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Using Twitter in your PowerPoint presentation

Social media is the next step in the WWW revolution. If you’re presenting to a large audience, keep in mind that someone in the auditorium has probably created a #hashtag for your event, and is Tweeting up a storm as you speak!

No doubt the Twitterverse is receiving live updates about your skill as a speaker, the highlights of your speech, or even making fun of your hair.

You need to build Twitter into your presentation design and grab this channel of instant feedback by the horns! Get a jumpstart on your modern, Twitter-savvy audience and start tweeting about your upcoming presentation a few days before the event. Take the initiative and #hashtag it yourself!

SAP has created a brilliant Twitter plug-in that allows you to interact with your audience as you speak. All it needs in PowerPoint for Windows and Adobe Flash to run.

For instance, you can dedicate a single slide to feedback tweets. Perhaps make this the final slide, and ask your audience to tweet their questions, which you can address. One of the best things about Twitter is that it’s hard to set up an anonymous account on the fly, for the sole purpose of bullying or insulting you, the speaker. Chances are excellent that the questions posed in the tweets will be good ones.

The Twitter plug-in from SAP will also allow you to set up auto-tweets while you speak. It has some fun applications, like a Mood meter and a Crowd meter. The audience can also vote or take part in quick polls – the results are quickly translated into bar graphs and pie charts.

Engaging with your audience on this kind of level requires that you ‘know your stuff’, which can be daunting. Think of incorporating Twitter into your presentation as a golden opportunity for your target market to interact with your brand, and go for it!

Would you consider adding Twitter to your PowerPoint presentation design?