If you're in business or supporting a cause you have a Web site. You've also got a blog. And you've got a Twitter account. And Facebook and if probably LinkedIn and maybe even Flickr and then there's your choice of online bookmarking sites and of course YouTube (or Vimeo or BlipTV).

Everything is going fine. But then you have something to say or share or sell. Where do you post it? And if you post it on YouTube do you tweet it as well? Then there's your blog and your Facebook status. That sounds like a lot of copying and pasting. It's also a big time waster; and for you time is money.

Posting an update in some places at the expense of the others could mean you miss the chance for your message to get through to part of your audience.

So what do you do?

Enter Hootsuite

Hootsuite will post anything you have to share to any number of social networks you belong to. Here's how it works.

1. Go to hootsuite.com and sign up.
2. Go to your blog and get your RSS feed
3. Back in Hootesuite click the Settings tab
4. Add your blog's feed
5. Choose how often you want to post updates and which social networks you want to post to

And that's it.

Now the next time you have something to share you can:

• Post it on your blog
• Post a tweet directly from Hootsuite

Either way will Hootsuite automatically broadcast your message to all your friends and followers all at once. Cool huh?

Show me that again

I'll post an in depth tutorial on exactly how to do this next week.

Got a question about how to do this? Post a comment and look for the answer in the upcoming tutorial. And while you're thinking: follow me :)

You are in a unique position of being able to teach other people what you have discovered about the latest 'thing'. This of course takes time. Don't worry, the media/Internet/colleagues/Oprah and other sources will eventually get the message across that what you discovered all those months and years ago is in fact valuable. So what can you do while you're waiting for your customers to sign up for Twitter or your friends to get a Facebook account or a Flickr account or to get into Zimba, or flat shoes or [insert trend here]? 

Answer: become a guru.

Experts know a lot and want to let everyone know it. Gurus teach and inspire and mentor others. They have usually been there and done that. They give people superpowers (abilities to do awesome stuff)!)

So what do you do? How do you give people superpowers? Start a blog, feed it to Twitter, publish an e-book, publish a real book, create a toolkit with downloads and video tutorials and podcasts and resources, design a course or a workshop and deliver it in person on put it online. Simply: you teach.

When the 'trend' moves from early adopters (people who pre-ordered the iPad) to the middle of the bell curve and the mainstream (people who will buy one in a year's time) get into it they will all be asking, "OK I get how this iPad can help me - how do I use it?" And that's where you come in. You've already been sharing ideas on your blog. Get them to subscribe to your mailing list, let them download your free e-book, offer to sell them a toolkit or a course or workshop showing them how to use the trend to help them in their life and in their business.

Takeaway

Adopt early. When the mainstream catches on then be the guru they look to.

Note: There is a difference between jumping on the bandwagon of anything that is new and finding gold nuggets of new stuff that will help you be happy and successful at work and at home. The first is a time waster, the second is worth it's weight in gold.

Your turn

What's the new idea, service, product, system, technique or tool that you discovered? What are you doing to become the guru people can turn to? How will you give people superpowers? Comments are open.

You have to use uncommon thinking and uncommon ideas if you want out of the ordinary results for your business or your blog or your fundraiser or political campaign.

Reverse engineer

So what makes this video great? A simple story told in a simple way. Using a fun medium. Tic tacs are an unexpected character doing an unexpected activity. With an unexpected ending. The punchline could be, 'Tic-Tacs: More than you expect in every pack.' Or something like that.

If this was an ad for your 'thing' what punchline could you add? 

Your turn

What's your story? How can you package it? How will you sell the idea to others?

What I like about this vid is the hand-made effects at the start. They take it back to the old-school of animation and props being used to tell a story. If you think about the Common Craft show, this is a technique for packaging your ideas that still works really well.

The best part is

Motionographer did an interview with the makers and included some behind the scenes info.Check it out.

I think I actually like this more than the video itself. Think about the last DVD you watched. Did it have a behind the scenes section (sometimes called 'special features')? Most of them do. But why? Who cares about behind the scenes or the back story to whole production experience or how they did that special effect in the Matrix? Answer: tons of people.

Part of the magic of the DVD experience (for me at least) is see a little bit of 'how we did that'. The effect of this on the audience is two fold:

• It shows how much skill and creativity and resources go into making something that might last for 30 seconds on screen
• It helps you feel like part of the movie or the story or the characters or actors lives

How does this apply to your business?

Add behind the scenes features to your Web site or presentation or proposal. These are normally called case studies. But that usually takes the format of 'problem, solution, result.' This is fine. But take it a step further by taking a leaf out of film maker's books. Go behind the scenes and show the creative process in action, the design decisions you made, what you left out and why, how you made that cool thing/effect and who you have on your team doing all that stuff. Help your audience (customers and prospective customers) feel part of the magic of what you do and really showcase how much talent you have.

Behind the scenes is a great promotional strategy. I plan to feature a lot more examples of business who do this in the future so stay tuned.

Your turn

Have you taken your audience 'behind the scenes'? How? When? What happened as a result? Post a comment.

I see examples of this all the time and here is yet another: how to innovate by drawing inspiration from outside your industry. So these guys play a traditionally 'classical' instrument, namely the violin. To do something remarkable they reverse engineer what works in another industry. In this case it is a rock and roll song from the 90's, November Rain by GNR.

I first encountered this kind of innovation in action when I read about how the guys who designed the Mac went and studied what made lollies (candy) shiny (disclaimer: I can't find a link to this info so I might be making it up.) Then they took that lesson (from outside the industrial design industry) and applied it to their new product. And thus we have the 'shiny' plastic film over all things Apple from there on in.

Another example that comes to mind is swim suits with shark skin-like textures for going fast in the water - swim suit design innovating by drawing inspiration from nature.

What's the recipe?

The recipe seems to be:

1. what works in that guys industry?
2. reverse engineer what makes it work
3. apply what you learnt to your industry.

How can it be applied?

My personal interest is in teaching people to be awesome. Just how do you make learning experiences that are innovative? One way is to reverse engineer what makes people stay engaged in learning something or keeps them paying attention to something. Two industries that do this well are gaming and book publishing.

Why do people keep playing video games that require them to learn new skills and to formulate complex strategies for days on end. Or what makes people watch movies for hours or read a series of books about vampires. In other words, what do games and good stories do that keep people engaged and help them learn new skills? Answers could include role playing, a mission, the right level of challenge, the ups and downs of a good storyline, romance and other emotions, fun etc.

Then apply those things to the way you design a learning experience. Get the learner to play the role of a hero or a villan, add some romance, get them to accomplish a mission that requires them to learn new skills along the way, make it hard but not too hard and make it fun.

Actually, that is what these guys did. How do you innovate when teaching people about inclined planes, pullies and leavers (not usually topics people care about)?

Wow is this a new idea?

No. There are tons of other examples out there of this type of innovation. I just thought of another one then. Seth Godin calls it 'edge craft' in Free Prize Inside.

Your turn

What examples have you seen of innovation in one industry that's inspired by what works in another industry? Or better yet, what examples have you made?

Infographics are awesome. They are a great way to 'show' the story of something to others. You can put infographics into two categories:

• Data viz (who? what? how many? how much? where?)
• Cause and effect (how does it happen?)

Data viz

Traditionally infographics are a form of data visualisation so you see lots of graphs (big circles and small circles, long bars and short bars, lots of people and a few people). Sometimes the graphs are styled to match the topic of the infographic.

For example, this is an infographic about infographics :)

Cause and effect

Stories can take many forms especially with electronic media. There can be a cross over between infographics and some types of mographs (motion graphics). Infographics that tell a story are often about cause and effect. They show a process in action and the results of that process.

A nice process infographic from Xplane.

Best of both worlds

Vizthink featured the work of Johnathan Jarvis on the credit crisis infographic and accompanying motion graphic. See how he rolls.

Infographics for Africa

Sink your eyes into these infographic showcases.

• Good (focus on people and causes; like peak water)
• Noupe (probably my favourite, I love the ones that use buttons or coffee cups instead of vectors)
• Social media infographics
• Cool Infographics

Your turn

Seen an inforgraphic you like (or that you've made yourself)? Post a comment.

I read a post today that reminded me of those newspapers with moving pictures from the Harry Potter movies.

On his blog Dan Pink highlights a preview of Time, Inc.'s new magazine reader app for the iPad.

Check out the YouTube vid.

Dan asks if this is the future of digital magazines. In answer to this question: although it's only a demo I can see how great the iPad magazine reader (iZine?) format  is for packaging your ideas. It's kind of a meta-format in that it brings several formats together.

As with all electronic media the challenge is often deciding whether to use text, pictures, audio, mographs (motion graphics), video or whatever to package a set of ideas. For me the iPad goes a long way to solve this by letting you package the same content in multiple ways, then the audience choose how to interact with (read/watch/listen to) the content.

What's the story?

Choose Your Own Adventure were the main series at the time. The idea is you read a bit of the story then make a choice about what a character should do next. The book prompted you to turn to a particular page that picked up the story thread based on your choice, eventually leading to a successful or unsuccessful ending. Part book, part game. The Wikipedia entry calls it a 'gamebook'. The new iZine format is the gamebook model applied to magazines. A story (or group of stories) with choice for the audience about the path and the media format used to navigate the story.

People find it easy remember and share ideas in the form of stories. People also learn lots from playing games, plus they are fun and engaging. An idea packaged this way is going to be memorable, sharable and engaging.

So what can you do about packaging your next idea as a gamebook? Here are some ideas to get you started:

Multi-media

Yes that's an old buzz word, probably from the 90's, but that's step number one. Take your idea, the message for your next presentation to the board, your  proposal, or your newsletter. Find some pictures to represent and accompany your text and bullets. Then a video or two (just shoot it with your phone or whatever you have handy).

When you show some content simply show it in the different formats you've used to package it. For example, show your report on the latest product launch plan as text, add some photos of the promotional materials and a video of customers using the product. If you're presenting on recycling, show videos of people recycling, a set of photos of recycling labels and your text and bullets about why recycling is a good idea.

Answer the question: what format? Next.

Choice

Choice for your audience is a cue to their brains to engage, explore, have an adventure - to do something. Choice turns passive into some degree of interactive (another 90's buzz word). How do you add choice to your traditionally one-way communication? Try these:

Just like in those pick a path books, ask questions of your audience and let their answer determine the path through the slides or pages. If it's slides, have links to related pages and click on a link based on your audience's answer. If it's pages add something like, 'If you'd like to see last years sales figures go to page 10. If you'd prefer to see next year's sales strategy go to page 12.'

Answer the question: what path?

Your turn

How have you used gamebooks to package your newest idea? Seen other examples of this? Post a comment.

I like the hand-made technique used in this stop-motion skating video. It obviously took tons of time and effort to make. What it does show is how simple but effective it is to tell a story using cutout animation. Now; when I say animation, cutouts can actually be used to package your ideas in lots of different formats like:

• slides for a presentation (or a slidecast)
• a video
• a card deck
• a workbook
• a blog post
• a Web page
• an infographic
• a mograph (motion graphic)

Many characters (people or things) that you see in printed or digital formats are either stockphotos or vector art. Both of these work fine. A cool alternative is to use hand-drawn characters like the classic stick figure.

Hand-drawn stuff always adds personality whatever you are sharing which helps to engage your audience. However, if you don't like the way you draw or want to use something different but just as effective then cutouts are a great way to go. They are pretty quick and easy to make. Here's how to add cutouts to your next slide/post/video/[insert format here].

How to use this technique

1. Think of a person or a thing you want to use as a character in your story
2. If possible, find pictures of the character showing several emotions like happy, angry, confused, etc.
3. Cutout the character (Tip: it's totally fine to leave some background around it so it's not clean cut, unless you've got some serious time to spend in Photoshop removing the background)
4. Add to your story (which could be packaged as slides or a video or a Web page or whatever)
5. Extra credit: Add speech bubbles (hand-drawn or otherwise) to give the character a voice

Finito.

How are have you used cutouts to tell a story?

Cool aye!? Imagine sharing how to set up a Web site in Wordpress or how to uncover a client's needs or how to plant a garden. Essentially this is a bare bones, animated napkin sketch with voice over. Quick, cheap and pretty easy. If you want to lead a tribe by teaching others what you know then this is one great way to do it.

So how did he do this? I sent Austin an e-mail and he kindly told me how.

1. Drew the final image (at end of slideshow)
2. Created a series of images be deleting parts of the final image
3. Inserted the images on his slides to show them building from a blank canvas up to the final image
4. Uploaded to SlideShare
5. Added audio

And that's it.

Of course if you have some sweet graphic design skills then you could create some vector graphics and use those in your slidecast, but that is necessary to create the kind of slick presentation that Austin did.

I plan to do a slidecast to show you exactly how this is done from start to finish. Stay tuned.

Garr Reynolds - Presentation Zen 

The guru of presenting. Check out Garr's resources for organising, delivering and designing slides for your next presentation. Explore all of this site and read the blog every day. You too can become a presentation master.

Simple to remember yet powerful rule to apply when designing presentations.

Seth Godin - Tribes at TED

One of the worlds best marketers and a pretty good presenter. Watch and learn my friend.

The CommonCraft show

Not presentations per se, but a great use of stories and visuals to sell ideas.

Blair's presentation tip of the day

You and your story are your presentation just like the actor and his/her lines are the movie. Sound and lighting and backdrops and props (your slides and other multimedia wizardry) can either support or detract from you and your story. Use them wisely.

An agile approach to doing your work is all about taking a big project and breaking it down into lots of small, bite-sized projects and doing them in order of priority.

In their popular book Getting Real, 37 Signals say it this way: "Instead of a 12-week project, think of it as 12 weeklong projects."

Built into this process is the option to change priorities or add and remove features along the way. If you've worked on any kind of project, you'll know that these kinds of changes are going to happen whether you like it or not. So my thinking is, you might as well plan for them. Make changes your friend instead of an uninvited guest :) Let's look at a concrete example.

Sushi Snack Shack training course (made up name, hopefully not trade marked)

I work in the learning and development field managing projects and doing some instructional design (designing training courses, workshops, e-learning etc). I also love eating sushi. Here's how you might build a training course on making sushi the agile way.

(Disclaimer: I only know sushi from standing in line and ordering it. Some sushi-specific facts my be inaccurate. It's only an example so feel free to post a comment to correct any of these.)

Ask the client, "What are all the things we want someone to be able to do at the end of this course?"

It's a beginners course so we'll say something like (in no particular order):

• Cook rice
• Serve sushi in a takeaway container (with extras like ginger and wasabi and sauce)
• Prepare ingredients
• Roll it up
• Assemble sushi roll
• Cut sushi into pieces

Ask the development team, "How long will it take to build a course that will achieve each of these learning objectives?"

When answering this question you are trying to think about building some training for each learning objective separately. Of course they will all come together in the finished product, you will just think about working on them individually. This might look like:

• Cook rice (1 day)
• Serve sushi in a takeaway container (with extras like ginger and wasabi and sauce) (1 day)
• Prepare ingredients (2 days)
• Roll it up (1 day)
• Assemble sushi roll (2 days)
• Cut sushi into pieces (1 day)

Ask the client, "What are the highest priority things for people to learn?"

So we'll put the learning objectives into order:

1. Cook rice (1 day)
2. Prepare ingredients (2 days)
3. Assemble sushi roll (2 days)
4. Roll it up (1 day)
5. Cut sushi into pieces (1 day)
6. Serve sushi in a takeaway container (with extras like ginger and wasabi and sauce (1 day)

Ask the development team, "What can you build in week 1?"

1. Cook rice (1 day)
2. Prepare ingredients (2 days)
3. Assemble sushi roll (2 days)

The backlog then looks something like this:

1. Food hygiene (3 days)
2. Roll it up (1 day)
3. Cut sushi into pieces (1 day)
4. Serve sushi in a takeaway container (with extras like ginger and wasabi and sauce) (1 day)

Ask the development team, "What can you build in week 2?"

Here's their diagram:

I've been meaning to kick-start myself to post stuff on my blog. So what better day to start than blog action day!

The theme for blog action day this year is climate change.

Here are some of the things I do to help minimise my impact on the environment:

• Walk places instead of using vehicles as much as possible
• Don't litter
• Recycle at home and at the office

Ryan Coleman http://ryancoleman.ca/

Dan Roam http://www.thebackofthenapkin.com

Sunni Brown http://sunnibrown.com/

Mike Rohde http://www.rohdesign.com/

David Gray http://www.xplane.com/

And if you're still hungry for more visit the VizThink Blog.

Enjoy.