How to report scientific research to a general audience

Dave Munger, co-author of the "Cognitive Daily" blog, published an excellent article about reporting scientific research to a general audience. His eleven tips are:

1. Find interesting research
2. Show why it's interesting first
3. Let the research speak for itself
4. Don't include details that are only relevant to scientists
5. Don't use scientific jargon
6. Tell a story
7. Visuals need the same treatment as words
8. Keep it concise
9. Cite your sources
10. Don't overstate your case
11. Have fun!

Although his article is written for an academic audience, it's highly relevant for anybody delivering a complex message. You'll find that all his guidelines apply just as well in a corporate, business or personal context.

Is Blogging Dead?

Blogs are the new publishing tools of the Internet. Now, with just a Web browser and an Internet access account, anybody can publish their own Web site (after all, a blog is just a Web site).

But does this makes blogs good? Or useful? Or effective business tools? Business consultant David Maister doesn't necessarily think so. He argues that blogs give a short hit of instant gratification, but unless you're committed to it, your blog will die a swift death.

Virgin America creates a watchable safety video

You know those airline safety videos you watch carefully every time you take off on a flight? No, me neither. Let's face it - most passengers don't bother watching them.

To counter this problem, Virgin America created a safety video with a difference: It's entertaining! Watch it yourself and see:



This clever twist on the standard safety video taps into people's natural inclination to watch something interesting. Virgin asked the question, "How can we make this something people want to watch?"

How can you do the same thing in your message management? Even if you think it's interesting, your message might be boring, mundane, prosaic or humdrum to your audience? How can you make it interesting - even entertaining - for them?

Top Ten Best and Worst (American) Communicators of 2007

Bert Decker, of Decker Communications, presents his annual list of the Top Ten Best (and Worst) Communicators of 2007. Like many things written by Americans, this is a purely American list, so it's certainly not representative of communicators throughout the world. But it still makes good reading if you're interested in what makes communication work in the USA.

Do Presidential Candidates Now Have to be on Facebook?

Less than two years ago, Facebook was an unknown little Web site for Harvard students. Now it's become so well-known and well-used that some people are questioning whether U.S. presidential candidates need well-constructed Facebook profiles!

Whether or not you agree with the writer's point of view, there's no doubt that positioning and public relations have changed in today's world. If you're not using today's technology to deliver your messages - and more importantly, if you're not using it well - you'll be talked about, but for all the wrong reasons.

Stating the obvious

Providing proof is an important part of creating a credible, memorable message. But you don't have to prove things that are obviously true.

Sounds obvious, right?

The National Post has a humorous round-up of some of the serious but unnecessary research conducted over the last year. Examples include these "discoveries":

• Eat less and you won't get fat.
• Divorce isn't a whole lot of fun.
• Many drivers exceed the speed limit.

Enjoy!

Use SlideShare.net to put your PowerPoint presentations on-line

For years, my clients have asked me whether there are any simple ways to put PowerPoint presentations on their Web sites. The answer has been, "Ways? Yes. Simple? No."

Until now.

Slideshare.net makes it easy to display full PowerPoint presentations on the Web. It's similar to YouTube, in that you upload your presentations to their site, and others can view them by searching on key words and tags you specify.

After uploading a presentation, you can also embed it in your Web site or blog. In fact, you can embed anybody's presentation, just like YouTube.

Here's an example of a presentation I uploaded recently to SlideShare.net:

Richard Wiseman's Colour Changing Card Trick

One of the most powerful forms of persuasion is a demonstration. Watch Professor Richard Wiseman as he demonstrates our powers of attention (and inattention!) in this card trick:



Professor Wiseman uses this as an example of science communication. After all, isn't this so much more powerful than a dry scientific lecture or an academic research study?

Business Presentations - Pros and Cons

How do you deliver an effective business presentation? Experts will give you varying - sometimes contradicting - advice. But some things remain the same - such as practising your material, keeping it simple, and establishing rapport. Darrell Zahorsky of the About.com Small Business Information channel has an article about 8 Secrets to a Knockout Business Presentation.

Elsewhere on the About.com site, you'll also find the other side of the coin: The Seven Deadly Sins of Powerpoint Presentations.

Classy video from Defenders of Wildlife

The Defenders of Wildlife organisation has created a simple thank-you video for its supporters, for all their work in 2007.

As you watch this video, notice a few effective design techniques:

• The video is introduced by the president of the organisation, demonstrating support right from the top.
• Statistics are shown in simple ways.
• Most of the video is in fact a series of still slides, not motion video - but it's still very effective.

Creating a sales video in PowerPoint

The technology to create a promotional video might seem expensive and out of reach of the average business. But you've probably got the technology already - and it's called PowerPoint.

PowerPoint expert Dave Paradi describes how to create a sales video using PowerPoint. You won't learn about the design of the message in Dave's article, but he does talk about the process of planning, producing and packaging your PowerPoint presentation in a form that's easy to distribute.

Cause Marketing influences your customers

Can you make money by giving it away? Yes, if you're giving it to a good cause, and one your customers care about. "Cause marketing" is big business, and works well, provided you do it well.

GrokDotCom has an excellent article on this topic, with examples of success stories as well as potential pitfalls.

Shannon Raybold Nothing But Nets presentation

Shannon Raybold of the U.N. Foundation recently made a presentation named "Nothing But Nets". Although it uses bullet points (which I abhor!), it's still a pretty good example of a well-designed PowerPoint presentation.

Watch Shannon's presentation here:

If you're giving a reason, make it plausible

I recently added my bank account as a payment option to my PayPal account (previously I could only use my credit card to pay). PayPal now tries to encourage me to use my bank account instead of my credit card. I suspect it's a lower fee for them.

Here are the reasons it gives me (copied directly from their Web site):

Paying with your bank account offers the highest level of PayPal protection and security, plus these advantages:

1. No Fees -- Payments made using your bank account don't accrue interest fees
2. Instant Payment -- Bank account payments are processed instantly
3. Convenience -- Paying with your bank account means that your payments always go through -- instantly.
4. Sellers with Personal accounts cannot receive credit card payments. Any PayPal user can receive bank account payments.
5. Safety - Your bank account information is kept safe through the highest grade commercially available encryption and is extensively covered against unauthorised use

Looks fine at first glance, right? But let's look at them more closely ...

1. No Fees: Fair enough
2. Instant Payment: Huh? I thought my credit card payments were also processed instantly. And anyway, why should I care about whether it's instant or not? That's more an issue for the seller.
3. Convenience: Seems to be just restating the previous point.
4. Sellers with Personal accounts: Fair enough.
5. Safety: Are they saying my credit card information is not covered by the highest rate of security??? That would be a big concern!

What's the point? Simple: People aren't stupid. If you give reasons for them to take action, make them real reasons. Some might be major reasons, other minor reasons - but none should be irrelevant.

The Three Essentials of Every Presentation

What are the keys to every successful presentation? They are not new - in fact, they go back over 2,000 years. I explain them in this short video:

Learn influence skills from the scammers and con artists

My spam filtering software usually deletes junk mail, but just for fun I thought I'd read one of the many scams doing the rounds:

From: Mrs Rebecca Thatcher.
No:36 Old Shrewberry Street,
London England.

Beloved,i am Lady Rebecca Thatcher, suffering from cancerous ailment. I used to be married to Sir Jeremy Thatcher an Englishman who is dead and resting peacefully. My husband was into private practice all his life before he passed. When my late husband was alive he deposited the sum of Twenty Million Pounds (20,000,000.00 Million Great Britain Pounds Sterling)which were derived from his vast estates and investment in capital market with his bank here in UK. Presently, this money is still with the Bank. Recently, my Doctor told me that I have limited days to live due to the cancerous problems I am suffering from.

Though what bothers me most is the stroke that I have in addition to the cancer. With this hard reality that has befallen me, I have decided to donate this fund to you and want you to use this gift which comes from my husbands effort to fund the upkeep of widows, widowers, orphans, destitute, the down-trodden, physically challenged children, barren-women and persons who prove to be genuinely handicapped financially. I took this decision because I do not have any child that will inherit this money.

My happiness is that I lived a life worthy of emulation. Please assure me that you will act just as I have stated herein. Hope to hear from you soon. You can contact me through my personal email address at [snipped].

Thanking you in advance for everything,

Sincerely yours,
Lady Rebecca Thatcher.

It's a scam, of course, and full of holes if you're looking for them. But read it again, pretending you were a more gullible person. What does the writer do to try to influence you?

Specifically, look for answers to these four questions:

• Why this? What are the benefits of responding to this letter?
• Why you? What is her credbility?
• Why me? What is the relevance to me, the reader?
• Why now? What is the urgency to take action?

Make them right, but make them uncomfortable

It's hard to inspire people if you start by telling them they are wrong - they immediately resent you. But it's also hard to motivate them if they think they are right, and don't have to change. How do you resolve this dilemma?

One way is to convince them that what they are doing used to be right, but might no longer be as effective today.

For example:

• Paying off a home mortgage used to be an effective investment strategy. But now there are so many other options for using the equity in your home to purchase investment properties.
• Thirty minutes of exercise three times a week used to be good advice, but now you have to do forty minutes four times a week because of even more desk-based jobs.
• Salespeople used to focus on product knowledge, but customers with Internet access now come to the sales meeting armed with all that knowledge themselves.

In other words, you make the audience right, which encourages them; and then point out that circumstances have changed, which motivates them.

Stand out from the crowd on-line

I've just conducted an interview with Colin Pearce for one of his audio programs. He interviewed me about getting business on-line, and in particular how to stand out from the crowd. In other words, if there are tens of thousands of businesses like yours on the Web, how do you make yours stand out from the rest?

The answer is: You don't! You're not competing with every other book shop, every other travel agent, every other financial planner, or whatever other industry you're in. They are not all fighting over the same customers and clients. Instead, know your particular niche - whether it's a niche by geography, demographics or motivation - and do your best to attract them.

This is crucial for effective message management. Don't aim for "everybody" - you'll reach nobody.

Death By PowerPoint

I've seen a number of presentations complaining about "death by PowerPoint", but few present the opposite view - creating compelling PowerPoint presentations - as clearly and effectively as this one by Alexei Kapterev:

Reckoning With Risk, by Gerd Gigerenzer

The test for breast cancer is extremely reliable. It correctly detects breast cancer in 90% of cases when the cancer does exist, and only mistakenly reports it in 9% of cases when the cancer doesn't exist. The incidence of breast cancer in women is 1 in 100. Suppose you (or, for men, a woman close to you) take a test for breast cancer, and unfortunately it returns a positive result (i.e. it detects the cancer). What is the probability that you do have breast cancer? Would you be surprised to know it's just 10%? Not 90%, 99% or some other high number?

Another example: DNA testing on a murder weapon matches your DNA, and a forensic expert says there's only a 1 in 100,000 chance of that happening. Are you doomed? Would you be surprised to know that in a city of, say, 2 million people, this means you're 95% likely to be NOT guilty, based on that DNA evidence alone?

Do these examples surprise and confuse you? If so, take heart: They surprise and confuse most people - laypeople and experts (doctors and lawyers) alike. Unfortunately, this can have disastrous - sometimes tragic - consequences in law, medicine and other fields.

This is the topic of Gerd Gigerenzer's excellent book about working with risk and uncertainty. Read it and you might be horrified at some of the horrible mistakes being made by experts giving advice. At least you'll be in a better position to question them and become better informed.

Is this the best book ever written about dealing with uncertainty? I'm not sure. But it's certainly well worth the read.