Video presentations are important to get right. Your aim should be to keep your viewers watching your video rather than clicking away part way through. Whilst there will always be people who don’t watch the entire video, you’ll be able to tell from your stats how long people watch for and can tweak your newer videos to help reduce the number of people who click away.

Grab attention fast

You know from the videos you watch that you need to get people’s attention fast. Our attention spans seem to be dropping by the minute and if we don’t get what we thought we’d clicked on, we’ll click the back button fast.

That means you can’t spend the first minute or two of your video waffling and generally beating around the bush. You need to have a brief introduction – I’ll typically say something like “Hi, this video is about” and then whatever the title of the video was.

Nothing more.

No long introductions – the equivalent of the polite sales call introductions of “how are you today” that you immediately recognise as being from someone who’s never spoken to you before in your life.

Make it personal

The closer you can get your video to being like a one-on-one conversation you’re having with a friend, the better.

This really is important!

Your personality will come across when you do this. Which means that you’ll either attract or repel people watching your video.

Don’t take that personally – we can’t be all things to all people, it’s just not possible.

Instead, you’ll get people who like your style and let you know that by subscribing to your YouTube channel, even if you don’t remind them that’s an option.

You may even get comments and YouTube allows you to moderate those. It also does quite a good job of filtering out the spam that pervades the internet.

Keep to the point

Videos aren’t the place to go off on a tangent.

Personally, I like to work from a slide show or at the very least a bullet pointed list.

That works for me and makes sure that I keep close to the original point I promised to talk about.

Don’t cover too much

It’s better to split your presentations into several shorter videos rather than trying to create an epic that covers everything.

This has two main advantages:

• It works with short attention spans
• It gives you more chances to appear in the search results

Most search results tend to drill down – people are getting wise to the fact that Google is relatively clueless if you only give it one or two words to work with and are using more words for their searches, often from the list of suggestions that show up as soon as you start typing.

Use the suggestions that show up as the basis for your titles.

Then answer the question that’s been raised in the search query.

Nothing else – just stick to the topic.

Of course, if you’ve promised 5 tips then you need to give 5 tips. That should go without saying – although without an editor overseeing you, it’s not uncommon for things to go astray even with something as basic as that.

I’ve done it on articles before now and been picked up by the editorial process.

But the chances are that you’ll be writer, presenter and producer of your video. So you need to be alert for that potential problem.

There is an old adage that when two opposing parties in a legal matter proceed to litigation, then they have both lost their case. Having negotiated thousands of real estate and finance deals in my career as an attorney, I have listed below what I call the 5 “B’s” of successful negotiation:

1. Be prepared. Know your facts and have the relevant information to support your position readily available. Nothing stalls negotiations better or undermines your position more, then when you have to scramble and seek out the information necessary to bolster your position.

2. Be Patient. With good negotiations, reaching a resolution takes time and is not like ordering “fast food.” Don’t feel compelled to make a decision right away. If you are unsure about something, there is absolutely nothing wrong with waiting 24 hours to make a decision. If there are several items to accomplish in a negotiation, focus on those points that the parties are more agreeable on, and tackle the more difficult issues at a later time.

3. Be Consistent. Have a goal of what you want to accomplish going into the negotiations. If need be, “map out” a strategy to reach your goal(s) and plan for contingencies. Most importantly, once you’ve reached an agreement regarding a point of contention, stick with it. Don’t agree to something with the real intent to address and “change up” the issue at a later time. That approach wastes time and undermines one’s own credibility.

4. Be Reliable. Imagine a car that starts only half the time. That’s how adverse parties feel about someone who fails to perform on past promises and then approaches their opposition for new concessions. Granted, in an ideal world, people would perform on their agreements 100% of the time. But in life “things happen” and parties are often called upon to make accommodations and exceptions to agreements long after the negotiations are over. It’s reasonable for a party to be less flexible in their accommodations for people who repeatedly fail to perform. It becomes increasingly difficult for repeat ‘offenders’ to persuade the opposition that “this time things will be different.”

5. Be Civil. This point should go without saying, but negotiations move towards success much faster when parties practice civility. If being civil to the other party proves difficult, then you have an excellent reason for engaging an attorney, a real estate agent, or any other professional intermediary on your behalf.

There are times when parties to a settlement leave the negotiation table not getting everything they wanted. That’s fine. In most good deals, the parties need to concede some, but not all, of their position in order to reach a resolution. Those people who insist on going to the negotiation table with an “all or nothing” attitude, do not make good negotiation partners initially, but by using the preceding 5 points, they will in time.

Beginners always need to be guided in order for them to understand what they have to do. This is true even for businessmen since they have to learn everything about the company that they are going to run as well as the job that they have to perform. For those who are operating or managing businesses, you might have heard about the balanced scorecard and its abilities. This is a business tool that enables one get the overall performance of the company based upon the following perspectives: customer, financial, learning and growth and internal operations. Now, you have to understand that the BSC will only work if all of the employees within the organization now about it. Most company owners neglect this responsibility and only let those at the top level of the organization comprehend what the scorecard is all about. In this case, what you need are BSC presentation templates.

The BSC presentation templates can easily be obtained today from the web. You can download them either for free or there are others that might cost you a few dollars. Once you have acquired the template, it is easy for you to come up with a presentation so that those who are working in your company can appreciate and be enlightened on the topic of the balanced scorecard. Before you download scorecard templates however, you should make sure that you can use the content that is provided by the template that you have chosen. It should provide you help on the introduction up to the conclusion of the whole presentation.

You can look for free BSC templates that you can utilize during meetings, conferences or seminars. This is the right opportunity towards promoting the awareness of your staff towards the whole concept of the balanced scorecard. There are really useful BSC presentation templates which you can download and use in order for you to present to your employees the importance of the scorecard to the processes in the company. The templates will guide you on how you can create the entire presentation but of course, you also need to research on a few things which are connected to the company’s position

Implementing the balanced scorecard will become easier with the help of the BSC presentation templates. This is because all the people who are working in the organization that you are running can define what the BSC really is. Aside from that, they can provide other people with information about how the BSC is being utilized in the company. This is particularly useful for the new employees. It is not required to make a presentation every now and then especially when there are newly hired applicants in the business. You can simply ask the older employees to guide the newbies. This is an effective method and can save time, money and effort on your part. Nevertheless, you need to give updates and even provide new presentations to your employees when there are changes within the scorecard that has been implemented. This way, everything will be clearly defined for them and confusion is avoided.