President Obama and the White House staff continue to find new ways to engage the public through digital media. The was evidenced last night on the WhiteHouse.gov website, which hosted a live video stream of the State of the Union address along with graphic images to illustrate the President’s key points. The White House has uploaded these images to their SlideShare channel, so the public can view them here.
It’s time for our annual SlideShare Zeitgeist, a look back at 2011 presentation trends based on activity of the SlideShare community. Each year we analyze metrics and share our summary so you can stay up to speed on what’s happening in the world of presentations. Here’s what we discovered…
A lot has changed since our Zeitgeist 2010. Are you increasing the number of slides in your presentations? You’re not alone – the average presentation has 22 slides, compared to the 2010 average of 19. Japanese presentations still top the list for most slides per presentation. But as a whole, Japanese presentations have reduced their average number of slides per presentation from 42 in 2010 to 29 in 2011.
Looking at worldwide data, we found that men still include more slides than women in their presentations. Step up to the scale, your files are getting fatter! The average 2011 file size for presentations was 9.2MB, up from 7.9MB in 2010.
It’s always interesting to see what tags are most popular. In 2011 the “business” tag remained in first place, with “marketing” and “design” replacing “market” and “research” from 2010. We’ve added a new metric this year, tracking the relative traffic from the top 5 technology blogs. Techcrunch topped the list, with Mashable, Read Write Web, VentureBeat, and GigaOm close behind.
These are just some of what surfaced 2011. You’ll find more about image use, file types and most popular presentations in the slideshow. Please leave a comment below with your thoughts, surprises, and how the information in the Zeitgeist influences your presentation design. We can’t wait to see what 2012 brings!
Experts agree that small businesses are at the heart of improving today’s economy. If you own a business, but are not a public speaker, you may wonder how SlideShare can help you. We see many creative ways that small business owners can use presentations in their marketing strategy. Madeline Hoge of Mason, Ohio has figured this out. Madeline is a real estate sales professional who knows how to get a prospective buyer’s attention. Let’s take a look at Madeline’s playbook and see how she’s using SlideShare to market one of her current listings:
Madeline’s SlideShare profile is complete with a professional photo, contact information, and links to her company’s website
The presentation is embedded on her company website, capturing views from her colleagues at the firm as well as incoming website traffic
Madeline can monitor the presentation’s analytics and keep her clients updated about interest in the property
There are many ways to incorporate your SlideShare presentations into your business and marketing strategies. We’d love to hear your ideas so please share them in the comments.
We’re pleased to introduce guest author Kendra Mayfield, a new addition to the editorial team here at SlideShare. As a professional writer, Kendra has reported for Wired News and companies such as LinkedIn, Gap Inc. Global Communications and the University of San Francisco Medical Center. To kick off our series highlighting best practices from the SlideShare community, Kendra interviewed Mark Johnson, FAIA.
We love to spot presenters who are using SlideShare in new ways. That’s just the case with Mark Johnson, a marketing exec, licensed architect, professional building designer and certified kitchen designer. Mark’s iPad + Apps for Designers presentation, created with Eric Schimelpfenig, gained lots of traction when global brand Formica embedded it in a blog post on Formica.com. In this interview, Mark talks about how his presentation went ‘niche viral,’ and shares some tips for SlideShare users.
How did you get started on SlideShare?
I spoke at the Ignite Social Media Conference a couple months ago. The keynote speaker tweeted that her presentation was available on SlideShare. I clicked on the link in her tweet and was immediately connected to her presentation. I thought, wow, this is a powerful social media component I’d never seen before. That convinced me I needed to try SlideShare, since presentations and Twitter are two of my primary media. Presentations have been my ‘second voice’ for years in the design and building products industry. The SlideShare community is fascinating and I’m enjoying experimenting with the site, promoting presentations through Twitter and embedding them on Facebook.
Your iPad + Apps for Designers presentation has created a lot of buzz, how did you come up with it and why did you use SlideShare to share it?
When I worked for Masco Cabinetry, our VP of Sales had a vision for bringing easy-to-use business applications on an iPad to our Kitchen & Bath dealers. I volunteered for the assignment and enlisted the help of Eric Schimelpfenig. We each bought an iPad and tried out different apps to see what we liked. We first presented iPad+Apps for Designers at the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show in April. It was a hit, so we continue to update it with new apps as we discover them.
I was recently asked to guest host #kbtribechat, a live Twitter chat for kitchen and bath designers. Having taught the iPad+Apps presentation live several times, I knew the first question would be, “is there a list of these apps for designers?” SlideShare seemed like the perfect solution to repurpose the presentation for a live Twitter chat. We embedded it on the kbtribechat blog to promote the chat a week ahead of time, posted it the day of the live chat, and again post-chat for those who may have missed it. The presentation went ‘niche viral,’ reaching 90,000 individuals on Twitter and generating 1,400 views during the week-long campaign.
Editor’s note: For a behind-the-scenes look at how Mark conducted the iPad + Apps social media campaign, check out his presentation below:
How did your presentation end up on the Formica.com blog? @FormicaGroup attended the live #kbtribechat Twitter chat and I’m guessing they saw the popularity of the presentation and how great it looked embedded in the kbtribechat blog. I was surprised and delighted when they used it for the Formica blog!
The momentum has just kept building from there. I recently embedded the presentation on various LinkedIn group pages for interior designers, and it’s generating some interesting comments among industry professionals.
What opportunities have come to you as a result of sharing your presentations?
My social media focus is largely B2B for the design community and building products industry. It’s a very visual audience, so using high-quality imagery is part of my content-marketing strategy. Approximately 60 percent of my Twitter tweets contain links to rich content—either a website, blog, photo or video. Now I’m able to add presentations to that mix as another medium for deeper engagement. Here are two of the business benefits I’m seeing:
1. Instead of forwarding one of my presentations to secure a conference speaking engagement, I’m now able to refer people to my SlideShare channel. It’s like an online portfolio.
2. I get quite a few Twitter click-throughs and re-tweets from my tweets that contain links to SlideShare presentations. This has translated into more numerous—and more relevant—Twitter followers. When someone re-tweets a link to one of my presentations, they’re engaged, likely to follow me, and someone I’ll likely want to follow in return. That saves me a lot of time.
What tips do you have for SlideShare users who may want to have their presentations embedded?
Don’t think of SlideShare as just another repository; think of it as a social media portal that embeds across all the other major platforms.
Integrate SlideShare with your entire social media strategy and leverage the power of its community.
Launch a social media campaign to drive interest around your SlideShare presentation – tweet about it or embed it in Facebook, a blog or other website.
Join or start a Twitter chat group related to your expertise. If you showcase your expertise through your chat comments and a link to one of your presentations on the chat topic, you’ll build credibility as an expert. You may even be asked to guest host a Twitter chat. Twitter chats are a great place to network, build a following and meet some brands. SlideShare may give others looking for blog content a reason to contact you or embed your presentation.
How does your SlideShare presence fit into your overall business strategy?
I’m making a transition from 20 years in corporate life to consulting. I wanted to differentiate myself by showcasing my social media campaigns and how I dig deep into the metrics. I use Apple Keynote to make my case study presentations visually exciting, and now SlideShare to make them accessible to everyone. While my own website is under construction, my SlideShare channel is showcasing my work and helping me come to the attention of other companies quickly. When I’m talking to potential clients about my social media services, I can direct them to my SlideShare channel, where they can judge my expertise.
12 presentations with predictions
What will change in 2012? What will stay the same? Here are 12 presentations that take a look at where we’ve all been in 2011 and predict trends that we’ll see in the coming year. Comment and share these presentations with your friends and colleagues. We’ll check back in 12 months to see which of these predictions have come to fruition.
75+ contributors share their thoughts about the relationship between brand and content, the evolution of blogging, the future of Google’s influence, content marketing and distribution.
This in-depth analysis examines the effect of innovation on peoples’ perceptions, they way people make purchases, the role of mobile devices and other trends that vary from country to country.
Death by PowerPoint? That’s old news. The tried and true tool that guaranteed conference attendees a post-lunch snooze now has more power under the hood. But that doesn’t guarantee a compelling presentation deck unless we know how to harness its engine.
You may recall the New York Times article, ‘We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint.’ US General McChrystal dryly remarked, “When we understand that slide, we’ll have won the war.” This sentiment continued until Clear Presentation Design declared “Enough!” and posted a presentation which, at this writing, has over 65,000 views:
Change is hard – what’s the first step?
Shelley Paul of Atlanta offers an alternative to Death by PowerPoint 2011. She shares these 5 ideas to keep your PowerPoint love alive:
Know your stuff
Limit your text
Use great visuals
Keep it clean
Think about brains (this may be a zombie reference, not sure)
Garr Reynolds’ Top Ten Slide Tips digs a bit deeper and provides almost a short course in presentation design that everyone can benefit from studying. The author of Presentation Zen cautions presenters to be careful in choosing each design element, whether it’s color, font or the style of a chart.
Slopegraphs keep data on track
Speaking of charts, throughout PowerPoint’s history and development experts have pleaded and begged us to make our slides visually engaging. But what if the slides need to reference data from spreadsheets? It’s not our fault if Excel graphs suck. We can’t all be Edward Tufte.
Bruce explains how Slopegraphs are an effective way to make data visual:
“Slopegraphs are perfect when you want to contrast two sets of data, either showing how the data changes over time, or how two groups are different. It is basically a line chart with two time periods. But slopegraphs have many advantages over tables, bar charts and pie charts.”
There’s more, so much more
We are always on the lookout for expert presentation advice to share with you. There are a number of websites, too many to mention here, that will inspire and get you up to speed on PowerPoint’s latest superpowers. You’ll find that the Microsoft PowerPoint blog is a great source of tips. You’ll also find helpful lessons and tutorials from the knowledgeable folks at Indezine. We tweet our favorite tips and articles so follow us on Twitter to catch them.
One of the most popular features here on SlideShare is the use of video presentations. With a PRO account, you can upload a video without embedding it into a slidedeck. Unlike YouTube videos, Pro videos are ad-free and provide viewer statistics. And just like with slidedecks, you can embed your video on websites and blogs. [...]
Is your blog becoming ho hum? Does it need a shot of rocket fuel? Consider embedding a presentation in your next blog post. This is a great way to expand upon your writing. Remember, the presentation doesn’t have to be your own and it doesn’t have to be brand new. In Eric Ries’s recent article [...]
