Posts Tagged ‘Apple’

This presentation trick uses QR Codes, those funny little scrambled bar code looking things that you’re now seeing all over the place. Smart phones with QR Code scanners can scan these QR Codes and be taken to the associated web address that are embedded in the code.

What we’re going to do is to add QR codes to a presentation, then allow your audience to scan or link to a mobile version of your presentation. That’s right, they’ll have the presentation in their hands and don’t have to do things like take pictures of the screen or re-type every single note into their laptops.

This is how to do the trick:

1) Create a special link for your presentation. I use the “Pretty Links” plugin in WordPress to generate these redirecting links. For example, if I have a presentation for the Santa Paula “Good Morning Santa Paula” event, I’ll make the link be: “http://www.jpluna.com/gmsp.” Using Pretty Links, I can direct the link to anywhere I want on the Web, including pages that are not on my JP Luna Media site.

If you use something like Pretty Links, you can also build in tracking codes but that’s an advanced topic. If you don’t have Pretty Links, you can create a Web page that uses that name and do a Meta Refresh to the new presentation Web location or use your other preferred redirect method.

(view full size)

2) Create your Power Point presentation then generate a new QR Code that redirects visitors to your custom web address. You can use my QR Code Generator tool to create the QR Code. Yes, now you’re starting to understand the full extent of my geekiness.

Snapshot of QR Code Generator tool

3) Upload your Power Point presentation to Slideshare.net. This puts your presentation online immediately. Slideshare is a great tool because it has a strong social component and it works well on most smart phones.

4) Go back to your Pretty Links setting or your Web page redirect resource and make the pretty link redirect to the new slideshare.net web address for your presentation. The slideshare.net link will be something like “http://www.slideshare.net/yourusername/your-presentation-title” where “yourusename” is your Slideshare username and “your-presentation-title” is a portion of your presentation title.

5) At the beginning of the presentation, tell your audience that they can view the presentation on their mobile devices either by scanning the QR Code OR by typing in the pretty and shortened link into their mobile devices. This will direct them to a great mobile version of your Slideshare presentation and they can focus on your message and not on writing down everything they see on the screen.

Want to try a QR Code Scanner for you iPhone? So far, my favorite scanner is the ATT QR Code Scanner. You can either look for it in your iPhone’s app store or you can link to the online iTunes store. If you already have another QR Code scanner and want to try this one out, you can scan this code and it will take you to the app on your phone. This is a good example of why QR Codes are powerful.

Scanning a QR Code using and iPhone

It’s hard to describe the glee that shows up on people’s faces when they see the presentation on their mobile devices. This is especially true if their geekiness is rewarded for having a QR Code scan application on their mobile device.

First page of the presentation:

(view full size)

Note, I found that embedding Slideshare on a WordPress page/post works fine for Web visitors using regular PCs, but it will only show a link to the Slideshare presentation on mobile devices. Clicking the link takes the user to the Slideshare site that will then properly load the device. But that’s an extra click. That’s why I link directly to the Slideshare site now.

Would you like to see a VIDEO TUTORIAL of how I do this? If so, I will create a video once I get to a total of 100 retweets of this blog post, Facebook comments on the JesseLuna.com FB page and Facebook “Likes” on this post.

Resources:

• View the Good Morning Santa Paula presentation on Slideshare.net
• How to Add QR Codes to your blog (VIDEO)
• Create your own QR Code

Share on Facebook

I love promoting awesome people, great causes, events, and organizations/businesses that are doing interesting things. My favorite tech tool to help me do this is the Apple iPhone 3Gs.

There’s a reason the iPhone 3Gs is such a hot seller, it is a mobile promotion machine. I use it to check email on the road or at home when away from my laptop. I use it to take pictures that I post to my Twitter and Facebook status feeds and to various blogs. The built in video allows me to post to my YouTube Channel, post via email to my Posterous account, send short videos via 12seconds.tv, and to live stream using Qik.com and UStream. With this single tool, I can immediately share what’s going on with my life or at an event.

Here’s an example of how I used my iPhone for shameless self-promotion. A couple of months back, I noticed Nancy Rodriguez’s Twitter update where she mentioned that she and the crew from Q1047, the local Hip-Hop and R&B station, where going to be live broadcasting from a nearby McDonald’s. It was around 7am so I grabbed a fast shower then zoomed over to McDees. I had chatted with Nancy before via Twitter so it was great meeting her and the rest of the Rico and Mambo show. I took a couple of photos of them in action, posted the pictures to Twitpic and Twitter, spoke to Nancy, then headed back to go home.

Now, I’ve been listening to Q1047 since I moved to Ventura County and it’s my favorite station. So I was glad to post pictures and tweet about them on Twitter. But as I headed back to the car I realized that I could have plugged my new online blogging course. So I decided to grow a sack and went back to ask Nancy to send a shoutout to my BuildYourFanBase.com readers and she kindly did so.

Fifteen minutes after I left the live broadcast, I had uploaded the video shoutout to YouTube and had already tweeted out a link to my blog post on the event. Minutes later Nancy retweeted the link and gave my blog and new blog class an on-air shoutout.

Now that’s promotion at the speed of light!

Do you have any other mobile promotion tech tools that you swear by?

[Cross posted to www.jesseluna.com]

Share on Facebook