How to use Prezi for B2B content marketing

Its ‘zoomable user interface’ (ZUI?) with swoopy transitions and infinite drill-downs make it a sexy alternative to boring old slides.

Why should you put Prezi in your B2B content marketing toolbox? Here’s why:

• It’s great for telling linear stories – allowing you to take the viewer by the hand and lead them through your tale.

• It’s still got novelty appeal – not many people use it so it’s a fresh way to engage an audience.

• It’s pretty rich – you can include video files, images and links.

• You can embed it – so anyone can drop it in their blog.

• You can edit and play offline – so you can present from it even if you’re not near WiFi. (A paid-for option).

Downsides?

• It takes a little while to learn – The editing interface is cool but unlike any other software tool you use now, so it takes some getting used to. The editing tool thingy looks like this:

• You don’t get much of a bonus audience from the Prezi site itself – as you do with Slideshare or YouTube.

• It doesn’t give you SEO-juice – the text inside isn’t searchable (I don’t know why they don’t do the transcript trick that Slideshare does). Oh, and it’s not easy to post a Prezi page on Pinterest — the image isn’t accessible to Pinterest (a small thing but a shame as they’re both visual media and ought to be made for each other).

• If you over-use the swooping you can make people feel ill. Which is embarrassing. The first one I ever did will actually cause sea-sickness. You’ve been warned.

• You still have to help people use it. See the sentence starting with “I suggest viewing it…” below.

Our latest B2B content marketing Prezi
Here’s a Prezi we just produced for Salesforce.com taking people through a typical social-powered customer service case, from tweet to resolution.

I suggest viewing it in full screen mode (press play to load it, then click fullscreen under ‘more’ in the player — bottom right). Then just keep hitting the play button to advance: