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CEBIT - Europe's Business Festival for Innovation and Digitization

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Welcome to CEBIT - from 11 to 15 June 2018 in Hannover, Germany - Exhibition, Conference & Festival. The first day is reserved for conference attendees and journalists, with the exhibition opening on 12 June.

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Jonas Loose is a photographer who also specializes in digital art. In his surreal and colorful works, he likes to combine everyday objects, animals, plants and surprising with unusual compositions. In his imagination, a tyrex...

Jonas Loose is a photographer who also specializes in digital art. In his surreal and...

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Jonas Loose is a photographer who also specializes in digital art. In his surreal and colorful works, he likes to combine everyday objects, animals, plants and surprising with unusual compositions. In his imagination, a tyrex... Jonas Loose is a photographer who also specializes in digital art. In his surreal and...

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designboom | architecture & design magazine

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designboom | architecture & design magazine

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est. 1999 designboom is the first and most popular digital magazine for architecture & design culture. daily news for a professional and creative audience.

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Nielsen Global Digital Landscape Report March 2015

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Digimind -Report - I Top Brand Di Birra online e sui social

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importante per press office http://www.mysocialweb.it/2017/04/18/come-scrivere-titoli-efficaci/

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Maurizio La Cava: Presentation Design Professional

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Maurizio La Cava: Presentation Design Professional

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Maurizio La Cava: Presentation Design Professional

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Wouldn't it be great if every single person who attends your presentation gets excited at your speech and stays tuned until the end, focusing on you the entire time? I think we both know the answer to that question. The problem is that we always lack presentation hook ideas to start the presentation.

If you want to catch the attention of your audience, however, you must really hook your audience from the very beginning.

Did you know that you normally lose 90% of your audience within the first 5 minutes of your presentation? If you get 60 minutes to present, you do not get 60 minutes worth of attention. In fact, the typical attention span in an hour-long meeting goes something like this (Source: Sequoia Capital):

Your hook is often the difference between a successful presentation and a very boring one. Think about it. If you don't grab your audience right away, you'll lose them forever.

You went through all that work of preparing a killer presentation, right? You worked hard at it. You did a ton of research and you spent a lot of time carefully taking care of every single slide.
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However, the truth is that if your introduction sucks, your efforts will be for nothing. Well done, my friend, you lost before you even got started! If you want to spread your ideas so that they resonate with your audience, you need to conquer them from the very first moment you talk to them. How to hook the audience?

Let me show you how.

If you Google the topic "Hook the audience with your presentation", you'll find plenty of public speakers and pitch experts who will give you their top 5, top 10, top (x) advice points on how to create the perfect hook. I have identified commonalities and summarized the most impactful, shared and successful presentation hook ideas coming from the top experts below and I've enriched them with real life dedicated examples. Below you'll find a long list of hook presentation ideas with a whole bunch of ready to use examples to use.

Pre-hook - interact with the speakers first

When you speak at a conference, it's very rare that you are alone. There might be other speakers like you, and you might not be the first one to talk. I like not being the first speaker, as this allows me to listen to the others carefully and improve on my own presentation.

If somebody speaks before you, it's always a good strategy to connect your intervention to their speech. Every time I'm invited to give a speech at a conference, I always request to join from the beginning, even though I'm not the first speaker. By doing so, I can listen to the other speakers, take notes and prepare my hook.

By connecting your intervention to the others, you show respect to the other speakers and you demonstrate that you have been an active listener while you were in the audience; you'll give a good example on how you expect your audience to behave during a speech.

Moreover, you create a connection that contextualizes your intervention into the flow of the conference and you turn the separated speeches into a dialogue that you trigger by commenting on the other speeches. By creating a dialogue atmosphere, the audience will wake up from the previous speech and connect with you.

Now you are ready for your hook!

Craft the perfect hook - conquer your audience now with the following presentation hook ideas

Let's take a look at the top 13 presentation hook ideas you can use to start your presentation and focus your audience's attention on your message:

1. Storytelling

Starting with a story is one of the oldest and most powerful methods of introducing your presentation. Storytelling is a good hook for a speech because it shows you are human and shows you have feelings, emotions and reason. It is even more powerful if you start with a personal story. The audience will feel close to you and will trust you. If you earn their trust, you'll get their attention.

Normally when you start talking, people are tired from the other speeches, and their attention level is not ready for your core message or your call to action. You will need to start slowly and take them in gradually. A story is common to everybody, and it's easy to follow.

In most cases, it's very effective to start with a story. You don't really need to introduce yourself at the beginning. Your introduction can be postponed to when the audience will be really listening to you. If you start telling them why you're good, you'll immediately build distance from the audience, you won't be perceived as one of them, so it will be harder for the audience to connect with you.

Psychologist Shawn Achor explains that the happy secret to better work starts straight away with a funny personal story about his childhood and keeps going until 2 minutes fifty, until the audience sympathizes with him, and so gives the audience his message. Shawn shoots the message when he is sure that he has 100% of the audience's attention, not before. He only gives information about his prestigious background ("When I applied to Harvard [...]") at 6:32, after he has passed the core message. Still, he feels normal and empathetic to the audience when he shares the feeling of being an average guy surrounded by smarter guys, in such a great university. Therefore, he makes sure that his background does not bring him away from the audience.

Making the slides for this kind of hook will be very easy because all they need to do is help the audience visualize the story. Therefore, all you need is just a sequence of beautiful full-screen pictures. If you are telling them a personal story, show personal pictures. This will make them feel how real your story is, and it will catch their attention.

Learn more about how storytelling applies to presentations: Forget slides, tell stories.

If you do not want to tell a personal story or you do not have one, I'd suggest you invent one! After all, we have plenty of pictures on our social media channels we can leverage to invent an ad hoc story. The most important thing is that your story appears real, because if the audience thinks you are tricking them, they won't trust you and you'll lose any chance to connect with them.

If you have no creativity, you could even take inspiration from websites that offer stories by keywords like BusinessBalls. In BusinessBalls, for example, stories are characterized by keywords:

2. Questions and audience interaction

One of the most common errors that presenters commit nowadays is thinking they are one step above the audience, just because they came to present. We are in the era of "listening" today, more than ever before, with the advent of social media. If we want to be listened to, first we need to listen. Presentations aren't an exception. If you want to give a successful presentation, first you need to build a one-on-one relationship with your audience and start a dialogue. What's better for engagement than asking questions to your audience from the beginning of your presentation?

Questions turn on people's curiosity. Their brains will begin figuring out the answer. If they know the answer, they want to know if their answer is correct. If they do not know the answer, they might get involved and focus on the speaker in order to get the answer. In any case, answering a question works like a reward, because people feel satisfied by the fact that they canceled one more doubt. People's curiosity will make them focus on you to find the answer.

When you ask question, you pair up with your audience as they feel like they're in your position, and they want to help you answer the question. If you are perceived as one of them, you've won their trust and therefore their attention.

There are several kind of questions you might want to ask as good hook for a speech:

Yes/No questions

These questions help you interact with the audience. Having just simple answers, all you need to do is to ask people in a sequence to vote for "Yes" by raising their hands and then you can ask people to vote for "No" to do the same.

You can adopt this technique every time you have a multiple choice question, so the audience can vote for a single option by raising their hands.

You could ask how they're affected by the problem you're going to solve during your presentation.

"How many of you get so frustrated with PowerPoint when it crushes?"

"Raise your hand if you've fallen asleep during a presentation."

"Who struggles every time you need to choose colors for your next presentation?"

This is a good technique to use for checking the audience responsiveness. When you ask a Y/N question, people naturally answer loudly, so you'll immediately know if most of them are still awake.

Open-ended questions

Using open-ended questions, you expect the audience to develop an answer. This is the typical situation of a Q&A session. However, this technique enables you to open a real discussion with members of the audience. However, people may answer what they feel without a filter, so they can impede you if you are uncomfortable with their answer.

This is an incredibly powerful technique, but at the same time, you risk getting controversial opinions by freeing people to develop their discourse.

Also, be sure that everybody can be heard when talking from the audience, because they're not standing in front of everybody with a microphone. Sometimes you have a hostesses who may bring the microphone to people for them to answer, but this depends on the size of the event. You'll be in charge of picking somebody from the audience to answer.

A good practice is to repeat the answer to the audience in order to make sure everybody heard it. By doing so, you'll give them the feeling of being part of the dialogue and you will show that you are careful to keep everybody in the loop.

Rhetorical questions

Rhetorical refers to those questions asked by a speaker who does not expect to receive an answer. Even though you know you don't want an answer, the audience does not know if it's a rhetorical question. Their brains will be automatically triggered to elaborate an answer. Just by doing so, you'll turn on their brains and you'll catch their attention.

In order to maximize the effect of rhetorical questions, I recommend you to pause just after you ask. People will be forced to think of an answer. If you talk too quickly and you skip immediately to the answer, they won't have the time to think about the answer.

If you show you are thinking fo the answer in real time, this will help you to make the audience feel close to you. They'll feel involved and they'll try helping with their answers. This already means that they are interacting with you, so you'll have their attention.

Finally, if you choose this technique to open your presentation, I'd recommend you select the right number of questions based on their form. You do not want to open a full debate during your hook. If you decide to go for open-ended questions, you won't make more than one or two. On the other hand, if you ask a sequence of questions where the audience needs to raise their hands, you can ask more.

Question with surprise effect

A cool trick you could use is to send the audience in one mental direction, and then tell them they're wrong. I know it sounds weird, but let me give you an example of a hook.

You ask a question and you give 3 possible options: A,B and C. You ask the audience to vote for one of the 3 options. Once they vote, you tell them that none of the answers were correct. At this point, they'll feel surprised and you can hook them, then show them the correct one. You could build your speech step by step, commenting on why the 3 options are wrong. In this way, you'll bring the audience to the message more naturally.

When I want to introduce the color theory for Presentation Design, I commonly ask my students how many colors we need to use in a presentation, and I give them 3 options.

However, none of them is right, as I want to show them the technique on how to choose the best color palette to make colors work in the most effective way. After the vote, they feel they have it wrong, so they want to know what the correct answer is. That's a great hook for presentation.

Direct questions

Direct questions can be scary, and that's why this is a powerful technique! In this case, you ask the question and you pick someone random from the audience to answer. However, if the person does not know the answer or if they're shy, they'll feel embarrassed. You need to be able to manage the embarrassment, or you'll immediately create a tense atmosphere. However, people will know that you might call them all of the sudden to join the dialogue. Therefore, they'll pay attention to avoid being caught unprepared.

Again, I recommend you to handle these situations carefully, because you do not want to recreate the atmosphere of a classroom exam.

Introduce yourself

I really like this technique and, more than the other presentation hook ideas, I often use it during my training as a powerful icebreaker. Instead of starting with you or your speech, start with your audience and ask them to introduce themselves one by one. I also like to add a question about what they expect to learn during my training, so I already set their expectations and I'm sure I'll talk about something relevant to the audience.

One of the most common problems during presentations is that the audience isn't interested in the topics discussed. On the other hand, it's true that it's often hard to know what everybody expects from the presentation, so what could be better than just asking them what they are looking for? Knowing the people in front of you also enables you to acquire knowledge about your target and their language, so it will be easier for you to connect with them.

I suggest you to take note when people talk so that you can use the information during the rest of the presentation to hook them again. For example, if I know that somebody comes from finance and wants to know how to present an ugly P&L, when I'm about to talk about that topic I can call his name and say something like, "Hey Anders, the coming section is the one you are interested in." By doing this, I'll wake him up and I'll get his attention.

It's a great technique to discover the names of your attendants, so every time you talk to them, you can use their names. This will make them perceive you very close to them.

3. State a shocking fact

This is the classic hook that leaves the audience with their mouths open, staring at you. To create this effect, you normally use a surprising statistic. You can capture their attention by reminding them of their fears. If you properly leverage uncertainty, you can create anxiety due to the unknown, and people will need your answers to overcome their fears.

Jorge Soto uses this technique in his TED speech when he claims, "1 out of 3 people sitting in this audience will be diagnosed with some type of cancer."

People are scared of cancer, so they want to listen to him to find out if he can provide them with a solution.

There are 2 ways to astonish your audience:

Did you know that...

When you start with the formula "Did you know that...?" and add the fact, you are creating expectations. The trick is to choose the most effective stats to make the audience interested in your message. Therefore, you need a statistic that matches your presentation.

To get the right fact, it's often a good practice to do some research in your field. But you can also find websites full of facts that you can use as hook sentence examples:

Did you know August has the highest percentage of births?

Every 40 seconds someone in the world commits suicide.

Did you know that unless food is mixed with saliva, you can't taste it?

Did you know the average person falls asleep in 7 minutes?

The Earth is being shaken by Earthquakes over 1 million times per year.

Did you know 8% of people have an extra rib?

Did you know all your blinking in one day equates to having your eyes closed for 30 minutes?

Source: did-you-knows.com or factmontster.com/scary-facts-that-will-creep-you-out.

When deciding to choose this technique, your slides will play a crucial role. Check the difference between the two slides below:

The one to the left is made with a powerful graphic, but the second one shows the consequences of an earthquake. It shows destroyed buildings and the army helping people. The second one shows a dramatic situation, so it makes the problem immediately relevant, as it brings the consequences to life.

Imagine how much stronger the message could be if the city represented is the same city where your audience lives. If you can relate scary facts to the audience, you will resonate with them and you'll be able to get their attention.

Facts first

In this case, you shoot the fact straight to your audience and then you introduce the consequences.

Giulia Miur (check the analysis) gives an example: " Before the rule, more than 50 people here were dying in trenches every year. When you get killed in a cave-in, it's not an easy way to go. You're literally crushed to death under the weight of the soil. Soil weighs approximately 3,000 pounds per cubic yard. Nobody deserves to go to work and die that way ".

Finally, when you use a provocative fact as a way to hook your audience, I'd recommend you to make sure you integrate the fact with emotions. Always keep in mind that you need to use a fact with relevant consequences to your audience.

4. Use quotations to grab them

Opening with a famous quotation is a great way to borrow credibility from somebody who is well recognized and accepted by everybody.
The beauty of a great quote is its power to distill. To punctuate. To make things click. Sometimes the moral is presented on a plate, obvious as can be; sometimes the delivery is more subtle and sly. No matter how they're served up, the best quotes resonate - for days, weeks, even years (Forbes)
Quotes play a curious effect of attributing to the speaker the values and the meanings behind them. However, even though they have a powerful communication effect, they need to be used carefully. In fact, you absolutely need to be sure that the quote you choose matches your message. It needs to be relevant to what you want to say. Take your time to scan the sources and find the best quote for the specific message you have to communicate.

There are different kind of quotes you can use to obtain this effect:

Hook famous quote

They just have a powerful and commonly accepted effect on people. If you can associate the quote to a resonating image, you'll hit your strike on the very first slide.

Say I want to present a new technology for snowboards. I could use the following slide to introduce my speech:

You can source tons of famous quotes on the web. Let me share with you some of my favorite sources:

Brainy Quotes
This is by far the source that I prefer and that I use most often. It's well organized and full of inspirations. You can search by Author or by topic as show below:
This gives you enough flexibility to always identify the best quote for your message.

The Yale Book of Quotations (App / Book)

Good Reads

Hook movie quotes

Movies play a central role in most people's lives. Movie quotes are a common knowledge and often part of jokes or slang. Starting with a famous quote allows you to quickly connect to the audience and wake them up.

I'm presenting a new sailing boat brand. Instead of start saying why our boats are faster, with better sails and so on, I could start with the meaning behind the brand by quoting Captain Jack Sparrow:

If I want to sell plastic surgery to women, I could open my presentation with the following quote:

I'm clearly copying Joe E. Brown in "Some Like It Hot" and I'm combining it with an image that allows me to introduce my message. With a simple quote and a related picture, I can mean whatever I want by borrowing the powerful communication effect from Joe.

You could source famous quotes from many different places and use them as unlimited source of presentation hook ideas, let them inspire you!

Hook foreign quotes

You could also broaden the border of your quotes or proverbs and go catch some famous ones abroad. If your audience has never heard the quote, they could discover a new powerful proverb thanks to your speech.

Let's make the presentation hook example of a company that produces red umbrellas. You could start with the famous Italian proverb shown in the slide below:

You can source many foreign proverbs from: site for foreign proverbs.

One more fantastic source of inspiration for quotes is Pinterest. You just type in "quotes" and it gives you many tags to combine to customize your research.

It also gives you some inspiration as all the posts associate an image to the quote. Do not let Pinterest take your place. Remember that for this technique to work properly, you need to associate a meaningful image to the quote so that it delivers your message. Therefore, use it for inspiration but don't let it do your job.

Another good way to leverage quotes is to adopt a controversial approach. You could also go against quotations and revert them: " A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step. But we need to remember that a journey to nowhere also starts with a single step. " (Bruna Martinuzzi).

This will make the audience curious, as you are challenging a common belief. So they'll want to hear how this can be possible and will focus their attention on you.

Another great technique to introduce quotations in a presentation is to use a picture of the author:

If you are talking about a famous author, you'll automatically inherit the values that they bring with them.

Finally, remember that quotes are a powerful way of making your presentations memorable to the audience. Leverage the opportunity to hook them since the beginning with an opening stunning quote.

5. Break common belief and provoke the audience

Provocation can be a great tool to hook your audience and to raise their curiosity. By provoking the audience, I mean you have to claim something that is totally against their belief. You'll then spend the whole presentation supporting the claim and demonstrating how it can be true. If you are able to uncover the truth step-by-step, you'll have them hooked to the end.

Let me give you an example from the outstanding TED speech of Jane McGonigal:
I'm Jane McGonigal. I'm a game designer. I've been making games online now for 10 years, and my goal for the next decade is to try to make it as easy to save the world in real life as it is to save the world in online games. Now, I have a plan for this, and it entails convincing more people, including all of you, to spend more time playing bigger and better games. Right now we spend three billion hours a week playing online games. Some of you might be thinking: "That's a lot of time to spend playing games." Maybe too much time, considering how many urgent problems we have to solve in the real world. I've calculated the total we need at 21 billion hours of game play every week. [...] In fact, I believe that if we want to survive the next century on this planet, we need to increase that total dramatically.
This is the point where the audience thinks: "Wow! Hold on a second. Are you really claiming that to save the world I should be spending more time playing video games?"

The common belief is that video games are a way to escape reality and to waste productive time. We all think that the new generations are burning their lives in playing video games. But suddenly at TED, an influential speaker is claiming exactly the opposite and this makes the audience curious to know how it can be true that the reality is so different to what they thought.

Jane is also great at uncovering the message step by step through the presentation. The audience can't really figure out why this is true until the very end. So Jane proceeds to hook the audience with a persuasive claim and keep them hooked until she shoots her message.

Finally, go against something the audience is convinced of and claim the opposite. Then walk them through your logic step by step to show how this is possible, and you'll get their attention from beginning to end.

6. Bring it to life

"A picture is worth a thousand words" is an English idiom meaning that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single image, or that an image conveys its meaning more effectively than a description. What makes a good hook in this case?

Opening with a picture, a video or a prop allows you to bring the subject to life immediately. If you are a good presenter, you'll be able to leverage the imagination of your audience, but if you place the subject in front of their eyes, it's not even a matter of imagination, it's just true.

Let's suppose you are in charge of presenting the new Apple SIRI, the virtual assistant. You could start talking about the features and all the functions it has, you could tell your audience how to activate it on their iPhones, or you could just show them the following video:

Watch out, because surely this takes attention off you, so it decreases the pressure level. But you need to be able to catch the attention back immediately. If you use a picture or a prop, this goes very fast because the processing time of a picture is very fast, and a prop is normally shown by a presenter, who interacts with it.

If you show a video instead, you'll lose the attention of the audience for entire the length of the video and you'll need to re-catch it once the video is finished.

A video, more than a picture, can help you convey a whole emotional environment to the audience. You can show a product demo, but you can also show a powerful trailer with music and enticing footage.

7. Make them laugh

Not an easy task, I know. To make the audience laugh, sometimes a joke might not be enough and on certain occasions, the audience might miss the joke, causing a no reaction at all. Looking at what the other influencers suggest online, as a result of my analysis, I've found a common opinion about how to make the audience laugh. Tell them a joke.

You can easily source jokes online if you do not have one. There are even websites that organize jokes by category: http://www.ajokeaday.com/categories.

What happens if they do not laugh? Well, your hook is dead but this does not mean that you ruined the whole presentation, so ignore the reaction and keep going.

Now, based on my experience, often telling a joke is not enough because to make people laugh, you need to feel the moment, you need to feel the connection with them and you need to behave in a such surprising way that you automatically trigger the fun.

In the following presentation, I was giving an introduction lesson about Lean Presentation Design and I made them laugh just by playing with the rhythm of my voice and showing them what could happen to the audience if you show them ugly slides.

So I showed them a ugly slide and then I showed them the sleeping audience. That was enough to make them laugh. I can tell you that afterwards, they were receptive, paying attention up to the end of the presentation.

8. Leverage historical events

Let's say you work for a company that produces solar panels and wind turbines. The company closed a bad financial year and you, as a CEO, need to go out today, 26 th of April, to motivate your board and get their commitment for the coming year.

Instead of reminding them that they won't receive a bonus this year and that if they perform better, they will for the next year, you could motivate them by giving meaning to their work.

You could take advantage of that date (26 th of April), show the following slide and saying, "About 10 years ago in Ukraine, a catastrophic nuclear accident occurred. Today, we exist to give the world an alternative."

Your start will empower your board members. They'll feel their work is important and has a real impact on the world, it saves lives. From now on, you can make your presentation because you will have them hooked.

9. Trigger the audience imagination

Imagine a big explosion as you climb past 3,000 ft. Imagine a plane full of smoke. Imagine an engine going clack, clack, clack. It sounds scary. Plane crash survivor Ric Elias begins his speech by bringing the audience back to the event, straight into the story, triggering their imagination and making them visualize the scene of the plane crush. By using the word "imagine," he turns on the people's minds and force them to start seeing the images and feeling to be there.

A very effective way of using this technique is beginning with "Close your eyes and imagine." Because in closing their eyes, people will focus on image visualization, not being distracted by the environment or the speaker. Moreover, you could prepare a surprise for when they re-open their eyes.

You could also begin with a "what if ..." form. You could depict an ideal scenario that could actually be true if they listen what you have to say. Of course, it has to be a desirable scenario for the audience. Let's say you invented a cure for cancer, you could start saying, "What if cancer deaths stop today?" Build on it. "What if you could no longer lose someone close, a parent or friend, because of cancer?" and so on. You can keep going and build up expectations, and the farther you go, the more curious the audience will be.

10. Straight to the Problem

Start the presentation by describing the problem straight away. Be sure that the problem is relevant to the audience if you want your hook to resonate with them.

Let me give you a very simple example.

"Good morning, everybody. Competitor A took us over in terms of revenue this year and we have nothing with which to return fire."

Now, if you work in that company, you might be interested in this fact and therefore you would want to know what comes next, to check whether there is a solution or if the speaker can just walk you closer to a solution. If you give a clear and relevant problem to the audience, then this is a very quick technique to hook them from the very beginning without spending time searching for specific visuals or the right quote.

Elon Musk in the Debuts of Tesla Powerwall presentation made a memorable speech that started with this technique.

"So, what I'm gonna talk about tonight is about a fundamental transformation of how the world works about how energy is delivered across the Earth. This is how it is today (shows a slide).
"It's pretty bad, it sucks! Exactly! I just wanna be clear, because sometimes some people are, like, confused about it. This is real. "This is actually how most power of the world is generated, with fossil fuels, and if you look at the curve, that's a famous curve, the Keeling curve..."
He hooked the audience bringing their attention straight to a well-known shared problem.
"...which shows the growth in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, and every year it ratchets up, it gets higher and higher, and if we do nothing, that's where it's headed to levels that we don't even see in the fossil record. "Well, I think we collectively should do something about this and not try to win the Darwin Award for us and a lot of other creatures too."
At this point, he starts with his discourse:
"The way the grid works today is this: you got coal, you got natural gas, nuclear, hydro and wind and solar [...]."
Check the first 2 minutes of the following video:

11. Set the expectations

First of all, I want to make it clear that setting expectations does not absolutely mean sharing a summary of your presentation like the one shown in the slide below.

That would just bore your audience even before you start the presentation, and won't add anything to them. Let's take an example from Cordell instead, who tells we should leverage the hook to go straight to the point and tell the audience:

1. What about the topic

2. What you need to know

3. What you need to do

In this case, the audience feels more like you take care of them and you are saving them time by giving them only the information they need to know to take the proper action, which you'll suggest as well.

In his 40.2 million views TED speech, Sir Ken Robinson gives an anticipation of 2 main topics that have been discussed by the others and that he wants to discuss during his presentation. Check the first 2 minutes of the video below.

Without any special effects, Sir Robinson starts anticipating two main topics he will discuss and connecting his speech to the conference.

This technique isn't creative at all compared to the others, but it is extremely powerful because tells the audience that they won't waste their time and you'll go straight to the point. Imagine the scene when you come up on the stage and the first thing you say is, "Today, I'll be telling you two things..."

A creative example of the 'setting expectations' technique comes from the outstanding presentation of Steve Jobs for the launch of the first iPhone. He sets the expectation and goes far beyond just exceeding them! If you haven't watched this video yet, you'll be astonished:

S.J.: Today we are going to introduce 3 revolutionary products of this class: the first one is an iPod.
The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. And the third is a breakthrough internet communication device. So, an iPod, a phone and a revolutionary internet communication device.
At this point, he keeps repeating the same sentence, telling the audience the three devices that he's going to introduce. At this point, the audience starts laughing and clapping his hands because they think he is happy about these 3 new devices, but here he comes out with an explosive surprise. " These are not 3 separate devices, this is one device!" Boom! The audience goes crazy, he's got them hooked from the very first moment of the presentation.

12. Use a surprising metaphor

Start with an image, just to create a suspense effect linked to your message and then uncover your message step-by-step with a metaphor.
The president of an electronics equipment company needed his managers to cut costs. Rather than showing mundane charts, graphs, and spreadsheets, he opened the meeting by asking, "What sank the Titanic?" When everyone in unison replied, "an iceberg," he displayed a beautiful high-definition image of an iceberg on the screen: the tip of the iceberg was clearly visible above the water; the much larger portion was dimly visible below the surface of the water. "The same thing is about to happen to our company," he continued. "Hidden costs - the dangers beneath the surface - are about to sink this company. I need your help." This visual metaphor spawned a creative, productive brainstorming session that inspired every business unit manager to diligently hunt for what they labeled the "icebergs," says Price. The result was saving millions and ultimately the company. (http://business.financialpost.com ) The home run is easy to describe: You put up a slide. It triggers an emotional reaction in the audience. They sit up and want to know what you're going to say that fits in with that image. Then, if you do it right, every time they think of what you said, they'll see the image (and vice versa). Sure, this is different from the way everyone else does it. But everyone else is busy defending the status quo (which is easy) and you're busy championing brave new innovations, which is difficult.
Trying to imagine his opening slide, I designed the following graphic:

Mentioning the Lean Presentation Design Book here, you get a famous tip from Seth Godin:

13. Combine more hooking techniques together

We went through a long list of presentatation hook ideas coming from all the most influential speakers on the net. You'll have to choose your technique based on the specific situation and on your audience. However, nobody said you can't combine more of them together to craft your special perfect opening.

In the following video, Alan Watts, master of storytelling, combines two presentation hook techniques we have analyzed. First, he asks couple of rhetorical questions to the viewer and then introduces a story from his personal experience with his students. It takes time to get to the message but when he gets there, you feel that what he's telling you is the natural consequence of the story that brought you there. As a result, you are hooked from the beginning and the video results in impactful and memorable storytelling.

What did this video make you think? Did you like it? I just love this video and I like listening to this storytelling, as it is incredibly impactful.

Conclusion

A good hook for a speech launched in the first seconds of the presentation is the difference between success and failure. Now you have 13 presentation hook ideas, and a long list of videos and examples from which you can take inspiration every time you need to make a new hook.

If you liked this piece of research, I'd invite you to share and comment in order to enrich the guide and make it even more useful, thanks to the contribution of new readers. I'm looking forward to seeing your presentation hook ideas described in the comments below.

Have you ever successfully hooked you audience? How did you do? What are your favorite hook presentation ideas?

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The 13 most successful presentation hook ideas ever

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Wouldn't it be great if every single person who attends your presentation gets excited at your speech and stays tuned until the end, focusing on you the entire time? I think we both know the answer to that question. The problem is that we always lack presentation hook ideas to start the presentation.

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Descrizione

The PageFrog plugin allows you to easily publish and manage your content directly from WordPress to Facebook Instant Articles (FBIA) and Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) with full support for ads and analytics.
What are Facebook Instant Articles and Google Accelerated Mobile Pages?
FBIA is a new mobile format developed by Facebook, which can be served to visitors accessing your content from the Facebook mobile app. AMP is a new mobile format developed by Google, which can be served to visitors accessing your content from Google, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest mobile apps.
Why should I optimize my content for FBIA and AMP?
The FBIA and AMP formats are built to load instantly on mobile devices and designed for higher engagements, resulting in improved News Feed Ranking and greatly benefits Search Engine Optimization.
Increase traffic and discoverability
Search engine optimization and social media discovery are extremely important when it comes to generating traffic. Both Facebook Newsfeed Ranking and Google PageRank rely on performance metrics such as page load times and visitor engagements to rank articles.

Native mobile formats such as FBIA and AMP offer unprecedented advantages when it comes to page performance. These mobile formats preload content and cache media files, allowing articles to load instantly for readers on mobile devices.
Boost engagements and shares
FBIA and AMP offer opportunities for true mobile experiences to captivate and engage readers. These formats allow for a number of advanced features specifically designed for mobile content such as audio captions, interactive maps, tilt-to-pan photos, and more.

These formats are deeply embedded into mainstream mobile apps such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Pinterest. FBIA and AMP offer specific layouts designed to maximize social engagements such as Likes and Comments.
What can I do with the PageFrog plugin? Content Optimization
Rather than following FBIA and AMP documentations to build custom layouts from scratch, PageFrog automatically takes your existing content and optimizes the page structure to fit the requirements of FBIA and AMP.
Quality Assurance
PageFrog offers real-time previews of how your content will appear on FBIA and AMP. This allows you to write content and see the output as you're writing, ensuring that your content will always appear professionally on FBIA and AMP.
Branding and Styling
FBIA and AMP enforce their own unique styling restrictions. Rather than building custom layouts for each format, PageFrog allows you to handle all your branding and styling needs within the WordPress interface.
Analytics and Insights
PageFrog allows you to connect multiple third party analytics to your FBIA and AMP pages using Google Analytics, Chartbeat, Parse.ly, and more. PageFrog can also display your analytics data from Facebook Insights directly within WordPress.
Ads and Monetization
PageFrog makes it extremely easy to monetize your content through FBIA and AMP. Simply connect your Facebook Audience Network and/or Google AdSense account to start displaying ads with full control over ad placement and display frequency.

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FAQ

What is Instant Articles?

Instant Articles is a tool for news publishers to distribute fast, interactive articles to their readers in the Facebook app.

How do Instant Articles work?

Rather than loading an article using a web browser, which takes over 8 seconds on average, Instant Articles load using the same fast tools we use to load photos and videos in the Facebook app allowing articles to load as much as 10 times faster than standard mobile web articles. Beyond just speed, Instant Articles allow publishers to provide the same high quality, fluid experience and interactivity that people expect from a mobile app. Instant Articles has been designed with extensive feedback from news publishers. Publishers can serve their own ads and keep that revenue, track readership in real-time and with comScore, and customize the presentation of articles to match their brand.

Will Instant Articles be required for publishers on Facebook moving forward?

No. Publishers have the option to participate in the Instant Articles program. Participating publishers retain full control of their content and publishing schedule, including how much to publish to Facebook. Standard article links will remain accessible from Facebook via the standard mobile browser for publishers that decline to participate. Our expectation is that people on Facebook will appreciate the enhanced accessibility of Instant Articles content, while publishers will see greater engagement for their content as a result.

Why would publishers want to participate in Instant Articles?

There are several benefits for publishers. Faster article loading allows readers to get to content as quickly as possible. Facebook's experience with other media formats, such as auto-play video, has been that more rapid content loading generates increased content consumption and sharing. We believe Instant Articles will help publishers grow their businesses on Facebook.

Do publishers need to create original content for Facebook?

No. Instant Articles is simply a faster, mobile-optimized way to publish and distribute stories on Facebook, and it supports automated content syndication using standards like HTML and RSS. Content published as Instant Articles will also be published on the publishers' websites.

How much effort is required for publishers to reconfigure their content for Instant Articles?

It's a straightforward process for publishers to publish their articles in the Instant Article format because it uses HTML and RSS, standard ways for authoring articles on the web. Facebook translates articles authored for the web in HTML into the Instant Articles format. We also provide tools for publishers to preview articles prior to publication and make sure they display as they intended. Publishers who wish to embrace new elements like interactive maps and auto-play videos can use simple, well-documented HTML tags to enhance their content with rich-media features.

What types of articles work best for this format?

Instant Articles work for any type of article, from daily spot-news coverage to in-depth, longform features.

Do Instant Articles change how publishers or people share on Facebook?

No. Nothing about link-sharing changes. Publishers and readers link to articles just as they always have; there is no need to link or post an Instant Article differently. Each Instant Article is associated with a link, so when a friend or page shares a link in News Feed, readers see the Instant Article version if it is available.

Are Instant Articles available to everyone on Facebook?

For the moment, Instant Articles are only available to people who use Facebook's iPhone app.

What happens if a reader is not on a device that supports Instant Articles?

People on a desktop computer or other device that doesn't support Instant Articles will continue to link to the mobile web version of the article.

How will Instant Articles influence referral traffic?

Instant Articles display within the Facebook app, so readers no longer redirect to the publisher's website. Facebook worked with publishers and comScore to enable Instant Articles views in Facebook's app to count as traffic to the original publisher, just as they do on the mobile web.

Can publishers sell their own advertising on Instant Articles?

Yes. Publishers can sell in their articles and keep the revenue, or they can choose to use Facebook's Audience Network to monetize unsold inventory.

How do publishers enroll to use Instant Articles?

Facebook is currently testing Instant Articles with a small set of publishers. The Instant Articles program will expand to more publishers in the future. If would like to participate, please tell us about yourself and we'll keep you updated.

What is the Accelerated Mobile Pages project?

The Accelerated Mobile Pages ("AMP") Project is an open source initiative that came out of discussions between publishers and technology companies about the need to improve the entire mobile content ecosystem for everyone - publishers, consumer platforms, creators, and users.

Today, the expectation is that content should load super fast and be easy to explore. The reality is that content can take several seconds to load, or, because the user abandons the slow page, never fully loads at all. Accelerated Mobile Pages are web pages designed to load instantaneously - they are a step towards a better mobile web for all.

What are the benefits of Accelerated Mobile Pages?

Speed matters and instant is the ideal. Research shows that the bounce rate can be as high as 58% for web pages that take nearly ten seconds to load. Using the AMP format will make it far more compelling for people to consume and engage with more content. But this isn't just about speed and performance. We also want to promote enhanced distribution so that publishers can take advantage of the open web's potential for their content to appear everywhere quickly - across all platforms and apps - which can lead to more revenue via ads and subscriptions.

How do Accelerated Mobile Pages work?

Accelerated Mobile Pages are just like any other HTML page, but with a limited set of allowed technical functionality that is defined and governed by the open source AMP spec. Just like all web pages, Accelerated Mobile Pages will load in any modern browser or app webview. AMP files take advantage of various technical and architectural approaches that prioritize speed to provide a faster experience for users. The goal is not to homogenize how content looks and feels, but instead to build a more common technical core between pages that speeds up load times.

In addition, AMP files can be cached in the cloud in order to reduce the time content takes to get a user's mobile device. Under this type of framework, publishers continue to control their content, but platforms can easily cache or mirror the content for optimal delivery speed users. Google has stated that it will provide a cache that can be used by anyone at no cost, though the cache (Google's or otherwise) is not required. Other companies may build their own cache as well.

In summary, the goal is that that the combination of limited technical functionality with a distribution system built around caching will lead to better performing pages, and increased audience development for publishers.

Why does the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project take an open source approach?

The initial companies involved in this early preview of the project want to make the mobile web work better for all - not just for one platform, one set of technologies, or one set of publishers. Making the project open source enables people to share and contribute their ideas and code for making the mobile web fast. This preview is just the beginning of that journey and we look forward to other publishers and technology companies joining along the way.

When will Accelerated Mobile Pages launch and what is the rollout plan?

On October 7th, 2015, the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project announced the release of the initial technical specification which will appear on GitHub, a broadly used repository for open-source content. We are also providing an early developer demo of what a faster mobile web can look and feel like with Accelerated Mobile Pages. More features and functionality will be added over the coming weeks, including functional support for subscription models as well as vendor support for advertising functionality. As more of this functionality becomes commonly available, we hope to see more and more major consumer platforms integrating AMP pages into their apps and services.

Who will be able to use Accelerated Mobile Pages?

The project is open to all players in the ecosystem - publishers, consumer platforms, and creators. In this early stage of the project, a group of publishers and platforms have come together to demonstrate how Accelerated Mobile Pages can transform the mobile web experience. They include platforms like Twitter and Google, tech players like ChartBeat and WordPress.com and publishers like Vox, The New York Times, The Guardian and Globo.

What type of content will work best using Accelerated Mobile Pages?

The goal is for all published content, from news stories to videos and from blogs to photographs and GIFs, to work using Accelerated Mobile Pages.

As a publisher, will making my content work for Accelerated Mobile Pages entail more work?

In short, not much. Since "AMP HTML" is built entirely out of existing web technologies, the development process mirrors the one publishers are already using today. Publishers can familiarize themselves with the AMP HTML specification on GitHub. For those used to the current process, we don't expect a significant learning curve.

How can a publisher get content into AMP HTML?

Publishers and Content Management System (CMS) providers can develop an integration with their CMS to generate AMP content. We hope that all content management systems will add support for AMP HTML pages. For example, WordPress.com has announced that it will integrate the AMP framework. In addition to WordPress.com, we hope other commercial CMS providers will support the project in the weeks and months to come.

How can a consumer platform get involved in Accelerated Mobile Pages?

The project is open to all players, and existing members of the project are very enthusiastic to engage with consumer platforms on the initiative. Google will also open its cache for use for free by anyone, including to consumer platforms that would like to display AMP content in their environment.

How can an advertising or technology vendor get involved in Accelerated Mobile Pages?

Though we cannot guarantee that all vendor technology will function perfectly inside AMP files, over time we expect to release new functionality in the specification that will make it easier for your technology to integrate with the format.

How will advertising work on Accelerated Mobile Pages?

A goal of the Accelerated Mobile Pages Project is to ensure effective ad monetization on the mobile web while embracing a user-centric approach. With that context, the objective is to provide support for a comprehensive range of ad formats, ad networks and technologies in Accelerated Mobile Pages. As part of that, those involved with the project are also engaged in crafting Sustainable Ad Practices to insure that ads in AMP files are fast, safe, compelling and effective for users.

Will publishers be able to sell their own ad inventory?

Yes, as with their existing websites, publishers control their ad inventory and how they sell it.

How will subscriptions and paywalls work with Accelerated Mobile Pages?

It is a core objective of the Accelerated Mobile Pages project to support subscriptions and paywalls. Publishers and technologists will work together to build the best solutions for readers and publishers.

How are analytics being handled in this AMP format?

Ensuring publishers are able to get robust analytics insight is a core design goal for the project. While the analytics support in the demo release is very limited, the spec is expected to have support for collection of analytics information, and integrating with 3rd party systems without compromising the AMP file speed or size. Chartbeat and Parse.ly, two publisher analytics providers, are participants in the project.

Do publishers receive credit for the traffic from a measurement perspective?

Yes, an AMP file is the same as the rest of your site - this space is the publisher's canvas.

Recensioni

Changelog

1.0.9
Release Date - March 8, 2016

Fixed AMP urls issues where /amp/ or ?amp=1 wasn't working

1.0.8
Release Date - March 5, 2016

Solve header image duplication

Enable posts by default, rather than forcing people to do it themselves

1.0.7.2
Release Date - February 29, 2016

Add feature to turn off plugins that might raise AMP errors

1.0.7.1
Release Date - February 27, 2016

Explanation text to help enabling articles

bug fixes

1.0.7
Release Date - February 24, 2016

You can enable posts in bulk now without things locking up!

There's support for post types other than boring old posts now

1.0.6
Release Date - February 22, 2016

Increased Instant Articles feed to show up to 50 posts

Improved Instant Articles formatting

Added AdSense Support

1.0.5.1
Release Date - February 18, 2016
1.0.5
Release Date - February 13, 2016

Added analytics integrations with Google Analytics, Parsely, Chartbeat, and others

Added a support contact form

Added toggle to turn on/off all published posts for each format

Included support for facebook ads

1.0.4
Release Date - February 3, 2016

Added mobile quick preview links

Instant Articles - iframe and embed preview support

Several small AMP & Instant Articles format fixes

1.0.3.1
Release Date - January 29, 2016

Added screenshots, icon, banner images

Various AMP & Instant Articles fixes

1.0.3

Launch release

Facebook Instant Articles Support (beta)

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Contributori & Sviluppatori

"Facebook Instant Articles & Google AMP Pages by PageFrog" is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Collaboratori

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Facebook Instant Articles & Google AMP Pages by PageFrog

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The PageFrog plugin allows you to easily publish and manage your content directly from WordPress to Facebook Instant Articles (FBIA) and Google Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) with full support for ads and analytics. What are Facebook Instant Articles and Google Accelerated Mobile Pages?

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La domanda che attanaglia tutti i blogger di questo mondo: quanto deve essere lungo un articolo? Forse già lo sai, forse no. In realtà la risposta non esiste, è impossibile definire a priori il numero esatto di parole per un articolo. E adesso immagino già le proteste che si alzano dalla platea.

"Ma non esiste una misura, un'indicazione di base, una linea guida per capire qual è la strada da seguire per fare un buon lavoro e ottenere un risultato degno di nota?". Ecco, questo è il punto. Tutto dipende dall'obiettivo del contenuto che hai creato. Anzi, dal contesto che circonda il tuo lavoro.

Ci sono parametri per prendere una decisione di massima, non esistono cifre nette. Ma il punto di partenza è sempre lo stesso: devi mettere al centro il pubblico. Solo le esigenze delle persone che vuoi raggiungere possono dare indicazioni sulla lunghezza di un contenuto di qualità.

Perché questo è il fine ultimo della tua attività online: pubblicare un post qualitativamente superiore e soddisfare il pubblico. Quindi, quanto deve essere lungo un articolo? Voglio risolvere questa domanda, ma prima lasciami affrontare un passaggio decisivo per proseguire.

L'approccio di un blog professionale

Non esistono regole scritte. Nel senso che la lunghezza di un post non è un fattore stabilito a tavolino come può essere, ad esempio, il tag title. Non conosco un numero magico da rispettare ma delle indicazioni di massima. Chi ha deciso di guadagnare con il blog, o di sfruttare questo strumento per dare vantaggi strategici alla propria azienda, deve sposare questo approccio.

Sto parlando di dare spazio alle esigenze del pubblico. Un blogger che pubblica solo per portare su carta il proprio amore per la scrittura può muoversi come preferisce. Può scrivere senza giudizi, può ignorare le necessità del target. In realtà non ha un destinatario: scrive per dare sfogo alla propria passione.

Questo è il tuo blog personale. L'approccio professionale è diverso. Ha un piano editoriale da seguire e delle regole da rispettare in termini di SEO copywriting. Insomma, nel mondo del blogging non sei tu il cuore del processo creativo. Ma quanto deve essere lungo un articolo?

Lo decide il pubblico. Anzi, lo decide il piano editoriale. Studio le esigenze della mia realtà, analizzo il target e gli obiettivi, creo una mappa degli argomenti e li trasformo in titoli da programmare sul calendario editoriale. Con caratteristiche differenti che un bravo web writer deve rispettare.
Per approfondire: come fare un piano editoriale per il blog
E il piacere di scrivere?

Molti colleghi sbattono i piedi a terra di fronte a questa situazione. Mi è capitato durante un corso di blogging, mentre spiegavo questo approccio una ragazza ha interrotto: "Ma quindi non esiste il piacere di scrivere nel mondo del web writing? Devo solo analizzare le query con i SEO tool e scrivere contenuti tagliati intorno a queste esigenze? Devo solo pubblicare per soddisfare gli utenti?".

Un blog professionale ha degli obiettivi. Entra in un processo di inbound marketing e intercetta il bisogno dei potenziali clienti. Conosci il funnel, giusto? Le persone non conoscono il tuo brand poi arrivano sul tuo blog grazie alla combinazione di contenuti, SEO e Social Media Marketing.

Dal blog poi passano alle landing page, fino alle call to action. Ecco come trovare nuovi clienti online e monetizzare la propria presenza su internet. Questo è possibile se ascolti le esigenze del pubblico e scrivi articoli capaci di soddisfare le domande espresse. Questo vale per gli argomenti, ma anche per la lunghezza. A proposito di misure: perché dovrei scrivere un post lungo?

Perché scrivere un post lungo

Perché alcuni articoli hanno bisogno di testo per spiegare nel miglior modo possibile un argomento. Ci sono dei contenuti che hanno questa caratteristica: sono abbondanti, non hanno paura di approfondire e spiegare nel miglior modo possibile un tema. Per questo vengono apprezzati.

Pensa ai tutorial, ai case study, ai cornerstone content e ai pillar article: sono contenuti che non hanno problemi a superare le 1.000 parole. Non sono i classici articoli generali che affrontano un'opinione personale: prendono in considerazione ogni singolo aspetto di una questione e offrono al lettore la migliore risposta possibile. Per scrivere un post del genere devi seguire una procedura precisa:

Raccogliere fonti utili.

Approfondire l'argomento.

Studiare chi ha scritto sull'argomento prima di te.

Approfondire le ricerche degli utenti.

Analizzare le domande espresse nelle community.

Scrivere un articolo esaustivo.

Questo significa che devi pubblicare un post capace di dare risposte che gli altri non hanno avuto la forza o il coraggio di dare. E lo devi fare usando tutti i mezzi a disposizione. Il testo è centrale, ma ci sono anche le immagini e i video. I post lunghi soddisfano le esigenze del pubblico, e incontrano i piaceri di Google. Infatti sono tanti gli studi che sottolineano il rapporto tra lunghezza e posizionamento.

Attenzione, non fraintendere. Non basta scrivere tanto per posizionare un contenuto. Devi sempre scrivere per incontrare i favori del pubblico, offrendo la risposta che le persone cercano. Ma un contenuto approfondito intercetta un maggior numero di ricerche e raccoglie segnali interessanti: link in ingresso, condivisioni sui social, commenti. Senza dimenticare tempo di permanenza sul sito web.

Quindi, se tra i miei obiettivi strategici - sto sempre parlando di blogging professionale - c'è la necessità di conquistare una SERP molto concorrenziale, probabilmente devo scrivere un contenuto abbondante. Capace di soddisfare tutte le esigenze di una determinata domanda.
Per approfondire: perché scrivere un contenuto lungo?
Ma le persone leggeranno?

Uno dei grandi miti: le persone non leggono sul web. Certo, è vero che all'inizio scannerizzano un testo e cercano di capire se ci sono le risposte che cercano. Poi, se l'argomento è stato centrato, la lettura segue un filo logico. Per agevolare questo passaggio devi curare la leggibilità.

Molti blogger sostengono che i post lunghi non funzionano perché le persone si annoiano. Dipende dallo scopo, ma soprattutto da come presenti il lavoro. Se scrivi contenuti lunghi perché giri intorno all'argomento allora è così: parole inutili, periodi superflui e paragrafi senza uno scopo sono micidiali. Un articolo informativo svolge la sua funzione senza parole inutili.

Perché scrivere un post breve

Quanto deve essere lungo un articolo? Non per forza quanto la Divina Commedia, la regola che vale per gli articoli informativi (cioè che danno informazioni precise su un argomento) vale per tutte le situazioni. Gli obiettivi di un blog sono vari e il calendario editoriale tiene presente questa varietà.

Il pillar article guadagna posizioni nella SERP e autorevolezza agli occhi del pubblico, ma puoi ottenere vantaggi differenti da articoli diversi. Ad esempio puoi essere il primo a rilanciare una notizia importante per la tua nicchia e guadagnare traffico, backlink, menzioni. In questo caso il contenuto è breve, rapido. Ora pensa a un articolo d'opinione, a un testo che scrivi per commentare un dettaglio.

In questo caso la lunghezza è irrilevante, probabilmente non andrà oltre le 700 parole. Così come la notizia può essere anche più breve, e scendere al di sotto del minimo sindacale suggerito da WordPress SEO by Yoast (300 parole). Perché al centro c'è sempre il pubblico.

Anzi, c'è un'esigenza del pubblico. L'articolo informativo deve essere preciso, completo. La notizia deve informare nel minor tempo possibile, non deve approfondire. Ci penseranno altri contenuti. L'articolo d'opinione deve fidelizzare il pubblico, deve polarizzare i singoli intorno al tuo nome. E per fare questo non servono tante parole, ma quelle giuste. Devi emozionare e riscaldare gli animi.

Google che ne pensa?

Mountain View fa trasparire la sua propensione verso i contenuti lunghi. O quantomeno completi, ben strutturati. Come fa notare il Tagliablog, nelle famose 23 domande di Amit Singhal per costruire un sito web a prova di Panda, lascia una serie di indicazioni che attirano l'attenzione:

L'articolo è stato scritto bene? Sembra poco curato o prodotto in fretta?

L'articolo affronta il tema in modo completo o dettagliato?

Gli articoli sono brevi, inconsistenti, privi di dettagli utili?

Insomma, sembra quasi che lo stia dicendo chiaro e tondo. Quanto deve essere lungo un articolo? Tanto, ma proprio tanto. D'altro canto John Mueller lascia delle indicazioni che in qualche modo aggiustano il tiro e rassicurano gli amanti della buona scrittura:

There's no minimum length, and there's no minimum number of articles a day that you have to post, nor even a minimum number of pages on a website. In most cases, quality is better than quantity.

Non c'è una lunghezza minima dei contenuti, non c'è un numero minimo di articoli da pubblicare o di pagine da mettere in bella mostra.Nella maggior parte dei casi la qualità vince sulla quantità. Ancora un invito: non riempire il sito web di chiacchiere, fa' in modo che le persone trovino la risposta giusta. Devi essere il miglior risultato possibile per un'esigenza. A prescindere dalla lunghezza.

Quanto deve essere lungo un articolo?

Ogni articolo deve contenere la giusta quantità di testo per raggiungere un obiettivo nel momento in cui soddisfa l'esigenza del pubblico. Devi informare? L'articolo deve essere completo, devi soddisfare tutte le domande che hai individuato durante la ricerca. Cercando di andare oltre la concorrenza.

Devi emozionare? Usa i codici necessari per ottenere il risultato. In entrambi i casi devi essere in grado di mantenere il giusto equilibrio. La scrittura online esige sintesi e completezza. Ed è qui che si riconosce il professionista, chi sa equilibrare gli ingredienti ottenendo la giusta alchimia. Secondo te, invece, quanto deve essere lungo un articolo? Descrivi il tuo metodo e le tue idee nei commenti.

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La domanda che attanaglia tutti i blogger di questo mondo: quanto deve essere lungo un articolo? Forse già lo sai, forse no. In realtà la risposta non esiste, è impossibile definire a priori il numero esatto di parole per un articolo. E adesso immagino già le proteste che si alzano dalla platea.

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Che cos'è lo storytelling - Webdoc interattivo per la didattica - work in progress Elementi di marketing, fondamenti della creazione di un racconto, focus sul Brand Storytelling

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Analisi ed evoluzione del logo

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Facebook carousel ads are extremely engaging and fun way to promote your business.

According to data collected by Kinetic Social, these ads can also drive up to 10 times more traffic to advertisers' websites than static sponsored posts on Facebook. And LOVOO found that they got a higher click-through rate versus single image mobile app ads.

It feels clear these ads can be extremely effective, but how can you maximize their potential? In this post, we'll walk through not just how to create a carousel ad but also how you can get the most out of your ads.

Let's get started.

What are Facebook Carousel Ads?

The Facebook carousel format enables advertisers, across both Facebook and Instagram, to show 3-5 images, headlines, and links or calls to action in a single ad unit.

You may have spotted them in your newsfeed. Here's how they look on desktop:

And on mobile:

On mobile, users can swipe through the cards while desktop users can maneuver between images by clicking on the left or right arrows.

5 ways you could use Facebook Carousel Ads

Carousel ads are extremely versatile and can be used in a number of ways. While many businesses use this type of ad as a way to promote products, the ads also provide an excellent opportunity to showcase your brand's uniqueness and tell a story.

In this section, I'd love to highlight 5 unique ways you can utilize Facebook Carousel Ads.

1. Highlight a product

Tieks are a specialist ballet shoe maker and used carousel ads to highlight one of the products. Each card of the ad focuses in on one aspect of their shoe, and they used the headline copy to provide more context to each image.

2. Illustrate how to use a product

Tyme Hair used carousel ads to showcase how you can use one of their products. To show how their curling irons worked, they used each card of the ad to share a step with a corresponding image.

3. Tell a story

Stories are an incredibly effective way of sharing your brands message and engaging with your customers. Project Repat, a company who make quilts out of old t-shirts, have used carousel ads to tell the story of how your memories can transform into a quilt.

4. Product tour

In the below example, Music app, Deezer have used carousel cards to give people a taste of the in-app experience before they even download it. Each card of the ad summarized a feature of the app, offering people a good idea of what to expect from the app.

5. Share an article

Carousel ads are an amazing way to share and promote articles. In the below example, Precision Nutrition shared articles from their website on healthy eating for athletes - this ad led to 6,000 new newsletter signups.

A quick experiment
We quickly tested Carousel Ads as a way to drive clicks to our content, and it'd be a pleasure to share our results here. Alongside the Carousel Ad, we also tested a Post Engagement Ad to give some context to our results. Here's what we found:

The Page Post Engagement Ad had a CTR of 1.05% vs. 0.20% from the Carousel Ad

The CPC for the Post Engagement Ad was $0.57 vs. $0.87 from the Carousel Ad.

The Post Engagement Ad also generated 79 post likes, 2 comments, 3 shares and 38 page likes on top of the 188 link clicks at 80% of the cost of the Carousel Ad that generated 2 post likes, 0 comments, 0 shares, 155 link clicks and only 1 page like.

Our hunch is that, though it underperformed in this test vs. a Post Engagement Ad, with a little bit of testing and optimization we could improve the effectiveness of the Carousel Ads as a way to drive clicks to content.

An initial thought is that maybe if the first card in the carousel ad didn't quite do it, perhaps another one of the four would. Here's what the first card looked like:

Have you experimented with Carousel Ads as a way to drive clicks to your content? If so, I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments below this post.

How to create a carousel ad

It only takes a few simple steps to create a carousel ad, and I'd love to share how you can create these ads from your Facebook Page and also from Adverts Manager.

Let's go!

From your Page

To create a carousel ad from your Page click the 'Promote' button on the top right corner of the page, and then select 'Promote your website':

Next, you'll see an Ads window open up, under the 'Images' section of this window click the '+' button to add multiple cards to your carousel:

Once you've added the number of cards you'd like (anywhere from 3-5), you can add an image and headline to each card, and when your ad is looking great and ready to go, fill out the Audience, Budget and Duration fields then hit 'Promote' to put it live.

Pro tip: If you need to crop an image, click Reposition Image to drag and drop the Crop Image tool onto the part of the image you want to show.

From Adverts Manager

To kick off a carousel ad campaign from Facebook Adverts Manager, first click 'Create advert' and then choose either 'Send people to your website', 'Increase conversions on your website' or 'Get installs of your app' from the campaign objective page.
Step 1: Create Advert Step 2: Choose objective Step 3: Select audience and budget Step 4: Select advert creative
This is where you can create your carousel. When you reach the advert creative screen, choose 'Multiple images in one advert' to build a carousel ad.

Once you've uploaded your creative, you're good to go and put the ad live.

How to create the perfect carousel ad

Grab attention with the first image

Facebook's Newsfeed is a very busy place, and users are often overloaded with content. To help your ad succeed, pay close attention to the first image and be sure it makes sense on its own and also grabs attention.

A great example of this is Virgin Holidays post about their #DreamBigger sale. The first card on the carousel shows you exactly what they're offering and grabs attention with a powerful image of New York City:

Adhere to Facebook's recommendations

Facebook have shared some design recommendations for Carousel Ads. If you're looking to maximize your performance, it could be best to try and stick to these where possible.

Here's a snapshot of their recommendations:

Pro tip: Use the Headline space under each image for product names or benefits, price or percentage off, or a call to action

How to create one long image

Some advertisers choose to break up one big image into cards, to tell a great visual story as the user swipes (or clicks) through them.

Here's an example:

If you'd like to create an ad in the carousel format that showcases one long image, here's how to do it:

1. Decide how many carousel cards the image is going to cross (this should be anywhere from 3-5 cards).

2. Create an image with the correct dimensions. Its height should be 600 pixels, and its width should be 600 pixels multiplied by the number of carousel cards used (ex: a four-card image should be 2400×600 pixels).

3. Upload this same image for each carousel card, but crop it at equal intervals to divide it up across the cards. Alternatively, you could crop each 600×600 card using image editing software like Sketch or Photoshop before you upload.

Pro tip: Facebook has an option to automatically show the best-performing images first your carousel. If you're creating a long image across multiple cards, it's best to leave this box un-ticked.

6 creative examples of carousel ads

1. Straight Outta Compton

Straight Outta Compton used carousel ads to showcase sections on the film and announce its release on VUDU.

2. Deezer

Deezer turned to carousel ads to announce that The Beatles music is available in their app. The ad features an image of the group spread across three cards and utilized the headline space on each cards to break the news about The Beatles being on Deezer.

3. Xbox

To promote the latest Tomb Raider game, Xbox used a panoramic shot of character, Lara Croft, hanging on a cliff face.

Alongside the images, Xbox used the cards headlines to tell trail the story of the game. The last cards on the carousel was a link to purchase the game.

4. Fallout

To promote Fallout 4, Bethesda Game Studios used carousel ads to share ratings and reviews from well-known and trusted games industry websites and magazines.

5. Tesco

Tesco used carousel ads to showcase a step by step recipe and link back to Real Food blog.

6. Chipotle

Chipotle used carousel ads as a to drive attention to their 'Friend or Faux' campaign; the cards compared Chipotle meals with other varieties of fast food to ask which is your friend and which is your faux.

Over to you

I hope you found this post useful! I'd love to hear your experience with Facebook carousel ads, both as a Facebook user and advertiser.
What do you think of these ads? Do you find them more interesting and engaging than other types of Facebook ads? As an advertiser, have you found carousel ads effective? How have you used them?
Leave a note in the comments and I'm excited to jump into the conversation with you.

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The Ultimate Guide to Facebook Carousel Ads - The Buffer Blog

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Facebook carousel ads are extremely engaging and fun way to promote your business. According to data collected by Kinetic Social, these ads can also drive up to 10 times more traffic to advertisers' websites than static sponsored posts on Facebook. And LOVOO found that they got a 72%higher click-through rate versus single image mobile app ads.