We’ve long been a fan of incorporating visuals into blogging and marketing efforts. Images not only improve the appearance of your blog post, adding color and grabbing attention — they have been shown to drive engagement and social sharing among your readers.
But recently we’ve noticed some creative thinkers in our community using Haiku Deck in some cool ways to promote their blog content. Here are a few of our favorites.
Method 1: Create Custom Visuals to Drive Traffic
Links alone are boring, but links with beautiful images get noticed. The content managers at Bruce Clay, Inc. use Haiku Deck to create one-slide custom visuals to promote blog content on their social media channels. Here’s an example from Google+, where gorgeous visuals really shine.
The Haiku Deck slide crisply captures the blog content in a way that’s easy to read and understand, and definitely stands out in the stream. To this, we say +1!
Tips: Showcasing a beautiful image with minimal text is your goal here. You can import your own image, or use our Creative Commons image search to pick out an image that perfectly captures the topic of your post to use as the background. You’ll then want to include the title of your post with a minimal amount of text — think of it like a headline.
Method 2: Create a Slideshow Summary to Share with a Larger Audience
The team at PGi uses Haiku Deck to create awesome slideshow summaries that they embed right in their blog post and upload to SlideShare to gain more traction. Uploading to SlideShare makes it easy to share widely — they’ll tweet it and post it on Google+, LinkedIn, and other social media channels to really cast a wide net.
Tips: Here, you’re basically creating a preview of your post that summarizes your ideas and piques interest. You can include intriguing pull quotes and interesting data points. Blog content focused on a list of tips or how-to steps lends itself beautifully to this format. Be sure to include a link back to your blog — you can either highlight it on a slide (using a link shortener here helps) or include it in the Notes field.
Method 3: Create a Video to Cross-Promote on Your Social Media Platforms
Videos allow you to expand your cross-promotion efforts of your content onto YouTube, and provides you with another content piece to promote on your other social media platforms. Here’s another great example from Bruce Clay Inc. — check out how they’ve turned their Haiku Deck recap summarizing a blog post on 6 ways to repurpose blog content into a video.
Tips: One of the great things about YouTube videos is that they can sync with your Google+ page, making it super easy for your followers to share and comment. Also try adding music for an extra element of fun or add narration to include more supporting details, and make sure to include a link back to the blog post in the info box. Converting a Haiku Deck into a video is quite simple, and we’ve written a helpful article on how to do that here.
PowerPoint. Everyone’s used it, everyone’s heard of it, and a lot of people are pretty tired of it. Have you found yourself seeking an exciting new angle to approach your presentations from? If so, try these five fresh PowerPoint alternatives on for size.
Before you decide which method to present with, though, ask yourself what purposes your presentation materials have. Critically thinking about how your materials are going to support you will help your presentation be more interesting and memorable. For each PowerPoint alternative we’ve listed below, we’ve included a few of its best scenarios and benefits, so that you can pick the best presentation method for your purposes.
PowerPoint Alternative #1: Printed Handouts
An often-overlooked option for presenters is to provide a simple handout, instead of putting together a full-blown presentation.
Great for:
Kicking off new projects
Meetings with a light tone
Content that your team might want to reference later
Meetings outside of the office
Being prepared ahead of time so you won’t have to fuss with technology
Benefits:
Handouts allow your audience members to interact with the materials, and take your presentation home with them. Your attendees:
Can read while you speak, benefitting from both auditory and visual learning aids
Won’t have to divert attention to taking notes
Will be able to focus more energy into thinking about what you’re presenting on
Can share your work with others
Handouts in action:
One person who strongly advocates the use of handouts is Edward Tufte, a pioneer in the presenting world. In his words:
Overhead projectors and PowerPoint tend to leave no traces; instead give people paper, which they can read, take away, show others, make copies, and come back to you in a month and say “Didn’t you say this last month? It’s right here in your handout.”
A paper record tells your audience that you are serious, responsible, exact, credible.
How to pull it off:
Once you’ve decided to make a handout, how are you going to make sure it’s memorable and fun? We recommend Canva as a free, easy, impressive way to put together handouts. Canva allows you to generate all kinds of different content, and it makes you look like a design god with very little effort on your part. Here’s an example made by our Chief Inspiration Officer, Catherine:
PowerPoint Alternative #2: Flip-Boards / Whiteboards
If you have a dynamic presentation style, and like to sketch or scribble, you might try a using a flip board or whiteboard to present with, in lieu of slides.
Great for:
Topics you can draw diagrams to represent
If you like drawing or sketching
Involving your audience in brainstorming exercises
Benefits:
The audience will be captivated by your physical interaction with the board
You can shift gears easily and use different colors, lines, and shapes to make sure everyone understands
You can invite team members to be involved at the board
Doodling can facilitate funny situations easily, which keeps audiences entertained and engaged
You have the opportunity to really shine as a presenter, because all eyes are on you
Flip boards in action:
Simon Sinek, author and well-known TED talker, often uses flip boards to sketch and demonstrate concepts during his talks, like his highly-popular Start with Why:
How to pull it off:
There are a few things you’ll want to keep in mind when presenting with a flip chart, whiteboard, paper tablet, etc:
Use bold colors. Yellow, orange, light blue, etc. markers can be very hard to see, especially from the back of the room. Test your markers beforehand and make sure you are well-stocked with easily-seen colors (that aren’t dried out!).
Practice beforehand. Find the balance between large enough to be read from the back, and small enough to fit on your board, beforehand. Practice writing at a whiteboard angle, which is very different from writing on paper. If you’re nervous about drawing on the fly, you can even lightly draw diagrams you know you’ll be making in pencil if you’re using a flip board, and trace over them with markers when you’re presenting.
Check for glare. If you’re using a whiteboard, scope out the room with the lighting you’re intending on using, and make sure there’s not too much of a glare for anyone in the audience.
Speak toward the audience. It’s easy to get caught up drawing or writing on a whiteboard, and to keep speaking when your back is to your team. Just remember, if your mouth is pointed at the audience, they’re going to have an easier time hearing you!
Write legibly. Don’t get caught up trying to write so quickly that no one can read what you’ve written.
Include visuals. If you’re using a whiteboard or a flipboard, don’t just use it to write words – even lines and shapes can make an otherwise boring whiteboard much more fun and interesting.
PowerPoint Alternative #3: No Slides
If you are really comfortable with your material, try delivering a talk without any slides at all. Think about some of the greatest storytellers you’ve known — how many of them used slides?
Great if:
You don’t need to show data to prove a point
Your meeting topic can involve a lot of discussion
You’re confident about presenting and keeping people entertained
The content for your meeting can be covered without visual aids, screenshots, examples, etc.
Benefits:
There’s nothing to distract your audience or teammates from giving you their full attention
Attendees will learn more about your personality through watching you present
The situation lends itself nicely to personal interaction
You’re more capable of moving around the presentation space
You can pack a very powerful punch by moving your audience with your delivery alone
See it in action:
Some of history’s greatest speakers didn’t use any visuals — just think about some of the most famous speeches you know of. For example, would President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address have been so famous if it’d been made in PowerPoint?
Sir Ken Robinson does an excellent job of addressing creativity in the standard educational system in this TED talk, without using a single presentation aid:
How to pull it off:
Bring physical objects or other props, especially interactive ones
Incorporate other senses — play music or audio, for example
Rehearse enough that you can deliver without a script — you can do this in the car, while working out, etc.
Watch the audience for visual cues you can interact with or respond to, so it feels fresh and unscripted
PowerPoint Alternative #4: Mind Maps
Mind-mapping apps are great tools for capturing and connecting ideas. They help you understand how you got to where you are, the motivations behind ideas, cause and effect, etc. Creating a mind map during a meeting can be a stimulating experience for your whole team and will definitely keep your audience engaged.
Great for:
Brainstorming
Planning
Strategizing
Collaborating
Benefits:
Demonstrates connected concepts better than many other methods of presenting
Helps keep non-linear ideas organized in an easier-to-understand manner
Provides an interesting visual for gathering input, rather than presenting findings
Mind-Mapping apps to try:
iMindMap – Featuring one of the most elegant presentation modes available for mind-mapping apps, iMindMap is available for Windows and Mac OS. There’s a free trial, as well as Home & Student / Ultimate editions of the software available.
NovaMind – Available for Windows Desktop and Mac OS X, NovaMind is in beta for a number of other platforms as well. The app breaks your maps up into slides you can present, and makes moving through your branches and nodes intuitive and effortless. Both the Windows and OS X versions have free trials.
MindManager 8 – If you want to have a lot of control over how much information is shown or hidden within your mind maps, and especially during presentation, MindManager 8 is for you. It’s available for Mac and PC, and you can get a free trial to see if you like it before buying.
iThoughts – Creating Mind Maps on the go, or while passing a device around the meeting, can be easy with iThoughts. You can get it for your iPhone, your iPad, and your Mac in the App Store.
PowerPoint Alternative #5: Haiku Deck
Of course we have to mention Haiku Deck! It’s very near and dear to our hearts, as you may imagine — but not just because it’s our job. Haiku Deck embraces our favorite aspects of presentations and storytelling: simplicity, beauty, and fun.
Great for:
Being inspiring and evocative
Presentations that benefit from strong visuals and bold text
Large groups that wouldn’t be able to see smaller text from the back of the room
Storytelling
Benefits:
Makes it quick and easy to create gorgeous presentations
Supports you as a storyteller with stunning visuals to pull your audience in
iPhone remote allows you to present without having to bring your iPad or computer to the meeting
It’s available on multiple platforms (iPhone, iPad, PC / Mac / Chromebook via the web)
Your slides will look clean, attractive, and professional — without the ‘template’ feel of a PowerPoint or Keynote slideshow
You can print handouts from your deck
Your materials will be available online (as long as you save them as public or restricted) so you can share with your team
Someone who uses Haiku Deck:
Lots of people use Haiku Deck, for a wide range of purposes! Here are a few good examples to check out:
But in the interest of the topic at hand, the example I’ll leave you with is from Stefanos Karagos, Haiku Deck guru and founder of XPlain, a performance marketing agency:
The MindMapping Road – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
So, what PowerPoint alternatives do you use?
Have another PowerPoint alternative not listed here? Any other apps you’d like to recommend? Let us know in the comments below!
Bar graph or pie chart? Text block or headline? If you’re looking for the perfect way to communicate your message — simply, beautifully, and effectively — be sure to take a spin through our field guide to the seven Haiku Deck slide types. You’ll see examples and get expert tips for making the most of each type.
Click to view the full Haiku Deck with Notes
I love the flexibility of these simple, yet versatile, slide types. You can also get creative — stat charts can be a fun way to showcase words as well as numbers, for example. The multiline text layout is super useful for quotes, short paragraphs, or even haikus.
Formatting is also a snap — I no longer get frustrated with having to manually resize each text box I create, and I no longer resort to the “trial and error” method for finding the perfect font size, since Haiku Deck takes care of that automatically.
Do you have a favorite slide type or have a slide type that you’d like to see in Haiku Deck? Let us know in the comments! And as usual, if you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line anytime.
Quiet chaos — that’s the phrase we tend to use to capture the distinct energy of a Twitter chat. {Also, fun!} For making new connections and getting a fresh flow of inspiration, we love a good Twitter chat as much as you do. We also wanted to share our tips for using Haiku Deck to simplify the task of organizing and promoting your chat, so you can keep your focus on the connecting and getting inspired part.
Promote Your Chat
Use Haiku Deck to spread the word about your chat in a visual format that will stand out and get people engaged in your topic. It’s a great way to call out the the Twitter handles of the hosts/moderators and any guests, the date and time (don’t forget to mention the time zone!), and of course, the hashtag. Here’s a simple Haiku Deck template we’ve created to make this super easy.
Want to really wow your chat participants? Introduce your questions with visuals, not just text. We recommend creating a slide for each question, exporting your deck to PowerPoint/Keynote, and then saving your slides as images.
You can then simply upload the image along with your tweet when you schedule your questions. (Bonus: You can do all this ahead of time, and it only takes a few minutes!)
Click to view the full deck of questions we created for #1to1ipadchat
Recap the Highlights
Haiku Deck is also a quick and easy way to share the killer sound bites and takeaways from your chat. The example below from Lisa Buyer‘s #SEOChat recap deck has a combination of imported images that she’s created on her own to introduce each question, with screenshots taken right from Twitter highlighting answers from a few of her chat participants.
You can then tweet this recap out to share with chat participants and those who missed it, along with sharing and posting it on your other social media channels.
#SEOchat – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
We hope this gives you some fresh new ideas for your next Twitter chat — and if you use any of these techniques, be sure to let us know so we can share with our creative community. And as usual, if you have any questions, we’re always here to help!
Need a little marketing inspiration? Here are a few creative marketing ideas from the brilliant minds of our own Haiku Deck community. (We’ll be trying a few of these ourselves!)
1. Create a list of your favorite resources.
What are your favorite sites for curating content? Where do you go to keep yourself up to date on the latest marketing news and trends? Here’s a fantastic example deck from Catherine Pham of The Seen, showcasing her top 30 content marketing blogs and what they’re about.
By transforming your blog posts into Haiku Decks, you’re not only providing your audience with a fresh new perspective on the blog post, but you’re also creating a piece of content with visual impact that can be shared across your social media channels in multiple ways. “Content Repurposing” by Niki Payne of Bruce Clay, Inc. is a great example of how she took information in her original blog post and transformed it into a Haiku Deck.
Content Repurposing – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
3. Share your expert tips.
What are you an expert at, or want to be known as an expert for? Showcase your skill set, offer your expert tips, or create a helpful guide. Here’s a great example from social media enthusiast John Walker, featuring ten useful tips for social media marketing.
Kelly Mitchell and Debra Trappen host weekly podcasts and use Haiku Deck to create an attractive image that is then shared across their social media networks along with information about where, when and how people can tune in. Learn more about how you can use Haiku Deck to promote your next podcast here.
Compared to sharing a transcript of the Twitter chat, a Haiku Deck recap is a quick and easy way for sharing the main highlights from the chat. We love Lisa Buyer‘s combination of imported images she’s created on her own for each Twitter chat question, with screenshots taken right from Twitter highlighting answers from chat participants.
#SEOchat – Created with Haiku Deck, presentation software that inspires
Leave us a comment below on the different ways you use Haiku Deck for social media and marketing. And as usual, if you have any questions, we’re here to help!
Share your next big idea, present social media stats, or promote an upcoming event with one of these simple and flexible Haiku Deck templates. Each template helps you easily create a piece of content that can be easily shared with event attendees, embedded in your blog or website, and posted to your social media channels.
These are must-have marketing presentation templates that you’ll definitely want to keep in your marketing tool box.
Idea Sharing Template
Whether you’d like to start building thought leadership around social media, capture insights from top marketing experts, or share your best social media practices, this beautiful idea sharing template will help get your big idea and supporting key points organized.
To take it to the next level, we recommend uploading your deck to SlideShare to help further share your idea and reach a larger audience.
Click to view the full deck with notes.
Weekly Content Calendar Template
This simple content calendar template will help organize your content and boost your productivity by eliminating the guesswork that stems from the question, “what do I share with my audience today?”
Click to view the full deck with notes.
Event Marketing Template
Marketing your event with a Haiku Deck is a new and fun way to promote your next event or conference. Use it to highlight intriguing keynotes, interesting sessions, and provide people with the opportunity to learn more about the event.
Click to view the full deck with notes.
Customer Quotes & Testimonials Template
Whether you have a collection of quotes from an event, user testimonials, or awesome iTunes reviews of your app, use this elegant Haiku Deck template to capture them in one place.
From explaining “how to craft the perfect Google+ post” to showing someone “how to make your own pizza crust,” our How To Template can help you get the job done with beauty.
Click to view the full deck with notes.
Press Release Template
Add visual interest to your press releases with this presentation template that has high flexibility, allowing you to adjust it for your specific needs.
Click to view the full deck with notes.
Twitter Chat Promotion Template
Keeping things short and sweet (just like a tweet), this presentation template helps you promote the most pertinent details of your Twitter chats with simplicity.
Move away from wordy case studies to case studies that inspire. This case study template, created by Haiku Deck user Irene Yam, is great for those wanting a new visual way of highlighting customer stories.
Click to view the full deck with notes.
Event Recap Template
Did you recently attend an event or conference and have inspiring quotes or major highlights from the event that you’d like to share on your social media channels or share with other event attendees? Try out this template that combines the perfect amount of quotes and event details to include in your recap.
Click to view the full deck with notes.
Social Media Report Template
Showcase and present stats from your social media report in a new and visually appealing way with this simple and flexible Haiku Deck template.
What Haiku Deck templates would you like to see? Leave us a comment below and let us know! And, as always, if you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line any time.
As the age of digital storytelling opens up new possibilities for sharing content with the world, you may find yourself wondering how to promote your podcast. Research shows that people love images: they grab your attention, tug at your heart strings, and encourage interaction more quickly and easily than text can.
So, what’s a great way to promote your podcast by using beautiful images viewers will love?
Use Haiku Deck to Generate Buzz
Using Haiku Deck is an awesome way to make a delicious-looking appetizer for your podcast quickly and with little effort. Creating a full deck or a single slide intended to drive traffic to your podcast is a snap, and whatever you create can easily be shared to Facebook, Tweeted, pinned on Pinterest boards, etc.
Example: BreveTV
Debra Trappen and Kelly Mitchell use Haiku Deck weekly to create single slides representing each new episode of their video conversations for BreveTV. The image is shared on Facebook and other social networks with information about the series, links to the videos and related resources, and discussion topics users can join in on.
The photos grab their followers’ attention, leading them to read the relevant text and learn how to check out each episode. The excitement generated by the eye-catching images and discussion topics encourages users to share with their social groups, effectively providing free advertising for the series.
Example: Tim Blankenship, Divorce661
Tim Blankenship of Divorce661 has an extensive series addressing all kinds of questions anyone might have while considering or going through a divorce. He uses Haiku Deck to generate title cards, text, and supporting information for his podcasts:
By using Haiku Deck, Tim has a fast and easy way to create clean, attractive content to balance out the video footage in his episodes. Like the BreveTV example above, the slides are an easy way to soak up attention on social media sites. They can also be used as highly-readable thumbnails for each video, as opposed to blurrier and less-informative video screenshots.
How to Promote Your Podcast with Haiku Deck
There are a few ways to approach using Haiku Deck to promote your podcast. Feel free to look over the following steps and mix and match them in whatever ways work for you!
A lot of people appreciate a summary of each episode. You can create Haiku Decks that summarize the contents of each episode so that viewers know what to expect — sort of like the description for videos on Netflix. Use public notes to provide links to any resources that seem helpful: the websites of people you’re interviewing, the live stream for your upcoming episode, the product you’re reviewing, etc.
Choose how to link to your content
There are two ways to share what you create in Haiku Deck, and use it to generate traffic to your podcast: via its URL, or as a screenshot.
Link right to your deck:
Just share the deck URL, or share right from within Haiku Deck
