It probably wasn’t the Powerpoint slides. Powerpoint is a great tool, if used correctly. But too many people make the mistake of trying to let the slides speak for them, packing in so much content that they lose their audience entirely; either by overwhelming them with far too much content, or because people are busy taking notes and ignoring what the presenter is saying.

Getting to the Point

Great presenters rehearse their message until it becomes second nature. By focusing on only a few points and repeating them several times, you will find your audience is more engaged. If you are allowed 20 minutes to present, try using only 10 minutes.

Then take questions so that you create an interactive dialogue. If you don’t have any takers at that point it probably means your presentation lacked impact for some reason.  Don’t stress about it; presenting and public speaking take a lot of practice but anyone can learn well. Try to learn from your mistakes and each time you get back up on the horse, you’ll get a little better!

For more great pointers on using Powerpoint, read Seth Godin’s post Nine steps to Powerpoint Magic

One Point per Slide

Here is a simple video tutorial on how you can quickly convert Powerpoint slide with several bullets into multiple slides that each make a single, specific point with impact:

Time spent at the proverbial water cooler has taken on a whole new meaning with the phenomena of social media. Whether chatting with friends and family on instant messenger, posting updates on Twitter, sharing videos on YouTube, pictures on Flickr, arranging dates on Facebook, etc.

By some estimates at least 50% of employees use some type of social networking application at work, while on the clock, while two-thirds of companies filter access to web sites and tools that are perceived as inappropriate or a waste of time in the workplace.

Corporate Culture and Human Capital

How organizations deal with this issue says a lot about their corporate culture and meeting the need of employees to adequately balance their work and personal lives. It’s a delicate balancing act to be sure!

HR and IT managers may cringe at the very thought of social networks being used by employees on company computers and networks. Many employ firewall rule sets and other security measures to block access. And for sound reasons including productivity, conserving network bandwidth and preventing legal issues.

Some employees use proxy servers to subvert these measures and “go around the firewall” … potentially risking termination for breaking company policies! And there days, many employees now work remotely at least some of the time, making firewall restrictions impossible to even enforce.

Setting and Enforcing Policies

So, how do managers and employees find common ground in a business environment where human capital and satisfied knowledge workers may be the most valuable assets many companies have? Three simple steps generally proscribed are to:

1. Establish a workplace policy addressing the appropriate use of internet technologies such as social networking, blogging, text messaging, etc;
2. Educate employees on the policy and the potential ramifications for violation;
3. Enforce the policy.

While this straightforward approach may seem all too obvious and strictly a black or white issue to many managers, the reality is that setting and enforcing a strict policy could lead to any number of gray areas, including reduced employee satisfaction and morale, increased costs of enforcement and, in today’s world, potentially can even decrease companies’ competitiveness if you don’t have a social media strategy and your competitors do!

Smart companies are learning to leverage social media in the workplace to build brand awareness, employee and customer mind share and even increase productivity by enabling knowledge workers to connect globally to people inside and outside the organization.

Obviously, the policies your organization sets are highly dependent upon many factors and may even need to vary based on job function; a manufacturing line worker probably would not require internet access, while a social media marketer would be unable to perform their duties without full access!

The Internet and Corporate Evolution

With every new technology, corporations face new dilemmas; 15 years ago very few employees even had access to the internet. Now, most office workers need access in order to do their jobs.

Social media is still in it’s infancy and companies are struggling to understand whether there may be true value in allowing access versus the immediate response that many managers initially tend to have to Facebook, blogging, instant messaging, etc; “That’s a complete waste of company time and resources”.

Companies such as Microsoft and Siemens already have thousands of employees with profiles on Facebook. Southwest Airlines not only has encouraged employees to blog about why they love their jobs but also has an official company Twitter account, but also has 6 employees devoted full time to social media.

Transparency, connectedness, innovation and a healthier corporate culture are just a few reasons organizations should consider a more “open” policy rather than insisting on draconian limitations.

Bandwidth continues to get cheaper, making IT’s argument that video uploads, etc. are a drag on resources. HR and line managers who put adequate productivity measures in place should not fear time spent online anymore than time spent at the water cooler.

Corporations who don’t satisfy workers will end up employing the dregs of society while competitors keep their workforce connected, balanced and in high morale.

What do you think? Should your company reconsider its internet technology policies and social media strategy?

But what the pundits didn’t foresee in 2001 was the rise of Pay-per-click (PPC) and cost-per-action (CPA) advertising models, which completely revolutionized the marketing and advertising world, by giving marketers exact measures of the success of their online advertising efforts.

Short Term Fallback or Long Term Change?

As recent market declines and recession continue to sweep world economies, some pundits are again predicting the downfall of online advertising. Even Google is forecasting lackluster advertising revenue growth for 2009 in the range of only 5 to 10 percent. And to be sure, I’ve seen click-through-rates (CTR) dip over the last year from 10 percent to less than 5 percent across our own content network.

But is this a short term pullback in overall marketing spend, which has decimated other advertising media including TV, Print, and Direct Mail, or a signal of long term change? Have users become “ad blind” even to contextual advertising such as Google Adwords just as they did to the banner ads of the 1990s? Or are they just not clicking as often on ads because they aren’t spending?

Probably the answer is that the combination of weak consumer confidence and the fact people have become more aware of contextual ads are signaling further transition in the long term strategies online advertisers will need to adopt as world economies begin to recover.

Convergence of Social Media and Online Marketing

With the phenomena of social media such as high profile blogs and a plethora of social media networks, marketers are finding that the key to success is to move beyond online advertising that relies on heavy-handed sales messages toward greater transparency, engaging prospects and customers in true conversations.

Companies and marketers that get this transition are already capitalizing on social media to build brand loyalty and increase market share. Those that don’t better figure it out soon.

The notion that influencers affect consumer sentiment toward brands and products is nothing new. But the means by which companies and their agencies get influencers on board has changed radically in recent years, with the advent of high profile bloggers and social media users.

Take for example, the 2008 holiday promotion IZEA developed for retailer Kmart. In this controversial case of social media marketing experimentation, Kmart offered up $500 gift certificates to 6 influential, high profile bloggers including Chris Brogan and Jeremy Schoemaker, who then reported what they experienced and bought in their respective spending sprees.

Marketers Learning to Give up Editorial Control

The trick here with the IZEA/Kmart campaign was that each of these influencers was allowed complete editorial/message control; Kmart was not necessarily recruiting spokespeople and had to recognize the possibility that the campaign might result in negative commentary. But then again, as the saying goes; “any press is good press”.

Marketers who decide to experiment with social media marketing will have to face the fact that editorial control lies with the influencers, who have built significant brands online and will not agree to simply “spam” their readership and risk harming the trust they have worked hard to build with followers!

Another recent example of the power of social media marketing was Panasonic’s invitation to Chris Brogan to attend the 2009 CES show in Las Vegas in January as a “guest”. Covering the event as an independent blogger (with disclaimer and complete transparency to his readership), Brogan used his blog and Twitter to provide real time updates of the show from his PDA and laughing about how he was posting updates as events occurred, whereas mainstream journalists’ posts would be delayed for hours or days!

I expect to see a LOT more major brands and agencies exploring these ideas even more creatively throughout 2009, pushing the envelope of social media marketing and moving away from the declining results of straight PPC advertising. In an era of declining TV viewership, online ad blindness and shifting consumer spending habits, the pace of change will only continue to accelerate.

If you have thoughts on the fate of online/social media marketing and advertising, go ahead; leave a comment and speak your mind!

The answers lie in management’s decision making processes. Successful technology companies develop and hone innovative products and services that delight users and create value for customers. Note that users and customers can oftentimes be very separate constituent groups (i.e. Google search users and advertisers). Determining this value chain is the key to building a defensible business model that delivers long-term valuation growth.

In his book, Basic Economics, Thomas Sowell defines economics as “The study of the distribution of scarce resources that have alternative uses.” And while it may seem like a cliché, it is the basic challenge all managers face. Capital, in the form of investment funds and human resources are scarce in every company. How C-level executives make decisions around allocating resources ultimately determines the successful conversion of capital investment into sustained valuation growth.

Intangible Assets and Value Creation

Technology companies typically derive their core value from the creation of intangible assets in the form of intellectual property (i.e. patented inventions, product software and services development). Technology and patents shape an Internet company’s brand identity and ability to dominate within its market niche.

How users and customers adopt and interact with these inventions separates the winners and losers. How companies leverage the innovation pipeline to create new products and services that users and customers readily adopt either enables or limits growth. But how a company connects the value chain determines its ability to capitalize on the growth.

Sure, it sounds simple, but witness how many software and Internet companies have trouble extending the value chain beyond their initial innovations. Microsoft, while investing in countless new products and IP has yet to find ways to cash in significantly beyond their initial operating system and office applications. Even Google has yet to realize substantial returns on its numerous inventions beyond its root products; search and contextual advertising.

In Relentless Pursuit of Innovation

Perhaps a better example of the benefits of relentless innovation is Apple. Hard to believe that only 10 years ago Apple appeared on the brink of extinction, having to borrow $150 million from Microsoft in order to survive.
After simplifying product lines, focusing on what users truly wanted, Apple not only regained market share in the PC space, but has since introduces truly innovative, revolutionary new product categories and services including the iPod, iTunes and the iPhone.

Quite simply, Apple has built a devoted following because management consciously honed its decision-making processes around the introduction of innovative products that customers can count on to be easy to use.

Capitalizing on Innovation

As the dotcom bust taught us, innovation is not enough. “Build it and they will come” is a surefire recipe for disaster unless managers can “connect the dots” and leverage IP to create a successful value chain. Such is the current dilemma of many companies in the social media space, an industry in its infancy that will soon face radical growing pains.

The adoption growth curve of companies such as Face book and Twitter is truly phenomenal, but they have yet to prove that all those eyeballs can be successfully monetized. The space is evolving so quickly that a shakeout is surely in the cards at some point.

Are social media companies building defensible, sustainable business models? Surely the venture capitalists who have invested in social media start ups believe so. And if the exit strategy is acquisition (i.e. YouTube and MySpace) then some will succeed even if the business model ultimately fails to produce sustained value creation for the acquiring companies. Time will tell whether social media companies will derive long term value from their innovation investments.

Separating Intellectual Property and Value Creation

Matt Mullenweg, founder of Automattic, seems to understand how to capture value from the development of open source software. Automattic is certainly inside the tornado now, with its open source WordPress software rapidly dominating the demand for content management system CMS software.

Initially known simply as a tool for bloggers, WordPress has captured the imagination of thousands of independent developers who willingly contribute their own time and IP to the code base and develop plugins that extend its value far beyond being just another blogging platform.

The antithesis of the closed software licensing model, Automattic seems to have found a winning formula in giving away what most software companies deem the “family jewels”. But the hosting service (i.e. WordPress.com) is allowing the company to reap financial benefits without forcing users to pay directly for its core innovations.

Conclusion: Converting Innovation to Value at Internet Speed

Allocating scarce resources to the right activities separates the winners and losers in the ever-accelerating world of technology innovation. The lesson is clear; how management decides what to work on, how users derive value from a company’s IP and how it translates to value creation determine its long term viability.

Thinking outside the box while working closely within the core requires executives to closely manage and shift the innovation pipeline. Listening carefully to the needs of users while progressively directing IP development and invention to support a well defined, sustainable value chain becomes ever-more critical in the dynamically shifting sands of the 21st century world of technology, software and Internet industries.

Telecommuting has grown in popularity. In 1999, only 18 of Fortune’s best companies to work for offered telecommuting. Today, 79 do. Some people just do it a day or so a week — so there are lots of options.

We’re also seeing a huge surge in the number of home-based customer service agents, the majority of whom are women. These are hourly, work-from-home employees across the county who take customer service calls for clients like J.Crew, 1-800-Flowers, Office Depot, the major airlines and more. These women set their own hours based on whatever works for them — averaging about 20 to 25 hours a week. You can earn $8 to $15 an hour — no commuting costs, no fancy business attire. It’s the ultimate in flexibility if you have a computer, high-speed Internet access, a land line and a quiet work space.

If you’re interested in this type of work, consider applying through the leaders in this industry, including Golden, Alpine Access in Colorado; LiveOps in Palo Alto, Calif.; or Working Solutions in Texas. You don’t have to live in these cities to work for these companies. They employ women throughout the country. What’s in it for the employer? Smart companies do these types of things to keep good employees, and to keep them happy. It’s not all altruism — it makes economic sense too.

The average cost of losing an employee is 1.5 times the employee’s annual salary because of lost productivity while the position is open, plus the cost of recruiting, hiring and training a replacement. By implementing these programs, employers benefit from increased retention and improved employee satisfaction, which boosts productivity and the bottom line.

Employers like Ernst & Young say their retention rates are currently at historic highs because the company culture embraces flexibility for employees at all levels.

• Approaching your boss. Before you knock on your boss’s door, ask yourself honestly if your job performance is good enough to warrant this perk. These flexible benefits are accommodations, not entitlements. The stronger your performance, the better the chance of receiving such perks. If you’ve been a slacker, you can’t walk in and say I want to work from home five days a week. It won’t work.
• Think of it as a business proposal. You have to present it in a way that’s a win for your boss and for you. How will your department or company benefit from such a program? If high turnover is a problem, this could be a solution. If you’re overstressed but great at your job, it behooves your manager to work this out instead of losing you.
• Do your research. If similar companies in your field or location offer flexible benefits, present that as part of your proposal. If other companies offer these benefits, but yours doesn’t, it can help you build your case.
• Propose benchmarks. If your employer were to allow you to work from home or use hourly vacation or any of the other programs, how will the success of this benefit be measured?
• Suggest a trial period. You’re more likely to get a yes if you say let’s try it for three months than if you ask for a permanent change.
• And, of course, have confidence. Change can start with one person and one conversation, but only if you have the courage to speak up for yourself in a confident and persuasive way.

Having worked on both sides of the fence (Product Marketing and Sales as well as IT management), I have seen the importance of assigning executive sponsors to key/enterprise customer accounts.

Working as the Chief Information Officer and Vice President, Product for a mid-size marketing services firm I found the role refreshing and, often, eye-opening. Our CEO required each member of the senior management team to pair with sales executives on our top customer accounts. In this case, the executive sponsor role involved working on five accounts throughout the year, making calls on the customer with the assigned salesperson once a quarter. This was a role we accepted in addition to the typical executive duties of day-to-day customer service and operations. As a key part of each executive’s MBOs, performance and compensation were closely tied to fulfilling the assignment.

As an executive nothing gets you closer to the customer and the business than going on three-legged sales calls. Your sales staff gains confidence that management cares, the B2B sales cycle benefits from a top-down rather than the typical bottom-up sales approach and your most important customers see that management is truly engaged at all levels of your operation.

On the other side of the fence, as the customer, nothing is more frustrating than engaging with suppliers and business partners whose executives are rarely, if ever directly involved in the sales and service process. If the only way you can get the attention of a partner’s executive team is through escalation when things go sideways you begin to lose faith that you are a key customer or partner. But when you know that you have an assigned executive sponsor who calls on you regularly you are a lot less likely to consider switching suppliers.