Solis, in The End of Business As Usual, explains the evolution of social media has led to people not just tweeting to their audiences, but this fabric of today’s social network includes “audiences of audiences of audiences.”

This is nothing short of disruptive. And it extends to the actual buying experience, down to the very minute before a point of purchase in a brick and mortar store. Smartphone-wielding consumers have product information and peer reviews at their fingertips as they stroll through isles of a store. This access can make or break a buying decision.

Solis outlines how some retailers, like Target and Best Buy, have been forward-thinking and have created mobile apps that actually help customers navigate stores, look up prices and find special offers and promotions.

Best Buy has taken it a step further by providing customer reviews for a peer-to-peer perspective.

For businesses struggling to figure out how to develop a social media strategy, Solis says businesses must be able to answer these nine questions.

1. Why would a connected consumer “Like” us on Facebook, “Follow” us on Twitter?
2. How can we deliver value for them?
3. What is the experience they will take away?
4. What is it we want them to share?
5. Why would they want to stay connected over time?
6. Why would they choose to engage our updates in their social stream over those of their real friends?
7. What incentive do they have to tell everyone they know to follow us?
8. Why would they invest their time and express loyalty in their networks?
9. Why should they come back

This is part of a series of blog post running until the end of the year on business books in 2011 that can enhance the way you do presentations, improve the way you tell stories, engage with your audience, or market your business through social media or other channels.

In his new book, Tell To Win, Gruber demonstrates how purposeful and emotional storytelling is the catalyst to propel people to act.

Gruber has a very colorful past, having produced blockbuster films (i.e. – Batman, Flashdance, The Color Purple, among others) for the past three decades and his films have earned more than 50 Academy Award nominations.

Developing these films along with some of the biggest egos in the movie industry serve as a backdrop to many of the stories he uses to vividly show rather than tell in this book. The basic screenwriting formula can be used to tell an inspiring story in a business setting:

Story building blocks:
1. Open with a challenge for the main character
2. Show how the character struggles through this challenge
3. Resolution: What was the result of the character overcoming this challenge

Gruber also outlines five core points in telling a great story:
1. Motivation: Contrary to what you may think, this point doesn’t center around motivating your audience, but rather knowing what motivates you, as the storyteller, moments before you speak to your audience. Gruber says you need to “get in state” before speaking the first word.
2. Audience: Render an experience to move them
3. Goal: All storytelling is purposeful. You are trying to create a relationship with the audience, not a transaction.
4. Interactive: A speech is not a monologue, it’s a dialogue. You want the audience to be a participant, not just a passenger.
5. Content: A story puts all key facts into an emotional context

This is part of a series of blog post running until the end of the year on business books in 2011 that can enhance the way you do presentations, improve the way you tell stories, engage with your audience, or market your business through social media or other channels.

But his friends, a tight-knit group of entrepreneurs, figured it was a typical math problem. The solution: getting 20,000 South Asian individuals into a bone marrow registry.

In order to do this in such short time, Team Sameer used Web 2.0 services, like Facebook, Youtube and Google Docs to mobilize and empower others to organize bone marrow drives all over the country. This resulted in getting more than 24,000 South Asians into the bone marrow registry. And sure enough, a match was found and the tranplant was performed in 2007.

This is one of many examples of how social media can be used to power social good, outlined in the book, The Dragonfly Effect.

The book is co-authored by the husband/wife duo of Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith. The Dragonfly Effect demonstrates how to achieve both social good and customer loyalty by leveraging the power of design thinking with practical strategies

The Dragonfly Effect model has four key elements:
1. Focus on a single, concrete, measurable goal
2. Grab attention: Make someone look.
3. Engage: Foster personal connection.
4. Take Action: Enable and empower others.

This is part of a series of blog post running until the end of the year on business books in 2011 that can enhance the way you do presentations, improve the way you tell stories, engage with your audience, or market your business through social media or other channels.

As a result, most companies realize they need to have a presence on Facebook, Twitter and Linkedin, but many are struggling to develop a strategy.

In the book The Facebook Era, entrepreneur and author Clara Shih, outlines how some companies have found early success in converting leads, engaging audiences and transforming customers into evangelists on social networking sites.

Shih and her contributing writers demonstrate the importance of using social media sites to build your sphere of influence by providing helpful tips and advice to your fans. And if this is done appropriately, only then can you earn the right to market products through these same channels.

The book notes that the leaders of today and tomorrow are learning to give up “control” and instead are inspiring and listening to their employees and customers.

This is part of a series of blog post running until the end of the year on business books in 2011 that can enhance the way you do presentations, improve the way you tell stories, engage with your audience, or market your business through social media or other channels.

In Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, authors Dan and Chip Heath chronicled a wide range of people who have found creative ways to make sweeping change happen without having structural authority. In other words, change can be spearheaded by middle managers, parents or social activists.

In one example, college student and conservationist Paul Butler didn’t have the authority to enact laws against killing an island parrot. Therefore, to save the species, Butler appealed to the emotions of the locals of St. Lucia by promoting the native parrot as “one of their own.” The St. Lucia Parrot only existed on that island, and the islanders “were the type of people who protected their own,” his campaign suggested. His campaign included puppet shows, parrot T-shirts, bumper stickers and even songs (written by local musicians).

The Heath brothers use many examples like this one to demonstrate that successful changes follow a pattern, a pattern that can be used by just about anyone. First, find the bright spots, script the critical moves needed that will lead to the change, and point to the destination (what does the change look like.).

In a blog post late last year, I used some of the Heath brothers’ principles to demonstrate how you can turn an average presentation into one that could inspire your audience to change behavior.

The Heath brothers are also the authors of the 2007 bestseller Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die.

This is part of a series of blog posts running until the end of the year on business books I’ve read in 2011 that can enhance the way you do presentations, improve the way you tell stories, engage with your audience, or market your business through social media or other channels.

I’m kicking off this series with Scott Berkun’s hilarious and highly practical Confessions of a Public Speaker (O’Reilly Media), in which this best-selling author and speaker reveals techniques great communicators use to connect with their audiences.

Many of the practical tips he outlines for presenting are hard learned lessons from falling flat on his face in his own public presentations over the years – hence the title of the book.

Here are some of the many areas of topics he covered and I found particularly fascinating or useful in today’s speaking arena:

1. How to keep an audience engaged in the era of tweeting, texting and mobile phone games.
2. Social Media: How to monitor what people say on Twitter, while you are actually presenting on stage.
3. The importance of speaking not just to a live audience, but also to the camera (since your presentation will likely end up on Youtube)
4. How to deal with hostile audiences

That’s because the audience fails to emotionally connect with the message, even though they may agree with it.

That’s part of the premise behind a new book called Switch: How to Change Things, When Change is Hard, by Chip and Dan Heath, the brother duo that produced the 2007 beststeller Made to Stick.

In order for people to not only want to change, but also be motivated to do so, the authors say you need to appeal to two types of personalities: the Elephant (people’s emotional side) and the Rider (the rational side).

The authors acknowledge this is difficult, because the Elephant often overpowers the Rider. When you fail to stick to a diet or push the snooze button, that’s your elephant overpowering your rider, they note.

To change behavior, you’ve got to direct the Rider, motivate the Elephant and shape the Path. If you reach your audience’s Rider, but not their Elephant, they will have direction without motivation.

How do you develop a presentation packed with the proper emotional/rational combination?

Some people think the persuasive presentations is filled with analytical data, with a formula like:

ANALYZE > THINK > CHANGE

But that formula will only work for small changes, the authors note. For big changes, however, the Heath brothers, citing a study called the “The Heart of Change,” say the formula is:

SEE > FEEL > CHANGE

To illustrate this, the authors describe Jon Stegner’s dilemma in the Heart of Change study. He was tasked to correct the poor purchasing habits of a large manufacturer. He discovered, in one example, all the departments were buying work gloves from many different distributors at a wide range of costs: $5 – $17. The no-brainer solution would be for all departments to buy the same $5 gloves.

But how do you motivate all the people in charge of purchasing to care enough to do so?

The ANALYZE > THINK > CHANGE approach would be for someone to produce a spreadsheet showing all 424 gloves and their costs.

But the SEE > FEEL > CHANGE approach would be to do what Stenger did. He collected the 424 different types of gloves and tagged them with the price tag. Then the gloves were gathered up, brought to the boardroom and dumped on the conference table. Stegner invited all the division presidents to come visit the Glove Shrine.

That’s what the Heath brothers call making “a gut-level emotional connection.”

In your next presentation, ask yourself: Am I making a gut-level emotional connection with the audience?

Incorporating video to your presentation has many powerful benefits to keep your audience engaged. It’s a great way to illustrate a point, or even show visually rather than only tell how something has occurred.

In fact, it’s a great way for “businesspeople… to show new stores or products in action or to show interviews with customers,” notes design guru Garr Reynolds in his new book, Presentation Zen Design, which is sort of sequel to his 2008 best-selling book, Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery.

Reynolds says adding video to a long presentation is especially useful to break up the pace, since research shows audiences’ attention tend to drift after about ten minutes, unless some aspects of the presentation are altered.

If you are a Mac user, embedding video (from your movie folder) onto a slide in Keynote 2009 is a simple drag and drop process (see video tutorial).

PowerPoint 2010, which is expected to be released in June as part of Office 2010, promises to include the ability to embed videos. A beta version is already available from the Microsoft site.

Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations includes other great tips on designing effective presentations that contain text, graphs, color and images.

Reynolds first book, Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery, provided the framework for planning, putting together and delivering presentations.

Whenever you hear someone describe Apple CEO Steve Jobs, they often use words like “charismatic,” “showmanship” “electrifying presenter.” His presentations look so effortlessly that people often believe it’s innate.

But that’s hardly the case. Steve Jobs is no doubt one of the world’s best presenters, but that’s because he is relentless at rehearsing and refining his presentation until every aspect shines.

BusinessWeek columnist Carmine Gallo examines many aspects of Jobs’ presentation techniques as well as his tireless preparation in his new book, The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience.

Gallo analyzed dozens, if not hundreds, of Steve Jobs’ keynotes and other presentations, which resulted in Gallo crafting a playbook, per se, on how you can learn similar techniques to electrify an audience.

Most speeches fall into four categories: informative, inspirational, persuasive or to entertain. Gallo notes that Jobs aims to cover at least three in every speech.

“Steve Jobs presentation is very much like a dramatic play – a finely crafted, well-rehearsed performance that informs, entertains and inspires,” Gallo writes.

Aside from delivery and preparation techniques, Gallo also covers how Jobs uses storytelling to grip his audiences as well as prepare outstanding visual slides to complement each story. No bullet points.

Related Article:
7 Tips to Sell Ideas The Steve Jobs Way

November 18, 2008

Virgin empire founder Richard Branson suffers from it. So does Cisco Systems CEO John Chambers. As does Paul Orfalea, founder of the Kinko’s chain. Charles Schwab, too. And what that is, is dyslexia.

If you wonder how some entrepreneurs who struggle at reading and writing not only succeed, but thrive, it’s often the result of developing superior public speaking skills (as well as social and problem solving skills). This is one aspect outlined in a fascinating New Yorker article by Tipping Point author Malcom Gladwell published last week titled: The Uses of Adversity: Can underprivileged outsiders have an advantage?

Gladwell suggests it’s fair to compare people who rise to the top in their field while battling disabilities, like dyslexia, to those who seem often to amaze us for success after being reared in poverty, or lacking the social connections affluent families can provide.

Gladwell points to a study that found 35 percent of small business owners suffered from dyslexia, surveyed by business school professor Julie Logan.

“That’s a remarkable statistic,” Gladwell writes. “Dyslexia affects the very skills that lie at the center of an individual’s ability to manage the modern world. Yet Schwab and Orfalea… and Branson seem to have made up for their disabilities in the same way that the poor, in [Dale] Carnegie’s view, can make up for their poverty.”

Another fascinating stat Gladwell points to came out of a study conducted in Britain. It found that 80 percent of dyslexic entrepreneurs had held the position of captain of a high school sport, versus 27 percent of non-dyslexic entrepreneurs.

“They compensated for their academic shortcomings, by developing superior social skills, and when they reached the workplace, those compensatory skills gave them an enormous head start,” Gladwell writes.

Gladwell’s New Yorker article comes on the heels of his new book, Outliers: The Story of Success, which hits bookstores today.

More about Malcom Gladwell and his books:

The Malcom Gladwell Effect, from the New York Times, Feb. 5. 2006

Secrets of Their Success: Fortune Magazine’s Q & A with Malcom Gladwell, Nov. 18, 2008

Gladwell TV Interview on The Colbert Report, Nov., 17, 2008