Steve Jobs Presentation Secrets

There’s a new book out there for all you marketing, sales, and product folks who do a lot of presentations.  The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience, In the book author Carmine Gallo reveals the techniques that Jobs uses to create and deliver mind-blowing keynote presentations. Here’s a quick recap of the key elements:

1. Always have a headline. Steve Jobs positions every product with a headline that fits well within a 140-character Twitter post.

2. Always have a villain. The idea of conquering a shared enemy is a powerful motivator and turns customers into evangelists.

3. Keep the slides simple. Less is more, Steve Jobs has a total of seven words in 10 slides. Stay away from cluttering up your presentation with wordy and complex slides that the audience won’t be able to digest.

4. Keep them engaged with a demo. Neuroscientists have discovered that the brain gets bored easily. Steve Jobs doesn’t give you time to lose interest, ten minutes into a presentation he’s demoing a new product or feature.

5. Have a “holy smokes moment.” Every Steve Jobs presentation has one moment described as an “emotionally charged event.” The emotionally charged event is the equivalent of a mental post-it note that tells the brain, Remember this!

6. Sell dreams. Charismatic speakers like Steve Jobs are driven by a nearly messianic zeal to create new experiences. When he launched the iPod in 2001, Jobs said, “In our own small way we’re going to make the world a better place.” Where most people saw the iPod as a music player, Jobs recognized its potential as a tool to enrich people’s lives.

Read the full article here, check out this slide show and watch a video interview with Carmine Gallo about how he researched his book. And have fun with it!

Checkin the Surf, Digitally


I had a message come through from a friend the other day about some 25-foot waves hitting a shores of Tofino, BC.  Tofino is a spectacular surf spot on the west coast of Vancouver Island, yes they do have surfing in Canada.  The surf report was sent over via a popular surf watcher website called magic seaweed. The site pulls together information on swell, wind, and wave height from buoys that measure ocean data for surf breaks all over the world, letting surfers from coast to coast find where the break will be as if they were checking the weather.

To go one step further surfers can also check web cams to see real time video of the break, gives a new meaning to couch surfing. The 25 foot waves should be hitting Cox bay in Tofino Saturday Nov. 7 you can watch it happen here.

Facebook Fan Pages

Have you thought about creating a Facebook Fan Page as a way to connect with your customers, provide updates, share promotions. Here are 3 examples of facebook fan pages that I follow, these groups have large followings and use facebook in unique ways to build stronger connections with their communities.

Starbucks
With over 4 million fans, Starbucks uses facebook to let their community know about promotions and free Starbucks giveaways. They also use facebook for humanitarian causes and fundraising activity such as world AIDS day. Follow Starbucks

Metallica
With 2.3 million fans the legendary heavy metal band continues to rock using facebook to update fans on shows with pictures recent events. This takes the virtual groupies to a new level where metal fans can stay connected with their icons and re-live their concerts virtually. Follow Metallica

NBA
With 1.5 million fans and growing the NBA gets bball fans excited with posts of throwback clips of memorable NBA moments that typically stir up a lot of fan commentary and interaction. With the NBA season just underway, look for more hoops action for fans to follow. Follow the NBA

I find it useful to learn how other businesses and groups use social media to do marketing and connect with their customers. Let me know if you have some examples of your own of good uses of social media marketing on Facebook that you follow.

How Has Twitter Changed Your Company?


Twitter is changing the way organizations think about customer experience and interaction. This new communication medium presents a new set of challenges for businesses espeically around aspects of customer satisfaction and customer support. At any time, in any place someone who has a poor customer experience can comment to the world about it, and all they need to do this is a phone.

Whether businesses like it or not, there is a dialog that is occuring in real time around the world about products and services. Organizations are beinging to look at ways to engage with this conversation, some on purpose, some by acciedent. Check out this article on how Twitter has changed the way Comcast thinks about customer service.