Book Image

Instant Brainshark

By : Daniel Li
Book Image

Instant Brainshark

By: Daniel Li

Overview of this book

Brainshark's audio annotation system is a power presentation tool that allows you to convert your boring, outdated slideshows into engaging and powerful audio presentations. Alongside its mobile functionality and customer feedback capabilities, it provides an easy-to-use interface for anyone from account executives to sales directors. "Instant Brainshark" will quickly get you started with creating online presentations and web presentations following best practices. The book covers the basics of BrainShark and explores a variety of best practices in both Internet marketing and presentation design to help you build effective and powerful presentations. Instant Brainshark will start you off with the basic functionality of BrainShark in order to introduce you to the best practices involved in presentation design. Then, it will guide you through a series of important and useful recipes that will show you how to reach customers via various marketing channels. You will learn how to find customers through social media networks, whether they be on a desktop computer or mobile device, as well as how to get feedback from your valued customers. You will also dig into BrainShark's audio annotation system and learn how to get the most out of it by following the recommended guidelines. Lastly, the book will guide you through a recipe on how to upload your BrainShark audio presentations as videos on YouTube, furthering the exposure of your presentations. Using Instant Brainshark, you will learn everything you need to know, from starting your first presentation and applying audio annotations to sharing it across multiple social media websites and retrieving customer feedback.
Table of Contents (7 chapters)

Designing mobile-friendly presentations (Become an expert)


With the evolution of cellular devices, people are more accessible via their smartphones than ever before. The ability to design mobile-friendly presentations to ensure that your mobile users are not lost is a great way to keep yourself ahead of the competition. This recipe will cover the best practices in mobile presentation design. We note that these tips are geared towards creating presentations for mobile devices which is distinctively different the methods explained previously for desktop presentations.

A screenshot of the Brainshark mobile application

Getting ready

To get started with designing mobile-friendly presentations, you'll need to install the Brainshark mobile application in order to allow for self-testing. This may be done using iTunes, if you have an iPhone or related iOS device or the Google Play Store if you have an Android phone.

Other supported devices that may view presentations via the website include:

  • BlackBerry

  • WebOS

  • Windows Mobile

  • Android below 4.03

  • iOS below 4.0

You should test your presentation on both the web browser and the native application to maximize compatibility across platforms.

How to do it...

We now explore the best practices in designing mobile-friendly presentations. The steps are as follows:

  1. Note that cell phones can be as little as 1/10th a desktop monitor. Thus, design your presentations around this to ensure that your font size is large enough to meet the baseline requirements of mobile devices.

  2. obile presentations for on-the-go audiences. Thus, ensure that your information is concise, delivering on what is required. There's no sense in expanding beyond what's required, especially if it hurts readability in the process.

  3. Try dividing information into more slides rather than placing it all in one.

  4. Use graphics wherever possible to communicate your ideas. Text is often too small for many cell phone users to bother reading. People are visual learners and can often recall images better than facts learned through words.

  5. Follow the aesthetic tips in the Increasing sales with Brainshark slideshows/documents recipe as readability matters much more when the device size is smaller.

  6. Test your presentation with as many mobile devices as possible to ensure maximum sales enablement across platforms. If possible, test with a BlackBerry first, as its keypad interface forces its screen size to be the smallest amongst mobile devices.

How it works...

Here is a quick reference for comparing the Brainshark mobile app with the mobile web browser version to help illustrate their differences:

Feature

Mobile Web Browser Version

Brainshark Mobile App

Animations

Video

Presentation Security

Guestbook Support

v

Player Controls (Pause / Fast-forward, etc.)

Basic Reporting (View Dates, Device Type)

 

Enhanced Reporting (View Duration, etc.)

 

Table of Contents

 

Downloadable Attachments

Input to Interactions (Questions, Polls, etc.)

 

Question Branching

 

Question Feedback

 

Multiple Attempts

 

Answer Randomization

 

SCORM/AICC Compliance

 

Rapid Learning Course Support

 

Completion Criteria

 

We note that although the mobile web browser version of Brainshark has fewer features and is slower on smartphones, it is also available on many more phones. This is because only devices with newer versions of Android and iOS may download and utilize the native Brainshark app. Thus, it is important to minimize the amount of native-only features that your presentation requires to ensure that all viewers can get the best experience.