The handy guide to improving your public speaking skills

A couple of months ago, I started organizing small trainings at work, to help my colleagues develop their communication skills and use communication tools to improve their work impact on the business. The first thing I did was sending out a small survey to know which topics would interest them the most. And to my surprise, what came out first by a mile was the subject of "public speaking". So I brainstormed a little bit, did some research and put together a one hour, very interactive workshop.

photo credit: d'n'c via photopin cc

The workshop was very well received so I'd like to share some of my findings with you.

Why is it important that you master public speaking?

The first exercise, after a round of introduction, was to discuss this question. Why is it so important to master public speaking, and why is it important for anyone, not just professional speakers?

Here are a few answers to consider:

• To be taken more seriously by your colleagues, clients or superiors


• To learn how to convince, to win people on your side


• To look professional

Like I said, public speaking is not a skill needed just by professional speakers, but by anyone in business. It's also a very useful skill in your social life and can even help improve communication at home.

When are you subject to be presenting or speaking in public?

The most obvious situation is when delivering a speech at a conference, but there are many other situations in which you will find yourself speaking in front of others. Let's review some of them:

• During a team meeting


• In your one-on-one meeting with your manager, whether it is an annual review or a weekly meeting


• When visiting a supplier, service provider or client


• At a job interview

Sometimes you might be speaking in front of one person only, like during a job interview. But the same principles still apply. You still have to look composed, find your words, appear professional and convince.

What types of presentations can you face?

In terms of how you deliver your presentation or speech, we can also identify various situations:

• You might be in front of a crowd, presenting some powerpoint slides - the most common situation when we talk about "presentations".


• You might simply be sitting around a table during a meeting, with slides projected on the wall, or maybe just with printouts.


• Or simply you are answering questions that arise in the middle of a meeting, without any support material.

I wanted to address these various situations, because they all require some kind of preparation, as we'll see later.

What scares you the most when speaking in public?

Now, this one is an interesting question, and if you do a quick search on internet, you'll find that public speaking is actually a very common fear, sometimes ranked higher than fear of death!

So why are we so scared to speak in front of people? Again, there can be a few reasons, as came out during our workshops:

• Fear of embarrassing ourselves.


• Fear not to be taken seriously, or not be listened to.


• Fear to forget what we want to say.


• Fear to be judged.

Are all these fears justified?

I guess indeed if we deliver a very bad speech, turn all red in front of everyone and leave the room, yes, we might lose our credibility. So the best weapon is preparation. Preparing for the content of our speech or presentation, but also preparing our mental attitude for getting out there in front of people, appearing confident and doing a great job.

So let's take a look at a few tips to help you improve your public speaking skills.

Watching your body language

I'm sure you've already heard many times that body language is an important part of your communication. Heck, some people are even specialized in studying body language and use that during interviews or other assessments. Yet we do little to prepare ourselves to send the right "messages" with our body.

I'd like to show you a little video to give you just three important tips on how to improve your body language. It's just a couple of minutes, so make sure you watch it:

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Here are a few additional tips that you can also apply in your daily life:

• Give a firm handshake when meeting someone


• Don't cross your arms or legs, keep an open position


• Keep eye contact, but don't stare


• Don't be afraid to use space if you're on a stage or standing in front of people


• Relax your shoulders


• Nod when people are talking, show that you are listening


• Don't slouch, sit up straight


• Smile or even laugh if appropriate


• Restrain yourself from touching your face or neck

If you have another 18 minutes to spare, I would highly recommend watching this popular Ted talk from Amy Cuddy, on how your body language can also shape who you are.

Dealing with impromptu speeches

If you want to become more comfortable when speaking in front of people, you can work on your improvisation skills. There is quite a difference between delivering a speech that you prepared yourself and suddenly having to answer a question in front of others. You can see how you could easily get stressed, search your words and struggle to deliver anything coherent.

The idea here is to practice impromptu speeches, by speaking for a set time on any subject. It doesn't matter too much if what you say doesn't make sense, the point is to speak and get at ease with improvisation.

I learned this exercise when I attended a ToastMasters meeting last year, and here is how it goes: You will need a group of people willing to practice with you. One person will select some random subjects or questions, and ask people in the room to stand in front of everyone and speak on this subject for at least one minute.

Here are some funny questions that can generate some interesting speeches:

• What was the strangest food you have ever eaten?


• Describe how to tie a tie or shoe laces, without using your hands


• What is your idea of the perfect ringtone?


• what would you do if you won a million dollars?

When speaking in front of others, remember these few tips:

• Articulate


• Speak loud enough


• Slow down


• Breathe


• Watch your Er, Ah, Hum..


• If you loose your thread, keep calm, mark a pause and start again.

If you want to take public speaking to a new level, I highly recommend visiting your local ToastMasters group. They hold meetings everywhere in the world and you can attend one as a visitor without any engagement to see if it is for you. When was the last time you went outside of your comfort zone or tried something new?

Question: What tips do you have to share?

Do you pay attention to your customers satisfaction?

Have you ever been to a restaurant only to regret getting a table there because the service was so bad? You'd think friendly service would be the first priority of a restaurant, yet I am so often surprised and frustrated by the poor quality of service we get, so I'm sure it happens to you too.

photo credit: Alba Soler Photography via photopin cc

If I was a restaurant owner, I would make sure that my staff is friendly - patrons are what keep restaurants afloat so they should come first and be treated well. That would be my number one priority. Or Maybe number two, after food safety and hygiene of course.

I just don't understand that business owners can forget so easily how important it is to keep clients happy. It is obvious for restaurants, but the same applies for other businesses, especially the ones who offer services more than products.

So the question is, where does customer satisfaction rank in your priorities? And more importantly, how do you measure it?

Technology now makes it possible to send endless surveys to customers, and we all received these questionnaires when coming back from a hotel, plane trip or conference. Surveys are good, but I would say they're just the starting point.

To me, the success factor for ensuring customer satisfaction is to build within your business a customer oriented mindset.

In every work that you do, across all teams, you should always have your customer in mind. It's not just the customer service team having to be friendly on the phone, it's also the accounting team finding new ways to simplify procedures for customers, or top management sending regular communications to show that they care.

Boost your productivity with the Pomodoro Technique

[caption id="attachment_712" align="alignright" width="300"] Learn more about the Pomodoro Technique on the official website: www.pomodorotechnique.com[/caption]

I think I might soon fall into the category of Productivity Nerd. I constantly seem to be searching new methods to increase my productivity. I don’t think it’s a bad thing, but to some people working next to me I might appear unstable.

So one of the latest techniques I’ve been using, quite successfully, is the Pomodoro technique, invented by Francesco Cirillo in the 1980s. The idea is to use time blocks and focus all your attention to a particular task for 25 minutes, then allow yourself a 5 minute break before working on something else – or continuing the task.

What the Hilton can teach you about freebies

Everyone loves free gifts. I'm not teaching you anything new there. In fact, offering something for free to attract customers is becoming a huge bait on internet, with most websites offering a free eBook or course in return for an email address.

But I think we can look further than websites, and business owners who work offline should remember the power of freebies not only when trying to win new customers, but also for keeping existing ones and turning them into loyal clients.

Let me tell you a couple of stories.

When I met my husband, he didn't own a car anymore, so we went to prospect a few car yards to buy a new one, and he ended up buying a BMW. The last car that he had bought before that was an Alpha Romeo (yes, he's into sport cars), but for the past year he had been driving a BMW, free of charge. That BMW, free for a year, was a prize that he won from a business award in New Zealand. So, needless to say that after driving the car of his choice for a year, he was converted to the BMW brand and went back to buying one, without much hesitation.

OK, this story might be extreme, I don't know too many businesses that will offer such a grandiose prize, but the result is highly efficient: you turn influential people into loyal customers and advocates for your brand.

Let's take another example, from our recent holiday to the Seychelles. Last June we stayed at the Hilton for a week. Beautiful, amazing in fact. Very nicely designed hotel, luxurious rooms, and excellent service. But what surprised us nicely were the three vouchers that we got given when we checked in (on top of the fresh fruits and glass of Champagne): one for a massage, one for a romantic spa and the last one for a nice afternoon tea at the bar.

You might argue that these gestures are the least the hotel can do to please you given the rate that you pay, but in fact how many luxury hotels do offer little treats like that? Even if you paid a lot for the service, little attentions like these ones (did I mention that we also received fresh delicacies and souvenirs from the island every day in the room?) always turn you into a more loyal customer.

How does this translate to your business?

Well, it's simple. Surprise your clients, go the extra mile, offer something that they don't expect. This will make them happier, and happy customers return. But also, it will generate some very nice word of mouth, because if they are like us, they will tell the world about their experience and how nicely they were treated by your business.

And if they're not customers yet, your little bait should help convincing them to buy from you.

So here is my question: are you ready to give something away to your clients?

How much can you achieve in 15 minutes?

Like most working mums, I'm a very busy person. I work full time, commute an hour each day, do the grocery shopping, prepare dinner, look after our son, etc.. So I don't have the luxury of time in my life and if I want to learn something new or work on a side project, I have to be very organized about it. But what I've discovered mainly is that I don't always need large blocks of time to work on something. Trying to find large blocks of time can actually be stressful or even depressing and I've come to the conclusion that working on something in small doses but consistently over time is a much better approach.

photo credit: Rishi S via photopin cc

The best example I have to share is about self development. Last year I discovered a daily motivation podcast, Morning Coach, that I listen to every morning. All episodes last between 15 and 18 minutes, addressing various topics. Of course in 15 minutes you can't cover a huge amount, but if you listen to them 5 days a week, Monday to Friday, you end up with a lot of ideas to contemplate, and there's always at least one good advice to take away from these podcasts. So I listen for 15 minutes daily, it doesn't take any of my time since I listen in my car while commuting to work, but I can assure you that the impact is massive. After a year of listening to the podcast, I feel like I have come a very long way in terms of self awareness and motivation, but what is more important is that because I don't feel like I spend a lot of time working on myself it never becomes a chore and I can keep going on the long run.

But enough talking about me, what I wanted to share is the simple fact that 15 minutes a day can bring a lot of improvements in your life.

What can you do in 15 minutes a day?

• Learn a new language: You can read a few pages of a book, listen to a podcast, do some grammar exercises or watch something on the web to practice the new language you want to learn.


• Learn how to play an instrument: With all the videos available on Youtube you can easily watch a tutorial and practice a few songs every day.


• Write a book: How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. So if you've always wanted to write a novel, a short book or even blog articles, all you have to do is write something every day.


• Read a book: You don't need to finish a chapter every day. Read for 15 minutes daily and before you know it, your book will be finished.


• Exercise: 15 minutes is not a lot, but if you build the habit of exercising 15 minutes every day it will become easier and easier, and over time you might want to increase the length of your session. The problem with exercising is often getting started, so if you start small but get in the habit of exercising daily, half of the battle is won.


• Remove clutter: Nobody looks at a messy garage and says "I'm so excited to clean it up, I'm going to spend the whole day reorganizing it". Instead, why not focus on 15 minutes a day, removing one thing at a time, cleaning one area after another? You can start with your desk, then your office, then move to other rooms.

I could continue for a while, but you get the idea. You don't always need 3 hours to make an impact. In fact, after reading Zen Habits for so long now, I have slightly changed my view on reaching goals, and instead of considering goals, I prefer to think of habits, because building habits is what really makes me go forward.

What about you, is there something that you do on a daily basis?

What does your Out of Office say - about you?

Every company has a corporate logo, a standard business card and maybe an Email signature template. That's good, it makes things consistent, it gives you a brand, people recognize you quickly and know what they're always dealing with the same company, regardless of who they approach in the company.

But what about your Out of Office message?

I've become the OOO police officer at work, tracking messages that don't fit our template, don't reflect our values. I've seen a few and some quite interesting. No salutations, confusing dates, no backup contacts, no thank you, silly fonts, etc...

You might say: "Common Christelle, It's not the end of the world", but it still reflects who you are and how you care about people trying to contact you.

Do you have a template?

Why I won't buy from China again

A few years ago while still in New Zealand, I was preparing for the launch of a new headphones brand and I needed to buy some promotional items to use as give-away goodies. It didn't really go like I wanted, in fact it was quite a disaster, so I'd like to tell you the story, so that you don't repeat the same mistake, and also just to entertain you.

Photo from the Big Boys Toys website

We were going to launch the new brand at a gadget/entertainment trade show ("Big Boys Toys", the name says it all), so I needed some branded goods to give away during the show and create some publicity. We chose to buy Tee-shirts and lanyards. So far, not much risk and nothing overly complicated.

I could have ordered from local suppliers in Auckland, but since we had an office in China it made sense to get them to source the goods directly, to get a much better price. I got good advice from my husband (also my boss at the time) to be really precise when telling our Chinese colleagues what products I was after. In fact I went to a shop in Auckland and chose a couple of tee-shirts which had a great cut, and shipped them to China. The idea was that they would replicate the exact cut of the tee-shirts to make sure they were nice, and at the right dimensions (I shipped 3 different sizes). Unfortunately for some reason the package never arrived, even if it was sent by DHL, and since the show was starting fairly soon we had to make do without giving them models to copy.

No problem they assured me, we'll get a nice cut and take European sizes. Being me, always positive and trusting, I didn't think much of it and went along with the new plan. We ordered quite a few boxes of tee-shirts and waited for the delivery.

A few weeks later, the boxes arrived in Auckland, and the first bad news was the huge Duties fee we had to pay. We usually imported headphones or components from China and for some reasons clothes get taxed much more, and we didn't know. Bummer.

But the worse part was yet to come. The tee-shirts had been printed with the brand logo, exactly as I had designed them, so I was quite pleased with the result, but unfortunately the sizes were completely wrong! Everything was way too big. No way they took standard European sizes.

We ordered new tee-shirts, but needless to say they didn't arrive in time for the show, so we used the large ones anyway. The only positive side of the story was that Islanders and Maoris, who can be really big, were very excited to fit a Medium size!

I mentioned that I also wanted to order branded lanyards, to use as key rings. I told my colleagues what I wanted, a lanyard with the logo printed on it, but with a ring at the end to hook keys on, not a clip for holding badges. From there came the confusion, and my colleagues made lanyards that were approximately 15cm long.. Maybe long enough to go around your wrist, but for sure too short to go around your neck.

So that was it, needless to say that I got called in the CEO's office (still my husband, but not so loving that time) and got told off properly. Lesson learned.

So what do you learn from this? Check, check and check again that you got understood and that your goods will be like you want them to be!

What Dunhill can teach you about customer service

Last week we received a hand written letter at home, posted from China. it was addressed to my husband, but I opened it anyway because I was curious to see what it was. Well I was quite surprised to discover a beautiful letter-pressed card from Dunhill, with a hand-written message on it.

The note said: "Dear Mark, I would like to take the opportunity to thank you for your recent purchase at Alfred Dunhill. I am so proud to be at your service, and I hope that you have had an unforgettable shopping experience. I look forward to seeing you in the near future. Best regards, Eric C."



And it was sent with the business card of the same sales person. Quite a dedicated staff, don't you think? How many businesses do you know will take the time to write to their customers just to say thank you?

This is Dunhill you will argue. People spend thousands of dollars with them, so yes they can afford this kind of customer service. Well, let me tell you I've seen other luxury brands treat their customers like dirt, so that's not a good argument.

And to validate my point even more, I'll also give the example of a very small company who really impressed me a few months ago with their customer mindset. This company sells nothing glamorous, in fact they retail magnets and other types of magnetic products. But they have a great sense of customer service.

I ordered a magnetic band from them, something to stick on our wall and on which we could add magnets, to use as a decoration. The order was approximately 30$, and I didn't have to prepay it when ordering online. I received the goods after only 3 or 4 days, my first surprise. But then when I opened the box, I got a whole lot of surprises.

On top of the product I ordered, I received a few samples of very strong magnets, and a little bag of teddy bear sweets. Nice one. But then there was this cute card with a photo of the team, holding a sign saying "thank you". They all boast a huge smile, so I figure they're pretty happy to work there. And the last bonus was a voucher to receive 10% on my future order.

All that for a 30$ order which I still hadn't paid (in Switzerland you hardly ever pay anything before hand). Talk about customer dedication! I kept talking about the content of the box, and the company, to whoever came into my office that day.

So the lesson is: if you care for your business, never misjudge the importance of customer service, whether you are in luxury, food, or any type of business.

Question: Do you have a story of great customer service?

5 articles worth reading about videos

If you're interested in adding videos to your marketing mix and make them successful, I've compiled this list of blog posts that will give you some good ideas, from the types of video you can create to how you can make them go viral.

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When is an explainer video right for my business?

Explainer videos, like their name indicate, are designed to explain something. Probably the most popular type of video created by businesses, to explain how their products work for example. The article gives some good examples and explain when these videos can be created.

3 ways Video scribing benefits your business

I love scribing videos - you know when you see a hand drawing a cartoon in front of you, illustrating a story. This is short article, easy to read for a short introduction to scribing.

Consumers Say Product Videos are ‘Perfect’ for Mobile Viewing

It makes sense, with the number of smartphones on the market now and faster connections, watching videos on a small screen is becoming more popular than reading. This article is a short report extracted from a survey on the matter.

The 5 Characteristics of a Successful Business Video

The title says it all, so read on to understand what makes a great business video.

The key to video & viral marketing

Wouldn't it be nice if your video went viral and was sent all over the internet? Read this article to understand the anatomy of a viral video. And if you have a lot of time to kill, read this much longer article from Tim Ferris on how to create viral videos - inspired by his book trailer.

5 reasons to use video marketing for your business

Late last year I was lucky to work on what I think was the best project of my career so far: the creation of a lipdub video. if you don't know what a lipdub video is, it's one of these music videos where you see lots of people appearing in front of the camera, pretending to sing on top of a soundtrack.

The idea came from my CEO as a replacement to our traditional Christmas Card, and although at first I was very sceptical and apprehensive, the video turned out excellent and we received a great feedback.

Of course this type of video is highly entertaining and might not be as educational as you would like to present your company or your products, but for me it got me into video mode and I'm definitely looking forward to creating more.

Going somewhere? Tell the world

Once you have selected which events your company is going to participate to this year, it's time to make sure your customers are going to come and see you. How do you tell the world where you are going?

Here are 7 ways to let your customers know that you are participating at an event:

1. Announce it on your website: The first place where you can make public that you have decided to attend a tradeshow or conference is on your website. If you attend a lot of shows during the year you might have an "event" section on your site, but otherwise you can just use your "news" section, or your blog. Make sure you specify what the show is about, and where you will be located at the event: hall and booth number if it's a trade show, time of the presentation if it's a conference, etc..


2. Customize your email signature: If this is the main event you are going to attend in a while and you really want your clients to know they can find you there, then you can customize your email signature and add the logo of the event, along with the date and details of the event, as before.


3. Advertize strategically: Choose the websites or trade magazines that are most relevant to the particular event you're attending and place an ad in which you will announce your participation. The ad itself won't be about the event, but rather about products or services that you will be showcasing at the event. But be creative and find fun ways to announce the event: for example add a fake post-it or a sticker saying "visit us at XXX, booth XXX".


4. Tell your newsletter subscribers: If you send a regular newsletter to your stakeholders, then definitely include a short section about the events a few months before the event starts. Make sure you include a link to the event so that they can find out more and decide whether or not this event is designed for them.


5. Be listed on the organizer's website: When you are an exhibitor at a trade show, or a speaker at a conference, you are listed on the organizer's website and catalogue. Make sure you send them your logo, a brief description of your company, the right category of products or services, and the link to your website. You can also choose to pay a premium to advertise on their website or in their paper catalogue/show guide, which can be great since visitors will use the guide when browsing the event.


6. Use stickers everywhere: Another creative way to let people know where you are going is to have some small stickers printed "Visit us at XXX show" and add them to all your company's communications for a few months: letters that are sent from sales or admin staff, invoices, etc..


7. Send invites: And finally, the most important one, think about who you really want to see at the event and send a formal invitation, whether by mail or post. We'll be talking more about that this week so stay tuned.

Question: Where else do you publicize for the events you are attending?

Discussion: how would you celebrate your business 10th anniversary?

Later this year the company I work for is celebrating its 10th anniversary. We're in the midst of planning some events for staff, customers and other stakeholders and the exercise is interesting - we get to brainstorm lots of interesting ideas.

What about you, how would you celebrate your company's 10th anniversary? What would you organise for your best clients? Leave a comment after the post and let's start the discussion.

(Note: This post is inspired by a group writing project on ProBlogger)

How do you choose your events?

As a marketer you are more than surely going to attend some events at some point in your career. It is quite possible that you will also have to organize events, or at least manage your company's participation at an event. Events are a great way to promote your company's services and products, reinforce your brand, find a new audience, or even just network with like minded people.

So let's look at what types of events are out there and how to find the best fit for you.

Four types of events to attend

• Trade shows: These are the most commonly attended events from most companies. Usually organized by type of industry, trade shows are a great way to showcase your latest products, benchmark your competition and get new leads.


• Conferences: Conferences are slightly different from trade shows, consisting mainly of speeches given by industry professionals. The benefits there are more about education and networking, and for the speakers to show their expertise on a particular subject. Conferences are often tied in with trade shows, with exhibitors having some of their staff deliver a speech.


• Workshops: As much as a conference can be quite passive for a participant (visitor), a workshop is a much more practical event, where small groups of people sit in a room to work on a particular subject.


• Gala dinners and sponsoring events: This is quite a different type of event but something that can work very well in a local community to increase your company's exposure. Be a sponsor in an Awards ceremony, or sponsor a local sports event - but make sure you don't just put a logo on a banner, try to be at the event and participate in some way.

How to add simple text to a photo with Photoshop

In this very short video tutorial, I show you how to add text on top of your images using Photoshop, and how to change the color of the text or resize it.

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3 simple ways to convert your photos to black and white with Photoshop

Black and white photos have something very appealing when done right. Not every photo is suited to be converted to black and white, but when you want your image to stand out in the middle of other colorful messages, using a black and white photo can be a good idea.



In this short video tutorial I show you three simple ways to convert a photo to black and white with Photoshop.

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Basic Photoshop skills: resizing, rotating and cropping photos

Have you ever taken a beautiful photo in a place that you really loved, only to realize later on that your finger was on the camera and that part of the photo was hidden? I did that on holiday, taking a photo of the beach from my towel, only to realize that my knee was on the way.

Luckily, we can crop photos and remove areas we don't want to appear.

Today I am going to show you how to crop a photo with Adobe Photoshop, but also how to rotate the photo to suit a better angle and resize it to the dimensions you need.

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Cropping is a very important feature, and you should always try a few variations of the original photo by cropping certain areas.

How to find beautiful illustrations without ruining yourself

I talked about where to find stunning photos for your marketing material, but illustrations can add a nice touch to your publications and can help explain concepts better than photos. There are different types of illustrations that you can use, for example, cartoon-like drawings, vector images or even icons. I'll give you some ideas of where to find some, but first, I want to explain what a vector image is.

How to find stunning photos for your marketing material

If you want to add some photos on your publications, wether online or printed, you basically have three options to source them:

1. Finding free photos on the web

As we’ve seen before, you need to be careful when using images on your site and make sure that you are allowed to do so. Don’t just google images and choose the ones you like, it might get you into serious trouble.

If you are looking for photos, I’ll give you two reliable sources for finding stunning images for FREE on the web.

Understanding Copyrights on images

A picture is worth a thousand words, we all know that. The web is becoming more and more visual, so our thirst for using images on our sites is growing. But if you want to use photos or illustrations on your website, or any other marketing material, you need to by careful and check that you have the rights to use these images, otherwise you might get into trouble.Typically, an image is either in the public domain, i.e. anyone can use it for free, or it has some kind of usage restrictions defined by the author (the photographer or illustrator).

Using check lists to manage your work

Ever since I started working, I've always been a big fan of To Do lists. I find that if I put things down on paper, and out of my brain, it relaxes me as I know that I don't have to constantly remind myself that I need to do XYZ. But over the years, I changed the way I managed my lists a few times, regularly changing my method, testing it for a while and changing it again to see if I could find something better.

The art of self education

I am a big believer in self education and continuous learning. In fact I already talked about it in a previouspost. I was blessed to have a great education and obtain both a marketing and engineering degree but I value what I've learned by myself even more.

What we learn at school is useful, but we're young when we study. Often we are not sure what we want to do with our lives and we don't have enough experience to understand the fullness of what is taught. Our working life is so long when we compare it to our studies, it would not make sense to completely give up on education at that stage.

photo credit: Mike Rohde via photopin cc

How to love Monday Morning

Are you one of these persons who struggle to get up in the morning and hate going back to work on Mondays after a nice weekend ? I used to be like that, but I changed and now I actually enjoy monday mornings. I really do.

Does this conversation sound familiar to you? "hello, how are you this morning? Oh, you know, like a Monday Morning".

photo credit: ♥KatB Photography♥ via photopin cc

Design trends: understanding responsive web design

I'm not a professional web designer, and I don't expect you to be one either, nor to be very technically aware on the subject. But if you are a serious marketer, you need to understand some basics around web design, and stay aware of trends. Digital is growing very fast, in particular for mobile and tablets, and this changes everything in the way we access content online. So it is crucial that your site reacts well on these devices - one thing that responsive websites do.

What is responsive web design?

Here is the definition from Wikipedia: "Responsive Web Design" is a web design approach aimed at crafting sites to provide an optimal viewing experience - easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling - across a wide range of devices (from desktop computer monitors to mobile phones)".

In other words, when your website is responsive, it will adapt itself to the type of device used by the reader: menu elements might go from a horizontal alignment to a vertical one, images will scale themselves, etc.. It all happens in a very dynamic way without the viewer needing to scale anything or click a button to access the mobile version of the site.

Perform a health check of your website in 5 steps

Whether your website has been around for 6 months or 8 years, it is important that you regularly review its performance, to know what can be improved or what needs to be changed. There are several ways of assessing the quality and the effectiveness of your website, and I will give you 5 simple steps to do so:

1. Review your website statistics with Google Analytics

The first thing you can do to know how your site is doing is to look at your statistics. This step can be very quick and will give you a really good idea of your performance: how much traffic you get, which content is worth publishing, etc..

2. View your site as a first timer

When we spend a lot of time working on something, we usually become blind of a few details. How many times have you written a short note only to realize once you sent it that there was a major typo in it? With the same approach, try to put yourself in the shoes of a new visitor, and note everything that you experience and feel as you browse the site. Do you struggle to find the menu, are there too many clicks to go from one section to another, is the site really slow to load, etc..?

3. Review your objectives

You don't have a website just because it's a trend to be on the web. Your website is a great tool to promote your company or your brand, it's here to work for you, it has some clear objectives to reach: increase the number of leads, help sell a book, etc.. Review your objectives and see if there are any actions you can take today to reach them faster. For example, if the main objective of your site was to get people to register to your newsletter, but your list is not growing well, you might want to declutter your site and make this one call to action very obvious on the site "register to our newsletter".

4. Check your social performance

Statistics are a great way to check how well your site is doing, but interactions from your readers are just as valuable. If you added some social sharing buttons on your site, check how many times people shared your content. Which pages are shared most? That will tell you the type of content they like. Also look at the number of comments on your blog if you have one, never forget to read through them. Conversations that happen there are often just as interesting as the post itself.

5. Don't forget the design

Design to me is still a very important part of the equation. I get turned down immediately when I land on an ugly site, or one that looks like the sites we created years ago. Not everyone is like me, but it pays to review your design and keep it tidy, modern and in line with your branding. After all, it's well accepted that the state of your reception area says a lot about your office, so what about your website? You send a strong message there if you don't put any effort in your site's look and feel.

So roll up your sleeves, get to work on your site, and let me know what you find out!

You can't manage what you can't measure

I've heard a lot of people use this quote lately: "You can't manage what you can't measure", and you have to agree that it makes perfect sense, in particular for something that you can measure easily, like the performance of your website.

The question is what to measure exactly, or how do you define performance? I guess it depends on your objectives, which by the way I hope you already set for your website.

Here are some things your can measure easily:

• Unique visitors: How many people come to your site every day?


• Page views: How many pages have been viewed on your site?


• Average duration: How long do your visitors stay on your site? You might have hundreds come in on one day, but if they stay 20s and leave it might mean that they arrived there by mistake or didn't like what they saw.


• Top pages: Which pages on your site get the most visits?


• Sources: Does your traffic come from search engines or from referrals?


• Keywords: What are people searching when land on your site?

With that in mind, I was amazed a couple of months ago at work when I met one of our web agencies and they told me that they never configured Google Analytics for our site. Or any other tool. Shocking.

So if you don't have any tool installed yet to analyze the stats of your website, I suggest you take action today and install Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a tool graciously offered by Google to help you check the performance statistics of your website.


If you don't want to get in the technical details of the installation, or if you don't have access to the back engine of your site, you can ask your agency to do it for you. Then all you need to do is create an account with Google and login with Google Analytics. But make sure you know what's happening with your site.

Question: Do you measure your website statistics? Which tool do you use?

 

Top 5 websites to learn Adobe Indesign

This week I've been talking about Adobe Indesign, a desktop publishing software from the Adobe suite that I love very much. If you're new to the tool and want to learn the basics, then I can recommend these 5 resources:

Adobe Indesign website: Help and Tutorials

The first place to check would be the actual Adobe website, in their help menu. The community is well developed there and you can find a regular help menu, text and video tutorials, FAQs, and community support.

VectorTuts

I've already mentioned this website when I talked about Photoshop because this site is a gold mine. I've been following its tutorials for years and really came to love their network of sites (they have sites for tutorials, templates, stock images, etc). If you're looking for Indesign tutorials, then head to the category Tutorials > Layout, and you'll have more than enough. There is also the option to pay a membership fee to have access to some premium content, but I already struggle to keep up with the free articles!

Layers Magazine

Layers Magazine is also a nice website I've been browsing for a while. When you land on it you can immediately notice the Adobe icons and choose which one interests you, so in this case Indesign.

Lynda

If you're serious about learning Indesign, then you might want to consider Lynda. Lynda is a membership site where you can learn almost anything (be it web, business or design) from video tutorials. I've never tried it but it seems very comprehensive.

Youtube

Finally, I don't think you can avoid going to Youtube with its thousands of videos. Just search for Indesign tutorials and you'll have more than enough. The only thing is to find quality videos there, so look at the number of views a video has, or find a channel with plenty of videos on the same subject.

A quick tour of Adobe Indesign

Earlier this week I talked about Indesign and what it can do for you. Since it's quite a different product from usual publishing tools, mainly Word, and it's not as popular as Photoshop, the best way to introduce it is to give you a short tour of the software.

I've created a short video showing you in the inside of Indesign, you can find it at the bottom of this post. Below are the key elements I talk about in the video:

• Pages
  In Indesign, new pages are not created automatically when you type text. You have to first create the pages, then add some text placeholders on them.


• Layers
  If you're familiar with Photoshop, then you might already understand the concept of layers: Indesign allows you to create various layers to work with on which you can place objects. For example, you might have a layer for the background, a layer for the text you enter, and one for the images. Or you can have a layer for each language in your document.


• Place holders
  To add some text or an image in Indesign, you must first add a placeholder, i.e. a container (it can be rectangle, circular or in fact any shape is possible) in which your content will go. Maybe you could think of it as a corkboard on which you would pin little sheets of paper.


• Images links
  Once images are placed in your document (inside placeholders), they are not actually embedded in it, they are simply linked from their original location. Which means that your image library needs to be very well organized and not change later on, or that you will need to copy the image file and place it in the same folder as your Indesign document to make sure you don't misplace it.


• Drawings and effects While Indesign is often used for writing documents, it offers very good options for creating illustrations or adding some effects to images, text or shapes. So if you are preparing a technical Specs Sheet, you can actually draw some of the illustrations directly in Indesign.


• Masters
  In the same way that you can create a master in Powerpoint to control the background of your slides, you can use Masters to control your pages in Indesign. A master will help you control what the background will be like, but also what margins your page will have, where the text will go, how many columns you might have, etc..


• Precision
  Indesign is not the easiest tool to use, it is easy to spend a lot more time on it than on Word, but to me what makes it so special is the precision that it offers. You simply can't beat it. With Indesign you can control how your text flows from a place to another, how many columns there are, how many mms there are between each, how text would wrap around an image and much more.

So here is the video I promised, taken from a page of my free eBook:

[video type="youtube" clip_id="3cX9q9B4Hks"]

Question: Have you ever tried to use Indesign? If so, what did you think about it?

 

Why I love Indesign, and so should you

Adobe Indesign is a tool I learned to love but that not many people are familiar with. I've often defended it in favor of other word publishing software and since I've been asked a few times why I like it or what it can do, I thought I'd write a couple of articles about Indesign, to give you a little introduction and see if you want to try it for yourself.

First, what is Indesign? Indesign is part of the Adobe Creative Suite package, it comes along with Photoshop, Illustrator and Acrobat. I explained the difference between the three tools in a previous post, but to summarize, Photoshop is to manipulate photos (although you can do much much more), illustrator is to create illustrations, and Indesign is to create documents.

Using slideshare for your presentations

If you're proud of the presentation you've just delivered and want to show it to a large audience, then you can try using Slideshare to share your slides on the internet. Slideshare is a cloud service where you can upload your presentations and share them easily.

Of course if your presentation was a financial report prepared for your CFO, you'd better keep it private on your C: drive, but if you're willing to go public, read on.

Here is an example of application. This week I'm talking about presentations on this blog and I just finalized my presentation on "3 simple steps to improve your presentations" (include link). I obviously want to share it with you, so slideshare immediately comes to mind. I could host the file on my server and give you a link to download it, but who would really want to download yet another large file and wait for the download before they can see it? Slideshare offers a much better alternative.

Why share your slides on Slideshare?

1. You can reach anyone
Slideshare is open to anyone, no need to login or be a premium member to view presentations. When uploading slides, you can choose to make them private for a small group, or public for the whole web to see.

2.Presentations are embedded on your site
All the presentations you upload on Slideshare remain on their server, but you don't need to necessarily view them on the Slideshare website. You can embed a slide viewer with reading controls (next, previous, full screen, etc) on your own website for your readers to view your presentation without ever leaving your site. Exactly like you can do with a Youtube video.

3. No need to download anything
As mentioned earlier, readers don't need to download a presentation file to view it, it is displayed directly on the screen, in the player. This might seem a small detail but it means one less step for your reader to take before viewing your presentation, which can make all the difference on the web, where people have a very short attention span.

4.You get more traffic
People browse or search for presentations on Slideshare, so you will find more viewers for your presentation if you put it on Slideshare than if you simply host it on your website and only share it there. These viewers might then come to your website if they liked what they read (as long as you didn't forget to include a link to your site), so the instant benefit of using Slideshare is finding new readers for your website. Additionally all these links from Slideshare to your website create some good SEO magic and will improve your ranking in search engines, bringing you even more readers.

So here is my presentation, displayed directly in my blog for you to view without going anywhere else.


Question: Do you use slideshare? What do you like about it?

3 simple tips to instantly improve your presentations

When I arrived at my new job last year, one of the responsibilities I was given was to help people build better presentations. To be honest at first I didn't feel like I was the right person for this. Who was I to tell senior staff that their slides needed a makeover? But when looking at why passed in my hands, it was not that hard to quickly improve the presentations, at least from a design perspective.

That's what I want to share with you, three simple steps you can take to instantly improve your presentations:

1. Choose a color scheme
Your background is green because it's your corporate color. You write in black, have orange titles, and highlight important text in red. That seems practical, but I bet the result will be simply…ugly.
A simple way to make a presentation slide look well put together is to select just two or three colors, ideally colors that go well together, and stick with them on all the slides. It's not something complicated, yet not many people apply this principle of choosing a color palette.

Why you should build a good picture library

An indispensable tool for any marketer is a good picture library, full of high quality images and well organized. Having images at hand when creating any communication material will be of great help. I'd like to discuss why I think pictures are so important, give you a few ideas of where you can source them.

Why you should value pictures

• Pictures improve your visibility online:

For a start, having pictures in your blog properly tagged with a relevant file name and description will improve your SEO ranking. But most importantly, images are visual and help people scan through content quickly. A direct result is that using images will get your content found more easily on Social Media sites, since most people will look at your picture over someone's text.

• A picture is worth a 1'000 words

We've all heard this old saying, and whether you use a picture online or inside a brochure, it remains valid that a picture can help illustrate a point much more quickly than a text. Think of technical illustrations, but also anything that has to do about design or even emotions.

• Pictures will make you look professional

If chosen carefully and used properly, pictures will enhance any type of material you produce and make it more sophisticated. I would stress the importance of using good quality photos or drawings though, and not jumping to a clipart or poorly taken photo.

• Pictures can be used and reused

A good collection of images is a great thing to have in your tool box. You will be able to reuse your pictures online, in your print material or at trade shows. Using your pictures across a variety of medias is a good thing to reinforce your branding - assuming you chose them well and they represent your business.

What you can use pictures for?

There is no limitation really, but just to give you an idea of the importance of building a picture library for your business, here are some examples of application:

• Websites, blogs


• Social media sites


• Presentations


• Print: brochures, posters, annual reports, technical specs sheets


• Trade show booths


• Office decoration

Where to find good pictures

As stated earlier I think it's really important that you choose your pictures carefully, keeping in mind the use you intend to make of them. Also, when I speak of pictures, it includes photos (products, places, people, etc) and illustrations (paintings, drawings, technical illustrations, etc). Without going too much into the details, here is a quick list of where you can find pictures:

• Finding photos
  
  
  
  • Pay a professional and take your own
  
  
  • Purchase stock photos on sites like Istockphoto
  
  
  • Source Creative Commons photos from the web
  
  
  • Use your own photos
  
  
  
  

• Finding illustrations
  
  
  
  • Hire an illustrator
  
  
  • Purchase stock illustrations
  
  
  
  

When writing this post I realize how much I like talking about images, and how much there is to say about it, so I will definitely come back more in details on the subject.

Photo: photo credit: Stuck in Customs via photopin cc

Question: Have you built your own library? What's in it?