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To really leverage the power of the internet, you have to understand and leverage a wide variety of promotional mechanisms: emails, video emails, blog posts, slide-based and rich media presentations, web videos, tele-seminars, webinars, podcasts (audio or video), webcasts, and more…

Today I am going to focus on rich media presentations.  In the past, I have recorded a webinar and published it to this blog. I used PowerPoint to make the presentation, Camtasia to record my screen, and the mic on the Logitech 9000 webcam. The Logitech 9000 webcam is significantly better than every other webcam I have tested. The picture and audio quality are amazing!

Here is the last presentation I produced using PowerPoint, Camtasia, and my Logitech 9000:

I do have a GoToWebinar account which I could use to record a webinar. However, the file size ends up being too big for my liking. A large file size not only eats up server bandwidth, it also can take a long time for the viewer to load it and play in a choppy manner. This is why I prefer to use the PowerPoint, Camtasia, Logitech 9000 combination, as it produces a small file size which loads quickly.

Camtasia Users: We recommend exporting to MP4/FLV/SWF – Flash Output. The menu will give you some options about Appearance and Size of the output. With the Flash Options under Appearance, we use a FLV format and MP3 audio at 44.1 kHz 128 kBits/sec. This will give us quality video with CD quality sound without having an unreasonable file size. If you are planning to embed the presentation into a webpage or blog, you can also resize the output file by clicking on Change Dimensions from the Size menu. Be aware that when you shrink the size when exporting, it can decrease the fidelity of the visual. To combat this, take the screen capture at the size you wish to export the presentation. In the webinar above, we fit the PowerPoint slide to the capture window (a width of 625) so upon export, there was minimal quality loss. This is because our blog posts have a fixed width of 625 pixels.

I received an email from a friend, client [he uses jiveSYSTEMS], and mentor, Jim Cecil—it contained a link to a presentation on YouTube which was stunning—far superior to recording a webinar. My first thought was, “I want to learn how to do that!”

Side note: Jim Cecil is the father of Nurture Marketing and has spent his entire business career producing, perfecting and teaching the Nurture Selling Process. As the creator of Nurture Marketing in 1986 and co-founder of The Nurture Institute™, Jim has coached tens of thousands of CEOs and Microsoft Partners on customer cultivation.

Here is the presentation that was forwarded to me by Jim Cecil:

It has over 57,000 views on YouTube. Not that impressive, right? I didn’t think so either until I realized it was brand new. The presentation got 57,000 views in just 3 days! The earlier version of the presentation has 3,636,995 views. Impressive—Very!!!!

So I spent a couple… okay a few hours doing some research. My goal was to identify the tools, resources, and time necessary produce a presentation near the quality of the one above. I also called my web development team and asked how much they would charge to build a presentation like the one above for a client, if the client provided the base content.

The Design and Development of the above presentation was done by XPLANE—a truly innovative and fascinating company! XPLANE is an information design consultancy that collaborates with companies to create understanding. The content was created by “Content by XPLANE”, The Economist, Karl Fisch, Scott McLeod and Laura Bestler. I am getting tired already. How about you? Four thought leaders and an entire team of professionals from XPLANE. But then, break-through, the Flywheel turns and I find an XPLANE blog post. It said the entire presentation was created using off-the-shelf slideware (Keynote and GarageBand, actually, along with Photoshop and Illustrator). Alas, the terminology of these magicians is revealed.

Side note: For a Flash Designer, making a rich presentation is a walk in the park. However, I am not a Flash Designer. I need a short-cut. I am willing to accept that I might lose some versatility. It’s a trade off.  Speed and affordability are major decision making factors for me. [One of the major advantages we have as a small business is velocity from idea to actuality. While the corporations are still waiting for their next board meeting to put forward a proposal, we can pump out informative and timely content. Quality information travels fast!]

I take a break and check my emails for a few minutes. Jim Cecil had sent me another one in response to my “Thank you for turning me on to XPLANE.” He referenced Mark Smith of Splainers as cost effective solution for those who want to out-source the development of rich media presentations.

Next, I make a call to a friend, who has a Mac. After an extended period of gloating, that I was inquiring about a Mac, my friend preceded to tell me how easy Mac’s are to use, and so on… I guess I am stupid because I couldn’t figure out how to switch my Dad’s Mac on last time I stayed at his house. My friend didn’t offer any useful information about Keynote. Anyway, I like my PC, and I know my way around it. The short-cut keys, the programs, and maintenance procedures.

I do some more research on and offline, and Keynote is rated highly. So if you have a Mac, you are good to go! Using Keynote and GarageBand you can make a pretty decent rich media presentation to promote your business or spread a message — in a relatively short amount of time (1-3 days). However, they used Photoshop and Illustrator in the presentation above. These programs allow for the image tuning and custom images you see in their presentation. While I have yet to use Keynote to build a presentation, I have designed and built several presentations using PowerPoint, Camtasia, and Captivate. My research leads me to believe these programs are more cumbersome than Keynote.

I did find and test several web-based services for building rich media presentations. They were either useless or cost-prohibitive in my opinion. SlideRocket was the my favorite paid web-based service.

Conclusion

Using relatively inexpensive off-the-shelf software, you can create rich media presentations to promote your business or spread a message. You can get pretty decent results on your own using: Keynote and GarageBand on a Mac; or, PowerPoint and Camtasia on a Mac or PC. To really refine your presentation by adding smooth transitions and custom graphics, you are going to need to hire a professional. I recommend that you build the presentation and then pay a designer to dress it up at the very end. Offering a few hundred dollars to any savvy design student in college will yield a significant ROI.

On-demand rich media presentations are a great way educate your prospects on the value proposition of your company. You can place the presentation on your homepage, in your blog, and distribute it via video sharing sites. I like to use TubeMogul as it automatically uploads my videos to multiple sites.

A rich media presentation has the potential to go viral. You are increasing the likelihood of your content going viral if it is purely educational in nature.

If you want to grow your company and successfully leverage the internet to promote your business, rich media presentations are most likely one of the best tools you could have in your toolbox. Create rich media presentations constantly and consistently.