I developed Put the Power in Your PowerPoint Presentations for an in-service for my agency. As a member of the Distance Learning team, I accepted the challenge to do this since this is an area in which I’ve done extensive reading and research. However, this is truly my first attempt at putting all of that great information into practice for a live presentation that I’m delivering. I combined information from various sources for the content, including Richard Mayer, Garr Reynolds and Cliff Atkinson.

The presentation is actually tomorrow and I still have quite a bit of practicing to do. I really wanted to be able to deliver this without notes, but I don’t see that happening since I haven’t put in as much time as I’d need to for that to be a reality.

As I’ve studied the great presenters out there, the many on TED, Garr Reynolds and Merlin Mann, I aspire to one day, deliver a talk with the conversational ease that they do. I’ve had lots of training in a more formal style and I looks like I won’t be able to make an overnight transformation, but it is something that I’m practicing.

Here’s the handout that’s referenced toward the end.

In the context of website marketing, I have advocated that businesses use SlideShare to establish themselves as an expert and increase incoming links.

Here’s the thing…as I say in my presentation, if you design your slides correctly–for a live audience–they shouldn’t be able to stand alone. So, putting a presentation that you give on SlideShare “as is” won’t be helpful for anyone viewing it. What you may, or may not, notice about the best SlideShare presentations (check out the contest winners’ presentations to see what I mean by this), is that they mimic a storybook. They use large fonts and visuals with very few words (part of a sentence) per slide. Each page is part of an ongoing story. Some presentations may have as many as 50 slides. As I mention in my presentation, this is not a problem. When you view a presentation on SlideShare, you are clicking through very rapidly. You can probably read a 50 slide presentation in 2 minutes.

Try it with the winner of the 2009 SlideShare’s World’s Best Presentation Contest…

The next time you deliver a presentation live, try out my suggestions and then give yourself some time and post a different version–more like a storybook–on SlideShare. Don’t forget to include a link back to an article on your website!

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If not, my new “Marketing Your Website” page gives them to you.

And if you’ve already been through my course, you’re ahead of the class anyway.

Here are the questions:

1. I have a website, but I don’t think anyone’s visiting it. How do I find out? 
2. How can I market my business online? 
3. How should I market my website offline…in the real world? 
4. What is Twitter and how can it help my business? 
5. I have a Facebook account. Can’t I just post links about my business there? 
6. I have a LinkedIn account. How can I use it to market my business? 
7. I’ve never heard of SlideShare. What is it and how can it help my business? 
8. Should I start a blog? 
9. How do I get people to come back to my website over and over again? 
10. How do I get my site to rank #1 in Google?

Have I left off any? If so, let me know and I’ll add them ASAP!

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Check out the book and start your journey toward better search engine optimization: Search Engine Optimization: An Hour a Day.

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My search didn’t show many results, maybe 4 or 5, but the results that did appear were quite interesting:

Yahoo! Answers

• One was a response to a Yahoo! Answers question asking for a website to schedule meetings. The person wanted something simpler than Meeting Wizard. I’m assuming that a representative from GatherGrid responded to the question, but that’s just speculation, and touted the benefits of GatherGrid, including a link to the service page.

Action Item: Search Yahoo! Answers for questions about your industry or product and respond. Don’t forget to be helpful and on topic and leave your link behind.

Blog Commenting

• The second response was actually an article about the benefits of Meeting Wizard. Frances commented that GatherGrid is much simpler and left a link encouraging readers to check it out. Now, I don’t know if Frances works for GatherGrid, but this is a great way to use your competition to your advantage. 

Action Item: Search Google for blogs in your industry, your competitors’ blogs and blogs about industry related products, provide useful information and include a link to your website.

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Click the image to see the full-size email.

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It’s a great way to begin building links on the internet.

Remember, the number of related, high quality incoming links to your website is a big factor
with Google.

So, how do you get started? Here are a few keys to keep in mind…

Key #1 – Make sure that the blogs you comment on are related to your field. If your website
teaches people how to fish, commenting on a blog about website design is not going to help
you a lot.

Key #2 – Make sure that your comments are substantive. “Great Post” is not worth typing.
Tell the blogger what you took away from the post. Share your insights or experience on the
topic. Ask for help with a problem.

This is an opportunity to build a relationship, show your expertise and maybe get help. Think of commenting on blogs as far more than a link building activity.

Key #3 – Make it a habit to comment. If you are like me, you have been in the habit of reading
more and not commenting. So, just start doing it and you’ll begin to remember to do it.

Key #4 – Use the “URL” field to include your link as opposed to the actual “Comment” field
itself. There are times where a link is warranted in the main body of the comment but
most often if you are simply linking to your site, the “URL” field is the safest place to include
a link.

Bloggers are extremely wary of spam…don’t make yourself a target for deletion.

Key #5 – There is a little issue of a “nofollow” code on many websites that prevents your url
from influencing your search engine ranking.

There are a few ways to approach this:

1. Remember that although you may not earn points with the search engines, you may gain traffic from people clicking on your name (which is usually linked to the website you provided) if you leave a profound comment.
2. You can choose to comment only on blogs that do NOT have this code. There are a few lists that you can view and a searching tool that you can use.

• www.dofollowblogs.com/ (directory)
• followlist.com/ (list)
• www.stephanmiller.com/the-ultimate-dofollow-blog-list/ (list)
• www.whydowork.com/blog/blogging-tips/558/ (list)
• www.inlineseo.com/dofollowdiver/ (searching tool)

However, I wouldn’t limit commenting to blogs that don’t have the “no follow” code. If you get one ”dofollow” blog link a day, then that’s better than nothing…and over time, that’s 365 incoming links to your website…just from commenting on blogs…not bad.

Extra Tip: If you read your blogs in an rss reader, like Google Reader, create a separate folder for the ”do follow” blogs.

Baseline number: To see how many incoming links you currently have to your website, go to Yahoo.com and enter “site:www.domainname.com” – when you get to the
next screen, you’ll see a button – Inlinks (##).

That is the number of incoming links you currently have to your website.

I hope I’ve given you enough to get started with commenting on blogs as a link building and
relationship building strategy.

Happy commenting!

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