It’s sad to see that many keynote’s or power point presentations are still basically tons of text that the viewers can read themselves (which sadly the presenter does for them) or they include ridiculous graphs that no one really cares about. This slide show below hits on all cylinders when it comes to connecting with your audience. Make your presentations interesting, engaging and entertaining, oh and don’t forget visually appealing, unlike those boring document style ones.

Have a look and let me know what you think in the comments below. Are you guilty of committing these presentation sins? I know I’ve been but have learned my lessons!

For many small, medium and large companies outsourcing to a call center is a great way to create more sales and help existing customers with tech support and customer support matter. While some larger companies have the money, time and resources to form their own call center, most smaller and mid-sized businesses choose to let a call center outsourcing company do the heavy lifting for them.

A call center outsourcing company (also known as a telemarketing center) is a facility where employees, usually seated at large groups of cubicles, make or receive phone calls for sales, marketing, customer service and/or tech support purposes. Lot’s businesses use call centers as the primary means of communication with their customers.

Advancements in modern technology make it possible to place call centers almost anywhere in the world. Today, many call centers are placed in nations like India and the Philippine’s, where labor costs are substantially lower than in more developed countries.

As more and more small to medium size businesses pop up, it’s becoming much more popular for these companies to look to outsourcing as a way to be able to build their business with very little capital or upfront cost.

Call center outsourcing companies give businesses the ability to be able to scale up at the speed they want and need for rapid growth. For example, you might only have three or four people working in your office out California but you could have over 20 or 30 people answering the phone for your prospective  and current customers in another country. This is where call center outsourcing companies come into play for the modern day business owner.

If you’ve never hired a call center outsourcing company the three most important things that you should keep in mind are:

♣ Professionalism

♣ A proven track record backed up by references with real, current clients

♣ That your call center outsourcing company should shares the same passion for growth and capturing market share as you

It’s not just large companies in the US that are benefiting from outsourcing in todays economy. Regardless of size, age or cash flow, every business can experience the benefits of working with a professionally trained, proven and productive call center outsourcing company. Call center’s not only save time but also boost productivity and efficiency of their clients.

Call center services have therefore become an integral part of a lot of growing companies. If you haven’t entertained hiring a call center for your business you could be missing out on a great resource!

It’s no secret that online video is hot. A recent study by comScore revealed that in October 2009, more than 167 million viewers in the U.S. watched an average of 167 videos each, while YouTube () reached 1 billion views per day – or 41 million views per hour – in the same month.

At my company, we’ve seen our own surge in video viewing. Video () now accounts for the largest number of files uploaded into online meetings on our platform.

Given that many of our customers work in sales and marketing, what I infer from these numbers is that video marketing is poised for a huge year in 2010. The reason is clear: video simply engages people in a way that static text and images cannot. There are dozens of studies that show the power of video to boost customer interaction, drive sales, encourage viral sharing, and build brand awareness. And according to MarketingSherpa, 95 percent of the companies that have used online video marketing are happy with the results and expect to use it again in the future.

Luckily, it’s never been easier to create marketing videos. You can create videos for free using stock images and still photos on services like Jivox, or even transfer existing TV spots to the Web. You can also create screencasts on sites like Screenr in under an hour by recording voice over still images, screenshots, and slides. If you want to shoot your own video, you can edit the footage using sites like Pixorial or Jaycut (). Of course, you can also hire a video production agency to create the videos for you.

Whatever type of video you create, make sure it’s short – under two minutes is usually best, but 30 seconds is even better. Simplicity is also key. Keep voiceovers straightforward and music at a minimum. If you want an example of the power of utter simplicity, check out the unique videos that explain hundreds of complex subjects produced by Common Craft.

Here are some great ways to use video to boost your business next year:

1. Punch Up Your Web Site

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The easiest way get started is simply to embed your videos on your Web site. You can use YouTube to do this, or alternatives like Vimeo () or Sorenson Media. Once you’ve got the videos playing on your site, make sure they are easy to share by adding a “share this” button on each video so that viewers can pass them along via Twitter (), Facebook (), and other viral channels. Already on Twitter, 8 percent of all shared URLs are links to videos on YouTube.

2. Use Video to Sell

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We’ve found that our sales reps see 20 percent higher close rates when they play a video at the beginning of their virtual sales demo. Other online services report similar results: Jivox, an online video ad platform, used this video demo on their web site to increase registrations by 25 percent – they even embedded a signup form right on the demo page to collect registrations. You can also use services like Wistia to share a video with prospects and track how they interact with the video.

3. Use Video in Your Online Ads

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Online video ads are growing in popularity because they are effective in driving sales. According to a study by the Online Publishers Association, 52 percent of people who watched an online video ad took action after viewing the ad, such as visiting the advertiser’s website (31 percent) or searching online for more information on the product (22 percent). A full 12 percent went on to make a purchase – giving video ads one of the highest conversion rates in the industry.

4. Help Customers Get More Value Out of Your Product

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The power of video is that you can show prospective and existing customers your product instead of just telling them about it. At our company, we developed a short video that explains how to use our product. This has dramatically increased product usage for both online and mobile customers. Another great example is Jigsaw: they use crowdsourcing to gather and vet business contact information, a new approach that relies on customer participation. They’ve created a whole set of slick video tutorials on their site to make it easy for people to fully utilize the service.

5. Go Mobile

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Make sure your videos can be viewed on many different devices. A good rule of thumb for whether you should modify your videos to work on mobile devices is: “If a video is worth sharing on Twitter, it’s worth making it mobile-phone-friendly,” since 40 percent of Twitter users access the service via mobile devices, according to an October 2009 study by Crowd Science. Already, there are more than 4.1 billion mobile phone users worldwide – at least 10 percent of which are video-enabled smartphones. Make sure these mobile warriors can view your videos.

The Bottom Line

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Online video is a powerful tool in today’s marketing arsenal. With 2010 fast approaching, make sure your company has a clear video strategy in place that works alongside your online, social, paid media, PR, and other marketing strategies. Your customers want video, so give it to them!

Click image to play video

Click here to watch

Due to the file size I had to upload a fairly small video. I will try to break this down into smaller segments in the future and upload in multiple parts.

Thanks!

via mashable.com

Posted via web from Clay Edwards’ Posterous

A recent Computerworld article reported some some surprising research discoveries:

• 54% of U.S. companies have banned employees from social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and MySpace

• 19% of companies allow social networking for business purposes only

• 16% allow limited personal use

• 10% of 1,4000 CIOs said companies allow workers full access to social networking during work hours

• Employee productivity drops 1.5% at companies that allow full access to Facebook

• 1 in 33 workers said they use Facebook only while at work

• 87% said they had no clear business reason for using Facebook

My personal belief is that social networking in the workplace makes for happier, more effective employees. If you give people the freedom to work not just hard but also smart, the long term benefits could outweigh the immediate ones.

What do you guys think?

By @noelleee

Posterous vs Tumblr, and why they’re awesome for bloggers.

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