we like it on-demand and the major cable distributors have built products to satisfy out desires for having what we want when we want it. These trends carry over to business communications. More and more companies are modifying their communications mix with less focus on face to face meetings and becoming more virtual and more on-demand with positive results to productivity and the bottom line. A case in point is a major financial investment firm that we work with today. They evaluated that three months after purchasing the Brainshark platform their communication mix was 50% face to face meetings and sales calls, 40% virtual meetings on the web, and 10 % on-demand content. Eighteen months later they had adjusted their strategy based on the response of the audience. What happened was they listened to the audience (to their credit) and were open to change. The new communication mix was 65 % on-demand communications, 25 % virtual and 10% face to face. The bottom line was that in 15 months they were increasing sales, reaching 250% more people and saving money and time while doing it.

2. The Changing Role of Marketing

Historically, the sales team ventured into the marketplace positioned the product to customers or prospects and then came back to marketing with ideas for what they needed from marketing to sell a product or service. Marketing reacted to the input of sales by producing a glossy brochure or white paper to support product sales. The consumer relied on the sales person to tell them everything they needed to know about the product before the purchase. The internet has changed this environment dramatically. Consumers have multiple ways to find out about our products today. They can conduct their own research, investigate companies, compare products, read blogs, access hundreds of new organizations and research groups that provide volumes of data all while sitting at their desk or perhaps in their pajamas.
Marketing has more environments to monitor and design content for, with respect to messaging and product information, than ever before. Not only do they have to provide a useful, informative, persuasive web site, but they need to maintain intranets, extranets, master the science and art of search engines and evaluate the data to give the audience what it wants. So while the challenge is greater, so are the technology and the opportunity. Multimedia content (like Brainshark) gives today's marketer the ability to create a consistent, entertaining, concise message for the marketplace. This is critical because it is what consumers are expecting when they venture out onto the web. They are not looking for glossy brochures and lengthy papers. They are looking for informative, concise, bits and bytes of information that help them to make sound decisions. And they want it now, and they want it at their fingertips and they do not want to have to work to find it or play it.

3. The metrics of on-demand (Brainshark) communications and the impact of metrics on messaging

So the audience is changing and forcing a change in marketing and the executive level is concerned about the bottom line, ROI and being more efficient. Metrics is one of the key catch terms of the 21st century. And Brainshark has more than enough to fully assess the impact of any communication.

But first a word about a problem that I see as prevalent and relates to the busy worker I referred to in my last blog. What is lacking is not actual the data, but the analysis. More often than not, we work on a project (campaign, web site, training) and once it is completed we take a breath and then begin the next project. What we have not done is take the time to assess what happened in the previous project and learn from our successes and failures. Part of this problem is the ‘busyness' of business and part of the problem is realizing that we now do have the data necessary to analyze the success of the communication - and we have it in a short time frame. Historically, you send out a mailer and over the course of the next few months you can monitor phone traffic and sales to guesstimate the impact of the mailer campaign. In today's world, you can use and email distribution package that will tell you immediately what the open rate of the email is, which emails bounced, and which people clicked your link. Add Brainshark to the mix and you know now exactly how many slides they viewed, how long they viewed them and which ones they did not view. If you put all of this information together you can very accurately assess which part of your messaging is working. And more importantly, you have the opportunity to modify the pieces that are not working. And, as anyone who has run an email campaign knows, all of this can be started within 24 hours of releasing the communication. How long it takes to make the changes to the messaging is up to you. It could be minutes, hours or days.

So the key thing to remember is that with a multi-media communication platform (like Brainshark) you are giving the people what they want, in the way they want it, at the time they want it and you can track their behavior to modify your message, which gives you what you and your management wants - more effective, efficient, impactful, lower cost communications.

One of the most frequent requests I hear from clients is, "Do you have any Best Practices to make our presentations more effective?" As the Director of Customer Success, I take this question very seriously and as a Software as a Service (SaaS) Company, Brainshark does as well. The answer is in fact, "Yes". Over the past 8+ years we have gathered many best practices and have incorporated this content into a series of Best Practice tutorials which you will find on Customer Connection Online (CCO). We decided that not only is it valuable for us to assimilate and distribute this material, but it would be of great advantage to all users if you - the Brainshark user community could have a place to share and comment on best practices.

So....Welcome to the Brainshark Best Practice Blog. Our goal is to provide a forum where we can learn from one another and discuss the best practices around such topics as: images, audio, slide design, presentation mapping, reporting and evaluation, animations, graphics, attachments, questions, video, podcasting and anything else about which you might inquire. We will provide this Shark Think Tank and we invite you to jump in and share your thoughts, experiences and methods of success (or failure) so that together we will develop the best practices for communicating efficiently and effectively.

The first item I would like to share with you is that we recently held a SharkTale contest. A SharkTale, (in case you do not already know) is a success story. We asked you to share stories where Brainshark either helped you communicate successfully or helped you be more successful in your job.  The response was tremendous.  We received over 100 SharkTales.  We have posted the winning entries on CCO.  If you are looking for a Sharktastic example of how people are using Brainshark to be successful then please take a moment to visit our Customer List and take a look.  Then come on back here and let us know what you think.

Pat Kelly
Director of Customer Success