Online education portals like Udacity and Coursera are really changing the world of remote learning in significant ways. By making free and high quality education accessible to a global audience, these platforms are opening up undreamt of possibilities for communities around the world to improve, grow, and prosper in the digital economy of the 21st century. Education at top tier colleges and universities has traditionally been a social and economic privilege, but now anyone can join in the learning revolution by sitting in virtual classrooms with the world’s best and brightest educators. Whether this involves learning how to code and build smart phone apps, or starting up a new business, or learning about public health literacy, the sky is the limit of what’s now possible.
Now that many of the top search engines are providing blended results, implementing video into your online marketing strategy is more important than ever. Because Google’s new algorithm appears to show a preference for videos, savvy internet online marketers understand the value of using free presentation tools and adding videos to their sites to improve their SEO profile.
In one survey, 46% of people said that they would look for more information about a product after seeing it in a video on the internet. But it can’t just be any video – it needs to have good quality information and relevance for the viewer. It needs to keep their attention and make them want to watch until the end. Videos can be informative, educational or just for fun. As a matter of fact, studies show that when it comes to video content, humor is important. Burst Media reports that comedy videos garner 39% of viewers, followed by news videos (33%) and music videos (31%).
Because of advancements in cloud-based technology and software, you don’t have to be an expert to put together powerful presentations for your website – and you don’t even need a video camera. With tools that are available, you could start in the morning and have a presentation done by the time you are ready to call it a night. Now it’s one thing to say that there are free presentation tools easy enough for you to build a presentation in a day — it’s another to back it up!
So this week I set out on a challenge.
My goal was to find 5 Free Presentation Tools that I had never used before (that I could join without any payment info) and use them to “write” the rest of this article – and each presentation needed to take less than 8 hours to make. Here’s how I made out.
(Qualifier – I have used PowerPoint before so that gave me a little bit of a head start)
In order to choose a tool, you need to decide on a type of presentation. I used Prezi for this section. One of the great features of Prezi is the way you can click anywhere on a slide to zoom in or zoom out and then click the forward button to get back to the presentation. Try it out on slide #9 so you can get a close up of the recommendations – and the links in the presentation work too! (You’ll learn more about Prezi in the next slideshow.)
Once you know what kind of presentation you will be doing, you need to choose a tool that has the options you need. I used SlideRocket for this section because it has an awesome feature to embed videos within the pages of the presentation – very cool!
Google Slides is a great free substitute for a PowerPoint. It also has the great feature of being able to embed youtube videos and let’s you work and sync collaboratively.
In addition to embedding your presentation into your website, it is also a good idea to post your presentations to at least one of the online presentation sharing communities. For this section I used Zoho Show, one of the many features of the Zoho Suite of online tools.
I would have liked to test out another popular presentation tool, Apple Keynote, but until my birthday I’m a PC and Android gal so it will have to wait. So instead, I learned how to use AuthorSTREAM to convert my google presentation, to a powerpoint presentation and then to a video that could be uploaded to Youtube.
And last but not least, let’s end with a good laugh…
I hope I’ve inspired you to stop procrastinating and start creating!
By the way, my favorite free presentation tool is Prezi because I loved how the creation process was like how I use Mind Mapping to organize my thoughts and ideas. Plus the end product is so much different from everything else out there. And I have to admit that I was having so much fun with the “fun-ness” of Prezi that I did spend more than 8 hours by adding the owl’s thought bubbles and playing around with layout! Another thing I absolutely loved about Prezi was the built in community – there is so much to learn from everyone.
And I can’t imagine ever going to plain ol’ PowerPoint after this challenge. Can you?
Outside of my freelance work as a writer, I provide business consulting, web design and online marketing services for small businesses – from one small business owner, to another. As an entrepreneur who has been through the struggles of learning how to succeed when resources were limited, I understand what it is like to build a small business from the ground up. My formal training is in Psychology and this background gives me a unique perspective on the world of marketing and behavior. I have been a work-at-home mother since 2002 and absolutely love the freedom that being self employed provides.
