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Why your Presentation must include VIDEO

February 16, 2019

Everyone’s board of PowerPoints the solution is video. You need to keep your audience engaged, excited.

Pre-Show Video

So, let’s start with the pre-show video. Everyone’s been there before, you’re sitting in a conference, you are waiting for it to start and there’s a looping PowerPoint. Usually, on these PowerPoints, it has things like, be sure to tag the hashtag for the event, here’s the Wi-Fi information etc. Oh, here’s an … Maybe sponsor logos up on one slide or maybe a couple of sponsor logos.” We’ve all seen this before.

However, you can make this a little bit more exciting by going from PowerPoint to doing video. And the reason why is you can do things like, for example, animations, you can add transitions. Adds just a little bit more energy. So, what I would recommend is have this “pre-roll” or this pre-show, slide show video created that way you can add a little bit of energy, while everyone’s filing into the room. They sit down and are, waiting.

This is also a great chance to distill information. You don’t want to necessarily say over the microphone and kill the energy in the room before everything starts. Things like Wi-Fi information, hashtags, sponsor logos. All that sort of stuff. Put that up on there and get creative.

One of our clients actually had a really creative idea to add trivia in between. Because the idea is that there are all sorts of people sitting in the audience that don’t necessarily want to talk to each other, maybe they’re just sitting there waiting and they don’t want to, twiddle their thumbs. So instead, throw some trivia up on the screen. Whether related to your organization, maybe your industry, or maybe even just like fun movie facts or something like that. You can get creative with it. Think about what would be fun to see in these videos leading up.

Another tip, when it comes to this, is spice it up do something a little different each day no one wants to see the same content day after day. So, if you have trivia, do different trivia questions for the second day’s pre-roll videos. There you go.

Countdown Video

Now the audience is engaged. They’re sitting in their seats. They’re looking at the screens. They’re excited. What’s next! That’s where the countdown comes in. The best thing you can do is create a massive amount of energy in the room leading up to everything starting. Most conferences start with speakers sneaking onto a stage and a half-given clap. Instead, build a countdown. Not, five seconds, four seconds” instead I’m talking about 20 minutes. Start a countdown showing 20 minutes going. And, the best thing you can do is actually integrate this into your pre-conference video. So, the best way that I’ve seen this done, is it starts off, maybe 10 minutes before.

First, this is a great way to say get in your seats. Get ready, it’s about to go down. Instead of making the “Please, ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats.” You know, the boring announcement. Instead, this tells people, “Hey, this is going on.” It also, as it gets closer, obviously builds anticipation. Who doesn’t love a good countdown?

Build Anticipation

And as you do it, have the music get louder, have it built up. And hopefully you have a really good audio sound system.

Introduction Videos

You don’t want to just have one person walk on stage to some background music. What I recommend is introduction videos. Instead of a relatively boring bio have a video made for every single one of your speakers. This works really well for a number of reasons. It allows you to really, hype up your speakers. Especially if they’re not very well know. What’s great, is you can add high-energy music to it. And then, at the end of it, “Please welcome to the stage” this person and their name gets said correctly, it’s already taken care of, and ready to go. At this point you need to add any additional resources you can to add to the energy

Coming Next Video

Now were at the stage of being at the end of the general session. You know what usually happens? Someone walks on stage, does, some housekeeping notes and then everyone leaves. All the energy you just built up and excitement just whittles away. We don’t want to have that. So, what we want to do is to continue building the excitement. We also want to build that excitement for the next day. So, the coming next or stay tuned for tomorrow video comes in.

At the end of the day inside your general session, show a video, like a trailer, like a movie trailer, getting people excited for the next day. The reason why this is important is A. It helps you do those housekeeping items that you need to do to tell delegates about, . the happy hour coming on tomorrow, the presenter’s coming tomorrow, this and this and that … Get excited. This and this and that … That can all be put in that video.

What is great is that, now, you’ve got, built that energy through, all the way to the end where now your presenters are going to be excited and ready to go.

Recap Video

A lot of conferences are doing this where they have someone going around the entire conference day after day shooting video all the time. And, overnight, they cut and make a quick trailer showing what happened yesterday.

This is a great video that you can splice into your pre-roll or show right after your countdown, or even before your countdown. But, what’s great about this is that a lot of this content so far, right? Your presenter introductions, your countdown, your pre-roll … It can’t be used outside of the conference. However, these recap videos, even though you’re going to be utilizing them on-site to recap each day, you can utilize this as marketing material for next year. And boom, look at that. Two for one, you get a free video, marketing video and also a video to build some excitement about your conference.

 

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