Online Business & Marketing Courses | Bizsnack

Bizsnack is an e-learning platform offering business courses on-demand for individuals seeking to acquire skills in order to advance their careers or grow their businesses. All Bizsnack courses are taught by well-respected, industry experts and instantly streamed in HD video to your desktop or mobile device.

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Course of the Week: Google Adwords 101

There are over 2 billion searches performed using Google every day, that means over 4 days there are more searches than people on the globe. AdWords is the ability to advertise within the Google search results to get more eyeballs on your product or website. To properly understand this crucial skill we’ve turned to Google AdWords Certified marketer Corey Rabazinski and his Google AdWords 101 course to show us how to get the most bang for our buck.

Here are some highlights from his course:

Targeting and Bidding: When it comes to targeting you need to bear in mind that there are options. Will you target by location or not? Will you target by language or just allow your ad to appear in any search of those terms? Bidding is another story and Corey shows us the best way to bid and budget to make our ads cost the most effective they can be.

Creating Ads & Adding Keywords: Corey meticulously shows you how to create an ad and shows you the different styles you can take when developing your message. He also walks you through keyword match types, how to add dynamic keywords and where negative keywords fit into your strategy.

AdWords Strategies & Research Tools: Competitive research could quite well be the thing that helps your company to stand out from the competition. You need this skill. Couple this with the ability to use Google Analytics for keyword research and you could just become unstoppable.

The amount of completely useful, practical content Corey Rabazinski packs into his course is impossible to list here. Trust us, after you finish his course you’ll be an AdWords pro! Check out the course here: Google Adwords 101

Related Courses:

Facebook Advertising using Pay-Per-Click

The Basics of Effective Email Marketing

LinkedIn MasterPlan

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Course Of the Week: User Feedback Surveys: Fundamentals

As we all know web analytics are a powerful tool to tell us “what” people are doing on our site, but how can we figure out “why” people are on our site? User feedback surveys are the most effective way to understand your customers motivations and to better tailor your product and advertising towards them. So how can we most effectively use these surveys to hear the true voice of the customer? Thankfully we have Matthew Niederberger to give us insight on how we should be planning and executing our user feedback strategy.

Here are some highlights of his user feedback survey course:

What Type of User Feedback to Use: There are a few different types of user feedback tools and collection methods. It’s up to you to decide whether to use textual or visual collection methods and whether this info should be collected on-site or off-site. Every business is different so knowing the pros and cons of each of these decisions will help you fine tune your survey and collect much richer data.

The 5 Golden Questions: These are meant to be asked after a purchase event. The 5 golden questions give you great info on exactly how they came to become a customer. These questions delve into how people heard about your site, why they bought from you over a competitor and what challenges they had in finding the product they wanted. These insights could be invaluable to growing your business.

To Incentivize or Not to Incentivize: Incentives do work, although incentives do not work. Of course by incentivizing monetarily people will fill out more surveys, but will they be of a high quality? The goal is not to collect the most amount of surveys, it should be to get feedback that will help you to tailor your website or product to your primary users.

Although the decision to implement user feedback surveys is an easy one, there are many factors to consider. Check out Matt’s full course here to give you more perspective on what is the best route for your site.

Related Courses:

How To Create a High Converting Landing Page

Conversion Optimization

Google AdWords 101

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Course of the Week: Pitch For Success

Ever been to an event where you were networking with people and no one remembered who you were? Those are always the most awkward email replies to get. This week we’re featuring a course by Eric Byrd that will help people to remember you, your company or your product every single time. He uses a simple “Hollywood formula” to get people interested in your idea and to help make it stick in their minds.

Here are a few highlights of the course:

Loglines: Since you normally have 7 seconds to make an impact on someone Eric recommends using a 1-2 sentence story to make a quick impression. These short pitches are great for when you meet people at events and want to help them remember who you are when you contact them later.

Create your own trailer: The movie industry is the best at creating a compelling teaser story to get you interested to hear more. Eric uses the same principles in order to get you to construct a compelling way to answer common networking questions such as: What do you do?

Do’s and Don’ts of Pitching: When you have loglines and trailers ready, your pitch can come off as flat and disingenuous. You need to be able to tell your story like you mean it. Use words that resonate with yourself to help bring out the sincerity in what you’re talking about. Authenticity creates connection.

These are just a few of the great tips Eric outlines in his course. Check out Pitch For Success today and help refine your pitch and leave people with a lasting trailer in their memories.

Related courses:

Fine-Tune Your Startup Pitch                           

Eye-catching Presentations using PowerPoint                           

Business Development at a Startup

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Course of the Week: HypeBomb - Growth Hacking for Startups

We all want to acquire more customers and traffic for our sites, but what's the best way to go about it? Right now there is a movement emerging that focuses on “growth hacking” or growing your customer base using non-traditional methods. It’s philosophy that creating buzz is cheap and easy, but you just need to know how to generate the right noise. Our instructor Bronson Taylor is a master of the growth hack and lays out a great strategy in his course HypeBomb - Growth Hacking for Startups

Here are a few highlights of the course:

Only Memes are Remembered: For every brand to be the most effective at having people remember what they stand for, a short, simple sentence should be constructed. You basically boil down what you do to the most basic of what you offer. Bizsnack uses Snackable training- instant, bite-sized and on-the-go, we feel it defines what we offer.

Email Addresses Are The Foreplay Of Profits: An email address is implied interest in being sold the products and services you have to offer so you should utilize your audience. One strategy to think about is building more products for your audience not building more audience for your products.

Highjacking an Audience is Easier Than Creating One: It’s hard to build an audience, you should be leveraging other people’s networks. By finding people who have captured your audience and working with them to add something that is mutually beneficial, you can gain a lot of exposure and push sales for both companies.

Throughout the course Bronson drops tons of great knowledge to get your growth hacking started. Check it out here and begin finding creative ways to drive traffic to your site!

Related Courses:

Entrepreneurs Guide: Introduction to Startups

Learn Twitter Essentials in Under an Hour

Business Development at a Startup

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Bizsnack Instructor Inspires Productivity in Business Professionals

Ulrika Hedlund teaches us why we’ve been using Microsoft Office all wrong

One of the defining characteristics of Bizsnack as an e-learning company is how much we focus on our instructors. This week we are catching up with Ulrika Hedlund, Microsoft Certified Instructor and 10 year business productivity specialist at Microsoft to talk to her about her background and her courses on Bizsnack.

Ulrika is a Business Productivity expert whose mission is to help companies and individuals improve their productivity and increase their return on investment in Microsoft software by providing modern, business-related, impactful high-definition video training.

A little background:

Ulrika has a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and an Executive Master of Business Administration from London Business School.  

She worked for Microsoft for more than eleven years in various roles in Sweden and the United Arab Emirates. She has worked as a Technology Specialist, Solution Specialist, Business Productivity Advisor, Enterprise Marketing Manager and Customer and Partner Experience Lead. Today, she is the Managing Director of Business Productivity FZ LLC.

So how did you get into Microsoft software training?

I’ve been passionate about technology my whole life. It was instilled in me by my father who was a pioneer in the tech industry in Sweden. Inspired by this, I took a job with Microsoft after college and began specializing in business productivity.

I spent most of my career in Europe and the Middle East and quickly realized one universal truth: the end users don’t know how to use software efficiently. I felt that there had to be a better way to teach people how to use these products.

Microsoft products are powerful business tools that people don’t normally fully utilize. I think there is a saying: They have a Ferrari but they’re driving it like a Fiat.

What are some common scenarios where lack of knowledge causes inefficiency?

One scenario has to do with the misuse of email. There are a lot of great collaboration tools where you can co-author documents. I tend to see a lot of attachments flying around that don’t need to be there. It can just cause more stress and confusion for people within that organization.

What is your favorite Microsoft product to train people in?

Surprisingly, my favorite thing to teach is how to effectively manage email in MS Outlook. It seems like a lot of people waste a high amount of time and get stressed about the amount of email that comes in every day. I want to help people take control of their inbox and reduce the stress in their work lives.

PowerPoint is another course I like to teach. It’s one of the things that I am truly passionate about. Some of the most brilliant minds can put together great content but, aren’t able to convey what they want to say in their presentation. I went to business school in London and I saw some of the professors there struggling. It really made me wonder if there was a better way to disseminate training to people who wouldn’t typically take a course in how to use Microsoft Office.

What do you think the advantages of eLearning are?

eLearning is an incredibly powerful tool. It allows people so much flexibility to learn at their own convenience. It’s not just being able to learn at your own pace but, now people have instantaneous access to experts whenever they want. This wealth of expertise can now be accessed through any number of digital mediums (tablets, PCs, smartphones). eLearning is really changing the way that expertise is shared around the world.

What caught your attention and made you want to launch your courses on Bizsnack?

Bizsnack is unique in the eLearning space. They give organizations the added value of qualifying content. There is a wide range of eLearning platforms out there but, they mostly focus on the number of courses they can offer. This can cause confusion for users since there are too many courses to choose from all of varying quality and length. Bizsnack curates great content and helps to eliminate the tedious process of picking through thousands of courses just to find the one you want. They’ve also added gamification to their platform which encourages learning in a modern way.

What does the future hold for you?

I’m very busy at the moment launching our Office 2013 courses it’s taking a lot of energy to make sure they’re all finished.  We’re also launching a new offering which we call “Get Sharp Videos”, a collection of short videos that show how to effectively use Microsoft Office in various business scenarios. Instead of offering a 1 hour course, these short videos give users the knowledge they need to address a specific problem. This idea blossomed since we noticed that most people normally don’t want to do a lot of training on a new version of Microsoft Office. They are usually familiar with the functions that are most important to them. “Get Sharp Videos” are targeted for business professionals at all levels to get a taste of how to more effectively use new capabilities of Microsoft’s productivity software in various business scenarios.

What’s your personal motto?

Life is too short to waste it on something you’re not passionate about. If you do what you love and work hard you’ll be rewarded.

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Course of the Week: Negotiation Training: Strategies, Tactics & Skills

We all want to try and get our way as much as possible. Remember when you were a child and getting into those shouting matches that inevitably ended in a repetition of “YES!”, “NO!” We should expect that we have outgrown these practices but, it seems like every time we step up to the negotiating table this is inevitably what happens.

Professor Terri Griffith saw this happen more than her fair share of times which inspired her to develop her course Negotiation Training: Strategies, Tactics & Skills. She works to make sure that instead of just thinking about yourself in a negotiation, you focus on the collective best.

Here are a few negotiation skills she highlights in the course:

Always prepare before a negotiation: The worst thing you can do is walk into a negotiation without any clue as to what you want, what the other party/parties wants or what would happen if no deal is made. Terri teaches you some simple steps to help lay out the information you need to create the best deal.

Integrate stakeholder needs: In a normal negotiation on price there are 2 positions and you try and convince the other party to agree to your price. This is a very inefficient way of negotiating, by taking in stakeholder needs you can circumvent the regular “let’s just meet in the middle” fatigue and come to an agreement that is fair to everyone.

Make the first offer: Decision makers take the first step. By issuing the first offer you’re helping to frame the tone and parameters of the negotiation. It usually means that you’ll be negotiating more on your parties terms as opposed to the other sides.

These are just a few of the ideas Professor Terri Griffith outlines in her course. You should take it today or else you might find yourself walking out of your next negotiation wondering if you got a raw deal or not. Start growing your negotiation skills now!

Related Courses:

Negotiation for Entrepreneurs

Value Centric Selling - How to Sell on Value, Not Price   

Pitch For Success

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The eLearning Contenders: Udemy vs. Bizsnack.com

This is the first in a regular series on our blog where we review other eLearning companies in the space, how we are inspired or not, and evaluate how Bizsnack stacks up against them. Not always pretty for us, but always honest. This week we took a closer look at one of the biggest eLearning companies; Udemy.com.

2 million registrations. 10,000 courses.

We recently read about Udemy hitting the 2 million student milestone and is predicting to add 10,000 courses this year. We dream of the day when we have 2 million professionals learning business skills together on our social learning platform. Imagine that! By the time we get there, and we will, Udemy will be at 10 million. They will be Facebook, and Bizsnack will be the LinkedIn of online learning. Their CEO will be the Mark Zuckerburg of eLearning and our CEO, Matt Minkin will be the... who is the CEO of LinkedIn?? Sorry Matt.  

Taking a look at Udemy’s courses; they vary from Learn Javascript to Postnatal Yoga to How to Raise Money for Startups to Adobe Illustrator CS6. Their library is vast. You could call them the Walmart of online learning. Not a bad thing.

The Udemy eLearning Platform.

They have an impressive learning platform that enables users to take courses on their desktop or mobile devices. Their platform has features like preview course, quizzes, take notes, course docs, social media integration, reviews, course progress and other key digital learning features.  These features seem to be the “price of admission” for any good eLearning platform. Other companies like OpenSesame,Codecademy, Skillshare, Craftsy, Kahn Academy, and (of course) Bizsnack have similar offerings.

A Business Model:  Courses on Consignment.

Udemy has been building their business success on the backs of the instructors and their content. Savvy. Think of all that original, SEO sticky, engaging content and they don’t have to pay a dollar upfront for this huge pipeline of courses (although they offer 50% rev share when a course sells). They offer a super easy interface and tools for anyone to upload content and teach a course. Which accounts for their huge growth in variety and quantity of courses they offer. For instance, my friend’s mom is in the process of creating an Outdoor Gardening course to upload to Udemy. No kidding!

Finding the Market.  Training the Market.

As experienced online marketers ourselves, we run into Udemy in all the usual customer acquisition hangouts online. Social Media, SEO, Affiliate, Pay-per-Click, Email Marketing, Deal sites, and Blogs. They really know their B2C online marketing, they have mastered the art of promotion. They seemingly have found the best way to get customers to open up their wallets and pay for courses, is by regularly offering deep discounts of 70% - 90% off the published prices.   

Leveraging aggressive discounting, Udemy has determined the real price consumers are willing to pay for an online course: about the price of a book or movie on iTunes. They are finding the market. This is one of the more controversial things folks in the eLearning space are clambering about. Is Udemy training consumers to only pay very little for online courses by waiting for deep discount offers? Is this a good thing or bad thing for the eLearning market? Only time will tell.  At least they are out there swinging!

SO HOW DOES BIZSNACK STACK UP AGAINST THIS 800 LBS GORILLA??

Strictly Business.

Bizsnack is entirely focused on business courses. You could call us a business school on-demand or corporate training in a box.  We don’t cater to college students, graphic designers, software engineers, or hobbyists. You won’t be able to take a Yoga class, learn algebra, photography or Javascript on Bizsnack.

Instead, Bizsnack intensely focuses on the needs and wants of business professionals, who desire training in key areas like Marketing, Sales, Leadership, Management, Accounting, Business Software, etc.   

It’s All About the Experts.

Another key differentiator Bizsnack has over Udemy is our close relationship with our instructors.  For instance we actually talk with all our instructors on a regular basis and consider them part of the team. We do a lot of research on their target audience and provide them customer profiles and what they want to learn. We interview and write blog articles about them to give our students more insight into the instructor beyond a bio. We conduct keyword research online, to help our instructors focus their training and lessons to meet the current needs of their students filling in the gaps where we can.

We work intimately with our instructors in growing their student base, improving the course and learning experience, communicating and connecting with the students, and ultimately help business professionals grow their skills and get ahead. This is what every instructor cares most about, they want to make a difference in the careers and businesses of the people who turn to them for training.

An Ocean of Choices, or a Path to Success?

If you don’t know what you need to learn in the first place, how can you be expected to choose the right one? This is a common problem with free content and the massive amount of information available on the Internet.  This is also a common complaint we hear about Udemy as well. The amount of courses is overwhelming which creates a paradox of choice.  If I have too many choices, then it becomes almost too difficult to make a decision.  

You are better off turning to a trusted friend or expert to guide you on the top 5 internet marketing training resources for beginners. We focus on being this trusted expert or friend. We curate the best and relevant content for our audience. We know what they need and where the want to go, we offer a guided path.

Biznsack the Corporate Trainer.

The leadership team at Bizsnack has deep experience in corporate training and business executive coaching. This is one of the main advantages we have over Udemy. Companies want to work with a business brand, with a business focus. Our platform is built from the ground up with the needs of corporate learning officers, HR managers, department heads, and of course the employees themselves (ironically an often forgotten constituency in the ecosystem of corp training). We want to be a bottom up movement in companies, as much as a top down management resource.  

In Summary:

Bizsnack is hard at work building up both a service and product that answers an unmet need in the professional marketplace: quality business education and training that’s instantly accessible and affordable suited for both individuals and companies.  

Some would say Bizsnack has a lot to prove, while Udemy has proved a lot. We get it, It’s a familiar story in business. There are always the big guys who seemingly are undefeatable and the little guy who is hard at work carving out their authentic niche. We believe there is plenty of room for both of us, and future entrants too. So make room!

What do you think?

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Featured Course of the Week: Presentation Skills that Get the "Wow" Factor

By Mark Monaco

The National Institute of Mental Health here in the US found that 74% of people suffer from Glossophobia, also known as a fear of public speaking! That means that in a room of 10 people, at least 7 of them are afraid of addressing the room as a whole. So what can we do to make sure we fall into that lucky 26% that aren’t afraid of giving a great presentation? Well we have our course of the week: Presentation Skills that Get the "Wow" Factor by Jason Teteak. This course will show you how to present, how to connect with your audience and how to reduce anxiety by being prepared.

Jason is masterful in his teaching style having watched almost 6,000 hours of presentations in the past 5 years as research for the course. Its no wonder that he leveraged that information into a TEDx Talk focused on presenting every time as though it was a TED Talk. His Presentation Skills that Get the "Wow" Factor course is the first step in getting to the level of truly great presenter. As Jason has been known to say,”Presenters are made they aren’t born.”

His course garners a lot of insight into how to present here are a few of the highlights:

How to prepare for your presentation: Know your audience. Its the most important piece of research that you could do. Jason shows you how to take that information and deliver and opener that will make the audience crave what you have to say.

Maximize media impact: Sure we all can speak wonderfully in front of an audience but, that’s not enough. We need to leverage visual aides to better convey our message to our audience. Remember what Houdini said: What the eyes see and the ears hear, the mind believes

Present with your body: Its been proven that over 60% of communication is based on body language. Jason pinpoints ways how to present and be more expressive and connect better with the audience.

Now are you ready to face that fear of public speaking and learn how to be the best presenter that you can be?

Check out the full course here

Related Courses:

Presentation Blueprint: PowerPoint for Crucial Presentations

Eye-catching Presentations using PowerPoint

Pitch For Success                           

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Learn How to Use Excel From a Microsoft Certified Master Instructor

Bizsnack Gets Some Time to Rap With Instructor Todd McLeod

by Mark Monaco

One of the defining characteristics of Bizsnack as an e-learning company is how much we focus on our instructors. This week we are catching up with Todd McLeod, Microsoft Certified Master Instructor and 20 year educator, to talk to him about his background as a teacher and his course on Bizsnack.

A little background

Todd Mcleod is a man of many interests. He is a writer, a consultant, a surfer and a Microsoft Certified Master Instructor. Todd has dedicated more than a decade to bringing Microsoft products and training people how to use Excel, in addition to his 20 years of teaching experience. As a tenured professor at Fresno City College he is a well respected member of the faculty there and is currently teaching in the Computer Information Technology department. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from UC Santa Cruz and an MBA from CSU Fresno.

What got you started in teaching Excel?

About a decade ago I decided to get a Microsoft Certified Master Instructor certification. There were roughly 1,000 people in the US who had earned it so it helped to bring my knowledge some validation. At the time I was teaching at a community college and the validation helped to act as a social signal to my students. People respect the training programs that Microsoft offers and I devoted myself to obtaining as many as possible. Eventually I learned about the Certified Master Instructor credentials and decided to go for it. I figured it would help to round out my knowledge base and have more to offer my students.

What drew you to teach your course on Bizsnack?

Bizsnack is great! Its amazing how much they have to offer their learners. It’s nice to know that there are focused options out there that are helping people to better themselves in their business acumen. Its an extremely valuable service that they provide and they are trying to engage their learners and instructors in a new and original way. I’m all for the personalized way they have been approaching things. It’s the perfect fit for me to teach people how to use Excel.

What are some of the reasons you decided to create an Excel course for eLearners?

My Excel course covers everything that the latest version has to offer. I start by showing students how to use functions to find solutions to problems and then eventually work them up to pivot tables. I’d like to think it’s very comprehensive. As far as eLearning goes there are a myriad of advantages over traditional learning systems. It’s personalized, can be tailored, can be enjoyed on-demand, any time, any place, and it is rapidly integrating methodologies to increase learning speed and retention.

Who usually needs help with Excel?

There is a sort of imbalance when it comes to people using Excel. Most people are very familiar with Microsoft Word since we have a focus on writing. We don’t spend a lot of time with data when we are learning in the early years, so people’s exposure to Excel is limited. This is what I’ve found through my years of training people how to use Excel. Everyone could use a little more time getting to know this great program.

What do you use Excel for?

I personally use Excel for any number of things. Professionally I use it to process data and take text from sources and make them into a more readable file. I do web scraping and drop it into an Excel file. It makes it so developing a competitive analysis is that much easier.

Another cool thing I use it for in my personal life is a mail merge (out of Gmail and into Excel). From there I can make form letters and even Christmas cards to go out to my family and friends.

Any thoughts about the direction education and training are taking?

The future of education is a change in the channels of distribution. This will emulate the transformations that have occurred in the music, movie, and book publishing industries: you have the content creators, the content consumers, and then between them are the content distributors. The old players weren't eliminated, however, roles have shifted. This will be the same in education. The current content distributors are universities/ colleges. This will change to reflect what Bizsnack is doing, providing tailored on-demand learning.

What does the future hold for Todd McLeod?

The future is always kind of unknown. Lately I’ve gotten into some basic programming and I am looking for ways to apply that to what I’m already doing. I’m also a novelist so I write a lot. I have a somewhat unusual writing style since I don’t correct grammatical errors, I prefer a more free form approach. I usually write, check the spelling and then publish my work, its a similar style to EE Cummings.

Aside from that I’ll continue to teach people how to use Excel and to better understand Microsoft programs.

What's your personal motto?

Be kind to each other.

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Course of the Week: Value Centric Selling - How to Sell on Value, Not Price

by Mark Monaco

The lifeblood of most companies is the sales team. These are the warriors that cold call, knock on doors, find leads where there were none and close deals that make your company money. These masters of the sales cycle are a rare breed who can find ways to make your product attractive to people who might not have necessarily known they needed it. With that being said, giving your sales team a sales training course keeps them well trained and on top of new sales techniques which is the smartest thing a business can do.

It turns out that 70% of purchasing decisions are made to solve problems whereas the other 30% is made to gain something. This means that demonstrating the value of your product in solving problems is one of the most effective techniques that you could use in your sales cycle.

Victor Antonio is one of the best in the business when it comes to training people on sales techniques and this week we are featuring his sales training course on value centric selling. Here are a few highlights:

Feature-benefit product inventory: In order to demonstrate the value of your product you need to know what features it has and what the benefits to potential clients are. Victor shows you an easy way to figure this out and give your sales team the info they need to demonstrate value.

Sales process: Every company has a process it uses in order to identify clients, reach out to them and then close deals. Yours could be causing a break in the sales cycle and leaving your sales people out to dry.

Anticipating and blocking objections: Victor uses a simple system to help you identify and work through objections that people might have with your product. The more you can prepare for these objections and block them before a person can verbalize them, the more of an expert you will seem.

So with the knowledge that Victor Antonio has in his sales training course you can upgrade your sales team and have them increasing sales in no time. Now get out there and start showing the value of your products to everyone you can!

Check out the course here!

Related courses:

Eight Keys to Sales Success

Presentation Blueprint: PowerPoint for Crucial Presentations

Pitch For Success            

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How To Become a Master Presenter and Rule the Room!

Bizsnack sits down with our newest presentation instructor Jason Teteak.

by Mark Monaco

One of the defining characteristics of Bizsnack as an eLearning company is how much we focus on our instructors. This week we had a chance to catch up with Jason Teteak, best-selling author and presentation coach, and talk to him about his courses and why he teamed up with Bizsnack.

A little background on him: Jason is a private coach and a consultant whose clientele includes elite institutions, universities, and top corporate executives. In twenty years of working as a presenter and coach, Jason has trained thousands professionals, given keynote presentations including a TED Talk on “How to Give a TED Talk Everywhere You Go.”, and his new book, Rule The Room, was recently published in the summer of 2013.

He has developed more than fifty presentation and communication training programs ranging in length from one hour to three days, that serve as the basis for this unique, practical, and comprehensive courses.

How long have you been in the presentation game and what got you started?

I’ve been teaching presentation skills for about 20 years. I started because I realized that  audiences are in pain and presenters don’t know it. The reason why these presenters are inadvertently torturing their audiences is because they have something called the “Curse of Knowledge.”  What this means is that a person knows their content so well they have a hard time simplifying it enough to make it understandable to a large audience.

It’s my job to help break that curse so people are able to communicate more effectively and leave their audience with more in depth knowledge.. Learning truly happens through a change in attitude and this change can’t happen if someone is confused about what is being presented to them.

There are some great presenters in the world today. What do you think makes them stand out?  

In researching for my book “Rule the Room” and for my Ted Talk titled: “How to Give a TED Talk Everywhere You Go.” I analyzed and broke down the 10 most popular Ted Talks of all time and started to pinpoint what made a presenter great. There are 4 unique presenting styles;

The Fascinator: This is someone who endears with their wisdom, enjoys getting others to perform, and enjoys sharing trivia. The best example of this is Daniel Pink. He uses his great wisdom and trivia to keep his audience engaged throughout any presentation he is giving.

The Inspirer: This is someone who endears with their spirit, reads people easily, and enjoys sharing stories. The best example of an Inspirer is Steve Jobs. He was able to weave these great stories that helped people become vested in what he was talking about.

The Performer: This is someone who endears by entertaining, they can get others to laugh, and are great at relating to an entire audience. A prime example of a performer is Tony Robbins. He does a great job of keeping his energy high and helping his audiences feel good about what they’re hearing.

The Energizer: An Energizer endears with their courage, they enjoy pumping up a crowd, and they are fond of puns. A great example of this is Sir Ken Robinson, he has the most popular Ted Talk of all time and in it he uses puns and challenges to engage his audience and keep them in the moment with him.

I cover these in depth in my course, “Presentation Skills that Get the “Wow” Factor” and point them to an online tool to find out what they’re personality styles are. The more in tune you are with your style the more you can work on refining your strengths and using them more effectively.

Which historical presenter do you most identify with?

I would say that I identify with Socrates. He was able to get the audience to sell themselves rather than to sell it to them directly. What I mean by this is he used a great questioning technique in order to allow his audience to come to their own conclusions, as opposed to telling them what to think.

Aside from his groundbreaking method of reasoning he also tended to give talks within amphitheaters that had him at the same height or lower than his audience. He showed incredible humility in doing so and was out to project the fact that he wasn’t an expert but, merely a man much like his audience. Also the area of Athens where he did much of his speaking is very beautiful, it must have been inspiring.

What types of professionals do you find really need or want to get better at presenting?

Everyone has problems with presenting. Funny enough the people who are usually looking to get better are those who are already good. There is a Japanese concept of constant improvement and its the people that subscribe to this way of thinking are the ones who turn into truly great presenters.

The techniques that I offer in my courses have all been developed by myself so it’s a more unique approach to presenting. I made sure to not read any presentation books before I sat down the write “Rule the Room” since I wanted my original ideas to not be influenced by others. Surprisingly, the people who often need the most help don’t ask for it, they believe that they’re great presenters but, really can’t read their audience. This attitude leaves everyone in the room suffering since there is a disconnect between the audience and the content.

What advice do you have for someone who is about to give their first major presentation?

There are 3 simple things that every presenter should know which I outline in my course Presentation Skills that Get the “Wow” Factor:

1. Its not about you its about the audience. It doesn’t matter if you’re nervous it matters if you show it. it doesn’t matter if you don’t feel confident, it matters if you show it. You present to bring something to your audience, you should keep that in mind every time.

2. People don’t laugh because something is funny, they laugh because they feel good. They need to feel safe with you. The progression of entertaining an audience is pretty straightforward, first they feel safe with you, then they feel good about what you’re saying, and then they are able to laugh and enjoy what you’re saying. Sincerity is one of the best ways to project this attitude and foster safety in your audience.

3. Your audience is not motivated by what you have to say until they first know why they want it. People need to know why they want something up front but, many presenters forget to do this. This is the biggest pull that a speaker can use with their audience. I use a simple exercise to figure out what it is that I am offering my audience. First I write down all the main points of my presentation and then I assess them as to whether or not they are adding 3 main concepts: Happiness, Success, Freedom. If you can make sure that you are hitting these touch points with your audience they will be much more vested in what you have to say.

What drew you to teach a course on Bizsnack?

Although there are many e-learning sites out there, Bizsnack is unique in that they focus entirely on courses for business professionals. They were also the first to proactively get to know me and my expertise and are working hard to build my brand along with their own. They really value their instructors and learners. Bizsnack recognizes that you need to know a person in order to be able to market their products. Their high touch approach is refreshing in the industry.

So there we have it. I really enjoyed being able to talk to Jason about everything. Honestly after speaking with him I felt inspired and realized that I could always do more to improve the way that I present. I can’t wait to start hearing success stories from people who have had their lives changed by Jason’s courses.

[bizsnack]

Featured Course of the Week: Effective Email Marketing

by Mark Monaco

There are 3.6 billion email accounts in the world and 91% of consumers check their email daily! How to do effective email marketing is something we should probably focus on to grow our businesses but, who the hell knows anything about it?

Bizsnack is lucky enough to have teamed up with Chamira Young who teaches an informative and insightful course in email marketing, and has the right plan to get your email list started, built up, and producing sales in no time at all.

In her well thought out, easy to follow lessons she walks us through one of the leading email service provider AWeber, and shows us how to use some of the key functions.

Some highlights include:

How to create a web signup form: This is the physical form where people can add their information direct from your website. AWeber has a template that you can use and then all you have to do is copy and paste some script to your websites backend.

How to create autoresponders: These are the bread and butter of email marketing. This is the most time effective process that you could create. Chamira shows you exactly how to go about setting up a series of timed autoresponders so you can reach out to your audience in a more organized and standardized way.

How to add an email form to Facebook: There are millions of businesses on Facebook but, they aren’t maximizing the effectiveness of their facebook pages. By adding an email signup you’ll allow yourself to grow your email list by driving traffic to your Facebook page.  

These are only a few of the need-to-know tips from Chamira Young’s course on how to do email marketing. 

Remember that 66% of consumers have made a purchase online as a result of an email marketing message, so get out there and start working your list!

Click here to preview Effective Email Marketing course

Related Courses:

How To Create a High Converting Landing Page

Build Your Brand: Blogging, SEO, SocialMedia & Relationships

Facebook Marketing

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Featured Course of the Week: LinkedIn for Business from Set-up to Analytics

These days the world has been flooded with a myriad of social networks. From Facebook, to Twitter, to Instagram, to SnapChat, to Pintrest, and LinkedIn, it’s almost impossible to keep up to date and use all of them effectively.

The most formal (and potentially lucrative) social network out there is LinkedIn. There are some problems with LinkedIn though, since many of us only think of using it when we’re about to switch jobs. This means that we neglect our profiles and take longer to update them. As a result of this, the way that we market on LinkedIn has also been affected by this. In order to sort everything out we have this informative course taught by business coach and author, Josepf Haslam. It covers everything from personal profiles and how to get a job to company pages and how to use them effectively to setting up and using analytics.

Here are a couple takeaways:

Optimize Your Personal Profile with Keywords: As we said before, the only time people really spend time on their profile for LinkedIn is when they are looking for a new job. We know people who have not touched their LinkedIn account for years and then suddenly had to spend days updating it when they got fed up with their current position. What we don’t realize is that recruiters use this tool to reach out to people all the time. In order to get found more easily Josepf recommends putting whichever keywords we want to be found by in our professional headline, job titles and other descriptive parts of our profile.

Content Creation and Distribution on Company Pages: One of the primary strategies that people use for company pages on LinkedIn is content creation and distribution. Josepf talks about the various forms of content people distribute and how to track analytics. He also gives a great rundown on how to use groups and why they’re effective. Essentially groups help you to spread your influence and establish thought leadership with a like-minded community of people. They are the best way to create real connections with people on the site.

Its almost impossible to summarize all the great knowledge of this course in a few short words!

Click here to preview the course on Bizsnack

  Instructor Profile:

Josepf Haslam

  Related Bizsnack Courses:

LinkedIn Master Plan

Eight Keys to Sales Success

Build Your Professional Brand Online

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Make Yourself a Stronger E-Learner. Quit Throwing in the Towel You Wimp!

by Mark Monaco

We recently found this great article that lists 20 things that mentally strong people don’t do. It’s a great list of things compiled by elitedaily that got us thinking about what things mentally strong e-learners shouldn’t be doing. Many of us have started to take a crash course in something like Twitter or PPC or Excel and never finish. So what lessons can we draw from the mentally strong that will help us to be a better e-learner?

Don’t Remain In Your Comfort Zone: Most people are afraid to learn new skills and apply them to the work they are doing. This is the worst thing that you could do. Did you know that Status Quo literally means the state of things as they were before? Don’t live in the past, take a crash course in something that you’ve never studied before; it will give you new perspective.

Don’t Have a Closed Mind: If you keep a closed mind, you are preventing yourself from learning new material. If you stop learning, you stop living. Period.

Don’t Be Impatient: Patience isn’t just a virtue; it is the only virtue. Most people don’t fail as e-learners because they aren’t good enough, or aren’t capable of finishing their courses. Most people fail because they are impatient and give up before they have had the chance to learn the material adequately.

Don’t Throw in the Towel: The biggest weakness in all of humanity is giving up — calling it quits, throwing in the towel. The strong e-learner lives by a simple philosophy: Only learn things if they are important to you; forget the things that aren’t important to you. If they’re important to you, then pursue them until you truly comprehend the concepts. No exceptions, ever.

  Now that you know what it takes to be a great e-learner get out there and take a crash course in something you can actually use! Check out Bizsnack’s courses

To see the full article from elitedaily here!

[bizsnack]

E-learning Replacing Snow Days? Yes.

by Mark Monaco

One of our favorite quotes here at Bizsnack is from the 1960’s cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead, “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” This is an amazing assessment that rote memorization is not as valuable as being able to find something that instills passion and learn it for yourself. That's what the essence of e-learning is, being able to find, and improve upon your passions at your own leisure. This is a skill that has been lacking in the education system but, there are pockets of innovation which have been springing up.

Take for example Gibault Catholic High School’s (Located in Waterloo, Illinois) new policy when it comes to snow days. They are no longer giving the kids a day off and taking that day on to the end of the school year. Instead, they are transforming snow days into e-learning days. In doing so they have found several benefits of encouraging e-learning within their students:

1. It creates a more contiguous learning schedule thus, helping to keep information fresh in the kids’ minds.

2. It encourages the children to become familiar with and be able to work within an e-learning environment.

3. It saves the school district money since they don’t have to stay open extra days.

4. It allows a flexible platform to be used that also allows children with a debilitating illness to not fall behind in their studies.

We think that this small school in the Mid-West is truly doing something great and we applaud their efforts to help bring the mentality of their students into the 21st century.

For the full article check it out here

[bizsnack]

Featured Course of the Week: Twitter Basics; Essentials in under 1 Hour

by Mark Monaco

Learning How to Use Twitter for Your Business or Brand can be Difficult!

We all know this and for some reason we don’t do anything about it. There are any myriad of confusing things that people who aren’t so familiar with the tweetosphere can’t get right. Luckily we have Deltina Hay to give us some guidance and help us sort it all out. She was awesome enough to boil down the essentials for using Twitter in less than an hour. She points out a numerous gems of knowledge that helped me get my Twitter feed much more organized.

Here are a few highlights from the course that show you how to use twitter:

1. Integrate and Automate Your Twitter Feed: This seems like a no-brainer but, how exactly do you go about doing it? Deltina takes you through the steps of setting up Hootsuite and shows you how to automate posts so you can just set and forget your content.

2. Customize Your Twitter Profile: Your profile is the representation of your brand! Don’t be afraid to let the personality of your brand shine through. There are a few websites that can help you set up a great, professional looking, profile for free all of which are mentioned in this course.

3. Find Followers and Engage with Them: We all want followers but, what’s more important; a lot of followers that don’t care about your business or fewer followers who are in your target market and interact with you? Obviously we would want to not waste our time talking to people that have no interest in what we do. You’ll get to see how to search through the madness of twitter and find those people who care about your business.

4. Promote your Tweets and Analyze What Happens: There was a quote recently that said, “Marketing without analytics is like driving without eyes.” Analytics is one of the most important aspects of any marketing campaign and twitter has a great analytics system that you’ll learn how to use. It’s kind of a game changer when you can actually see how people are responding to what you’re tweeting out there.

All-in-all Twitter Essentials in 1 hour is probably the best class you could take if you want to learn how to use Twitter on your lunch hour. Try it for yourself and let us know how you liked it in the comment section!  

Click here to take this course now! 

Other Related Courses:

Leveraging YouTube to Drive Traffic and Sales

Social Media Marketing for Businesses and Brands

Introduction to Social Media Marketing