Converting a Prezi Into a YouTube Video

Prezi has turned into a tool that you can use for presentations, training and in the marketing of your organization.  If you do not know what Prezi is then you need to learn and fast!  Take a second to look at this video put out by them.  Its explains what they do really well!

If you look at our website at www.expivia.net, all of the videos that you see on the site were actually created using Prezi.  Our favorite is our Expivia in 2 video:

 

Currently Prezi does not have a way to instantly turn a presentation into a video from their site and post it on Youtube but there is a work around that is very easy.

If you are a small business, have a small budget or just like to try new things, this is for you.  If you need some help with this we can help you as well here at Expivia.

1)     Create your Prezi.  This is a whole other blog post!!!...lol... but take some time and create a great presentation that explains what your business, product or service does.  Prezi allows you to really use your imagination and you do not have to be a graphics designer to make something great.  That’s one of the huge plusses of the format.

2)     Ok so now you have your prezi completed hit the EXIT button to leave the editor.

3)     Once you have exited and are now in the viewing stage, you need to click DOWNLOAD and then click DOWNLOAD PORTABLE PREZI.

4)   It will then create all the files that you will need to get it in the proper form to create a YouTube video.

5)   You then need to save the folder to your desktop and extract (right click on the file) all the files.  Once the files are extracted and you open the folder you will see one of the files that looks like this:

 

6)   When you double click on that icon/file your Prezi will play.   

7)   Now you need to download screen recording software.  You can find many free ones to download online.  A personal preference when we were just starting was Camstasia Recorder.  You do need to pay for the software after 30 days but its free to start, we believe it did the best job and was the easiest to use.

8)   Open up the recording software and you should be able to manually adjust the size of the area to record.  Make sure you have the full screen area able to be recorded but do not record your menu areas.  Also move the area up a little it from the bottom so it will not record the arrows from the Prezi.

9)   Open your Prezi and then hit the record button.  Now you should always manually click through the Prezi as it is being recorded to make sure you take a little more time on wordier slides.  Just slowly ready though the whole presentation to get the timing right.  If you have music set to your Prezi,  you can play around with clicking though the slides to highlights in the music.  It takes a little more time but is a really cool effect.  Kind of like when you see fireworks set to music!

10) When you are done recording make sure you view everything to make sure it came out how you wanted.  You will find in normally takes a couple "takes" to get it right. Now that you like what you see it is time to upload.  99% of the screen recording software allows for a direct upload to your YouTube account.  If you do not have an account just quickly sign up for a channel on YouTube.

The last part of it is to enjoy the video you just made.  You can now add this to all your online branding.  Put it on your Website, Tweet it, show it on LinkedIn and make a picture of it for your Pinterest page!

It is a very easy way to turn your Prezi masterpiece into a great video that will enhance your brand.  We hope this helps the small entrepreneur, business owner or student who may not be ready for a full online marketing plan to make their business, service or product look professional and more importantly really cool!

Email us for any questions no matter how small.

 

tlaird@expivia.net

 

www.expivia.net

www.pinterest.com/expivia

www.facebook.com/expivia

www.twitter.com/expivianow

 

 

Expivia on Pinterest!

There are many exciting happening starting at Expivia! We will keep everyone aware of this on upcoming blog postings.  We will have some pictures and videos available as well.

In the mean time we are proud to announce the Expivia Pinterest site is alive!  Take a creative look at who Expivia is through pictures.  

  http://pinterest.com/expivia/this-is-expivia/

How to do your Online Branding Pre-Startup

Expivia wants to be able to help all organizations succeed with their CRM plan. Even those that are not funded yet. We understand that many organizations to be are in a pre-startup mode and need some advice.  Since our organization is no longer in startup mode and is now moving down the road with our mission, we wanted to take a second to try to help those companies that are just starting.  We want to show how they can have an online presence/brand before starting to look for funding.  Every entrepreneur must start somewhere.  We hope this helps some others out there as much as it helped us get started.  If you need help beyond this or just have a question please do not hesitate to contact us at tlaird@expivia.net no matter how small the question.  We have lived it and now have grown from it.


We hope this helps....

There is no reason your future start up should not have its online branding done BEFORE and start up money is even gone after. When you are pitching your business plan you need to have your online presence done.  This shows how serious you are and also frames your vision not just in words but in an arena that people can visualize.  We all know that the first place people will start their research on your company,  product or service is to go online and Google you!  You need to anticipate this and be ready.

This is a story, the story of our company Expivia Interaction Marketing Group, Inc, on how we did a total online branding before we were funded, made it look very professional with very little graphics/webdesign skill and even better…with very little investment.  When I mean very little I mean under $100 dollars.  It does take time and thought but it can be done. We did it and got funded and now are in a different stratosphere.  Here is how you begin. 

 LOGO 

Your company needs a logo.  Whether it is just the name of your company or a different design you need something that is simple yet catches the eye.  We designed our logo on paper, took it to Fedex/Kinkos and for 20 some dollars they designed the digital look of it and gave me a CD with a couple different variations. 

Our logo can be found here:

http://static.wixstatic.com/media/fe4d38_e4ab5dd09ad1ac8281a9d36eb524333f.png_srz_147_52_75_22_0.50_1.20_0.00_png_srz

 

WEBSITE

After looking at all the different free online website design formats we found that we liked Wix.com the best.  It is very easy to use, you do not need to be a graphics design major or know any html coding to make a very professional site.  One of the tips though that we will tell you though is in our opinion you should stay away from their flash sites. Our site was done in html5 and there are a lot of templates done this way. Apple is not compatible with flash so a large part of the population out there with ipads and iphones will not be able to see your site in its full glory.  The website took the most amount of time as you need to get this right.  We took about 20-30 hours on our site.  You have to make sure your brand and theme is stated here.  Anything that you do after the design of the website with other online channels must match/compliment the flagship of your online presence,  your website.    Our website set the pace for all of our other branding.  To create the site it is free.  To get a URL and to get it online costs about 30 bucks.  After that the price is about 20-30 some dollars a month for hosting. 

Here is our website.  All the videos were done for free (I will show you how) and I think it came out really well.  We are proud of it.  While we are in the process of a major overhaul away from Wix, the main features will still be the same.

You can see it at:  www.expivia.net

FACEBOOOK

Next we did our Facebook page.  We used our logo and images from our website to tie it together.  Obviously this is free.  Make sure you go through the phone verification to get the more professional URL name.  One of the first things you can post are topics from your website.  It is a good way to start linking both of them.  Don’t worry about your LIKES right now.  Just make sure it looks like you took time to set it up right.  It’s fine if you ask your friends and family to LIKE your new site but don’t worry about that number right now.

Ours is:  www.facebook.com/expivia

 

COMPANY BLOG

This part of your online portfolio takes time and thought.  Your blog should tell everyone about your company, what do you do, why are you different, what cool things are happening in your niche.  While it is ok to post something that you found from the web every once in a while, the blog needs to have mostly original material(such as what you are reading right now!)  People want to hear from you especially if they are interested in what you have to say.  Don’t cheapen that by being lazy and just posting things that you find online.  People can go to a site like Reddit.com for that.  We try to post at least twice a week our company blog.  The fun part of this is to get others in the organization to get involved, then it does not become a “chore”.  Make it a team effort.  You can start your online blog for free from many different sites. 

We chose Googles blogger for our blog :

www.expivia.blogspot.com

 

PREZI/YOUTUBE

Something that we have done and I believe has really enhanced our online brand was to use Prezi.  If you are unfamiliar with Prezi then that needs to change, especially for a small business.  Prezi is what PowerPoint would want to be when it grew up.  It is an amazing cloud based (no download) presentation format that allowed us to not only make marketing slide shows, products presentation or training guides but has allowed us to place these presentation on Youtube.   This will allow you to have free videos for our website or for those that want to know more about our company.  Prezi does not have a way to actually make a Youtube video but all that you need to do is to download a free screen capture program.  Run the Prezi while the screen is being recorded and you have a great marketing video for close to NOTHING!  Prezi allows about three of these for free and then you need to subscribe.  It is like 3 dollars a month for the ability to do more Prezis than you could ever make.

Here is a link to our blog about prezi to learn more

http://www.expivia.blogspot.com/2013/04/as-interaction-center-has-changed.html

This link will also show you our completed Youtube Prezis. 

Small business owners need to show a little imagination and ingenuity.  This is one way to make yourself different, to use your imagination and show your vision for almost no cost!

 

LINKEDIN

LinkedIn is the Facebook for the business world.  For a small business owner looking to startup a company LinkedIn is invaluable.  Most business people already know about LinkedIn so I will not belabor its importance.  What you need to do though is to put your soon to be business on LinkedIn as well.  This again needs to be an extension of your website/brand.  Same logos and same theme need to be duplicated.  LinkedIn is really nice because it allows you to break down your products and services as well as just giving a company overview.

Here is our LinkedIn services page:

http://www.linkedin.com/company/expivia-interaction-marketing-group-inc-/products?trk=top_nav_products

TWITTER

Twitter is the voice of your soon to be start up.  It’s a free account as most know.  Again you can pretty it up with your logo and pics.  Don’t worry early on about getting followers, that is for after launch of your company.  All you want to go now is make sure you are up, know how to use twitter, and start having some fun with posting things to groups with your common interest or to a future customer base.

Our twitter account is:



www.twitter.com/expivianow  

EZINEARTICLES

Ezinearticles  is a free site that allows you to “publish” original works online.  We kind of ham and egg this with our blog.  It is really just another way to get your word out for free.  All it takes is some time to write.  It is a great way to get hits to your online channels.

You can see our Ezinearticles from our blog using this link:

http://www.expivia.blogspot.com/2013/05/expivia-is-diamond-rated-author-on.html

 

TIE IT ALL TOGETHER

So now we have a website, Facebook page, LinkedIn site, beautiful videos that we have added to the website on YouTube and a Twitter account.  All of this is in addition to all your written work that was done with your blog and article writing.  All of the different channels all have the same theme, complement each other and look professional. 

Make sure that you tie them all together.  If you post on Facebook your Twitter account and LinkedIn page should do the same.  If you have a new blog post your Facebook and Twitter account should shout that out.  You get the idea.

SAVE ONE

It’s a great idea to save one of the more photo centric online marketing channels (like Pintrest or Instagram) for when you get funded.  Do a whole campaign on your start up journey through pictures.  Use all of the other channels to aid in this campaign.  This is a great way to start to build your following and get our name out for very low cost.

It does not take a lot of money to get this going.  Remember though you need to have all of our online branding done BEFORE you start pitching anyone for start up money. 

Once you get into it, it’s so hard stop!  It becomes a labor of love.  It is something that you are never done with but always changing, evolving and trying to make better.

 

After your business plan, this is the next most important piece of your structure that needs to be done before you should start to seek funding.   Once you get funded you can get into the more complex web technologies.  We are lucky enough to be in this phase right now but we will never forget the fun and love we had setting up our initial platform for the world to see!

Please take a second to comment if this has helped in any way!

Feel free to contact us at tlaird@expivia.net

 

WebRTC Primer

WebRTC (Web Real-Time Communications) is an effort, started by Google, to build a standard-based, real-time Media Engine into all of the available browsers. Since 2002, Global IP Solutions (GIPS) developed software media engines for the likes of Nortel (Avaya), WebEx (Cisco), Yahoo and IBM to support their PC-based telephony applications and other VoIP devices.
 
In 2010, Google purchased GIPS for $68.2M. In 2011, using the technology it acquired in the acquisition, Google created an open source version of GIPS software called WebRTC and built it into its Chrome Web browser. This became the basis of the WebRTC movement and standards activities. With WebRTC functions built into a browser, a Web service can now instruct the browser to use local resources to make a real-time voice or video connection to another WebRTC device or to a WebRTC media server, using SRTP (Secure Real-time Transport Protocol). With a HTML5- and WebRTC-enabled Browser, a soft client is now just HTML pages passed from the server, displayed as the visual and functional interface.

 Signaling and protocol standards are coming from the IETF, and the APIs for Web app developers are coming from W3C. The next step at the IETF is approval of the RFC next month. Today, WebRTC-enabled browsers are generally available from Google (Chrome) and Mozilla (Firefox) So far, Microsoft has an alternative approach and Apple is in stealth mode.  So, we have the start of something...a standard supported by some vendors but not all (so is that really a standard?).  As you can imagine, there are a number of topics that come to mind; please let us know if you would like us to add some others to the list we're starting with:

* Market Dynamics
* Security
* Integration or replacement
* Technology

This article was written by Chris Vitek and Dave Stein of the STC.

55% of customers expect companies to reply to Facebook & Twitter posts within 4 hours

 

Facebook and Twitter have become essential customer utilities.

A survey on customer service expectations which sampled 2,766 respondents has found that 55 per cent of those who raise a customer service issue via a company’s Facebook or Twitter presence expect to be answered within four hours.
It concludes that customer expectations continue to increase with the adoption of social media platforms.
“Consumers have very high expectations of customer service,” said Steven Van Belleghem, who carried out the research.
“95 per cent find it important to be helped quickly. 89 per cent want a transparent overview of the next steps in a purchase or complaint procedure. 89 per cent expect to be treated in a very friendly manner and 88 per cent want to complete the procedure in a single contact.”
The research found that speed “tops the list” of customer expectations, with four in 10 expecting an email to be answered, and 55 per cent expecting a reply to their Facebook and Twitter posts within the same period.
“Consumers are becoming increasingly demanding and due to social media, word about good and bad service experiences gets around quickly,” Van Belleghem said.
“Accounts of positive experiences raise the pressure on less successful companies. Society as a whole is becoming faster and faster and customer expectations reflect this trend".
The study, undertaken before the recent Prism revelations on data trawling, also found that consumers are willing to share data, but only if they perceive a benefit from their own openness.

From thereddrum.com

Ongoing Associate Training at Expivia - Agent Analysis Program

There are a lot of centers that think a quick morning meeting is their only basis for ongoing quality training.  Not at Expivia.

You would never go on a long road trip without any kind of map or GPS right? How can representatives and supervisor kn​ow where you want them to go unless they too look at their map for success? We call this our Expivia Agent Analysis program…Our map to success for our agents.

It’s very important to give out goals to each of your reps daily. It’s also just as important to have each of your reps have an achievement/progression plan that gets looked at and talked about weekly in a much more detailed format.

Our Expivia Agent Analysis program is one of the cornerstones in developing high quality representatives. Not only does it show that we care about the standards that are set, it also shows representatives that we care about them; it shows we care about their personal development. They can see there is a path to career progression.

Each of our representatives are pulled from the floor for at least 15-20 minutes a week to talk a little deeper about how they are doing, what they need to do and how we can help them. We make sure the tone of this meeting is positive in tone.

1) We talk about the past week, what were the quality/sales/social media goals that were given last week to that representative. Did they meet the goal, if not then talk about how they can better achieve these goals in the next week.  Our supervisors are trained to be prepared for this. They give specific examples to help the representatives.(“Janie we talked last week about to recognizing closing signals in your calls, I think you have done a little better especially yesterday when you…..”). We go over recorded calls here that are specific to the goals that were set the past week. We talk about their specific monitoring scores as well.

2) Any attendance/dress code/team behaviors are brought up at this point. This is the only part that may get a little negative so we like to sandwich it between the recap of the week and the next weeks plan.

3) Give each representative SPECIFIC individual plan/goals for the week.
“Janie we need 4.0/5.0 quality score average for all your monitored calls for next week, you were really close to that this week so I know you will be able to do this. I would like to see your conversion go to 6% from 5.2% next week on your cross-sell opportunities as well, recognize those closing signals that we talked about and you will be above 6%! I know you can do it!!!”

4) We end the meeting talking about their career plan. Do they want to be a management trainee, supervisor, team lead? Do they want to learn more programs/social media opportunities? We talk about how we can help get them to the next level. Career progression is very important to us at Expivia.

This is another way we are different from other marketing organizations.
​

Creating Fun in the Contact Center

Call center work is hard work. Representatives on the phone can take a ton of abuse from customers and sometime from supervisors themselves!
Our job is to make the customers we talk to have a world class experience. We cannot do this if we have reps that are lethargic, have bad attitudes and do not want to be at work. One way we can help them is by making the call center THE fun place to work.

I believe that the call center can be a place where you can do things that you cannot do in any other department. You can yell out loud, high five, cheer each other on! You can't do that in accounting! Show me a quiet call center and I will show you one with high turnover, low quality and more importantly it will reflect that the reps are not enjoying themselves.
If we can get our reps to have fun at their job it takes their mind off of all the negative things that hamper great call center work. All call centers have reps that seem to always come in with their days troubles on their sleeve. All call centers have reps that leave "sick" every day because they are just plain bored. If we can take their attention off these things and channel it into something positive, then we have taken a huge step in improving our center.
It does not matter if you are running a center with an insurance, banking, pure customer care or sales vertical. You can, and in my opinion, must make the environment enjoyable.

DECOR:
Take a look at your center. Most of you are probably at work right now looking at this so take a second to look at your center... I'll wait... lol
Does it have energy, or is it just plain and boring? If you were a rep would you like coming to work in this room every day?
I'm not saying you need to overhaul your center if it's not where it should be. There are a couple basic things you can do. Also I would love to get some of your ideas on this as well.

• Balloons can add a ton to a room. Just some company balloons or a "great job" balloons go a long way. As basic as that sounds, if you give a balloon to each team's top producer daily based on your specific KPI, it goes a long way for moral and adds to the fun look of the center.


• Team Crests/logos/mascot pics can really brighten up the room and add to great team spirit. Just having each team decide a team logo can be a lot of fun for the team members. You can even make a game out of it where each sale/great call/cross sell gets to add a name for consideration and the top producer get to pick the name. Use your imagination!


• Posters. I really like to put up great sayings that my reps used on a call. It's a reward for them to have a poster "named" after them and the phrase will get more uses because an actual rep used it. Having generic posters in a room is OK but tends to just get ignored a bit.

GAMES:
I have a TON of games that can be played in a call center. I just wanted to add a couple that are easy to do and you need basically no money to pull off. This hopefully will to give you some ideas. These are games that can be played daily on each team. You can do team vs. team or rep vs. rep.
BINGO- Set up a board that includes some KPIs that can be measured during the day. Each time your rep hits on of the goals they mark it off the sheet. Once they get enough BINGO gets yelled out and you have a winner.
POKER- Each time a rep hits a KPI they get a card. Best poker hand wins at the end of shift.
CHAIR GAME- I don't know about you but in my center the supervisors have different chairs that the reps love. We play pass the chair. Each time a rep gets a sale or hits a KPI, they get the chair until it get "stolen" by the next person.
PASS THE... - Like the chair we will pass an object for each Sale or KPI hit. If its summer I will go get some beach ball and we will pass or hit around a beach ball, winter maybe a stuffed Santa. You can award the owner of the ball each hour or just once at the end of shift.
OFF THE CLOCK- Reps love to be off the phones, its human nature. Set up some games like having a putting green on the floor, little nerf basketball hoop or some darts up in your center. Again however you have it set up, great sale, great monitoring score, KPI hit, the rep gets to get out of the booth and go play the game for a small prize. The real prize though is the 5 minutes off the phone!
HANGMAN- Pretty self-explanatory. Supervisor set up a board and the word/phrase and the reps get rewarded with chances at guessing a letter and the word or phrase.
Those are all just a very small sample of games a supervisor should be playing at all times on his/her team. Remember is in addition to a center wide motivation that maybe runs for a week or a month.
PRIZES:
What should the prizes be? Well I can tell you they do not have to be big to have the reps fighting over them. Candy, lottery tickets, a new pencil or pen, cup, homemade cookies, a free soda are all things that work. It's funny it really depends on how your supervisor sells it. I had a supervisor give away a 5 cent pencil eraser. Sounds boring right? But the way she sold it to her reps made it should like the greatest thing every. They died to try to win it.
It's very important that your middle management buys into all off this. I will have more later on expectations and training for your supervision.
I hope you guys enjoyed this, brought back some great memories of some of the fun I have had on the call center floor. I hope it gets you to realize how important your role is in the overall "fun" culture of your center

To see this culture in place take some time to visit http://www.expivia.net
Contact me at tlaird@expivia.net
We are reshaping customer interactions. This is EXPIVIA