Why Haiku Deck ROCKS

Best Visual Thinking Tool

Internet marketers are a strange group. We lucky few Internet marketers must harness power from both sides of our brain. We need the right brain's creativity to be equally matched by the left brain's engineering and analytics. The problem with most tools created to assist Internet marketers is they are developed by engineers.



Engineers are GREAT people, but they tend to be hyper LEFT BRAINERS. Most of my almost 15 year Internet marketing career has been spent learning a series of counter intuitive tools. I say "counter intuitive' because for visual thinkers (as most Internet marketers are) learning to use a Google Analytics, your average Content Management System (CMS) or other support tools means learning THEIR way of thinking.



Learning THEIR way of thinking can mean suspending ours. The net effect of using a "counter intuitive" tool is marketers must translate between how we THINK and what we are DOING. This "translation" is a bit like speaking two languages.



If you've heard the term, "Lost in translation," you know the problem most marketers face when forcing visual thinking into a counter intuitive tool. We lose something in translation. If you ask any marketer if they would like to use a tool and NOT lose ideas and concepts in translation the automatic answer would be YES PLEASE.

Haiku Deck's Visual Genius

Haiku Deck is a brilliant mashup tool iPad app. One of its functions is to make loyalty free creative commons images readily available, tagged and easy to search. But Haiku Deck is so much more than a simple UI sitting on top of a vast reservoir of creative commons and easy to purchase relevant images.



The tool's real POWER is in how it changes your thinking. If PowerPoint is destined to create busy slides with lots of bullets no one can read (or care about) Haiku Deck is PP's polar opposite. Funny how susceptible people are to suggestion. PowerPoint's suggestion is to fill up SPACE with bullets. Haiku Deck's suggestion is to THINK VISUALLY and so tell the story.



Yesterday the team @HaikuDeck complimented Think Asynch, a deck I created over the weekend, saying that they liked how I was using their tool to create "lean content". The beautiful thing about their tool is creating "lean" content is where it leads you.



When you map visuals to ideas you don't need as many words. I'm sure there are times when Internet marketers reading my Haiku Decks WISH there was more as in this slide about entropy from Think Asynch:







I could easily write 1,000 words on what this slide MEANS, but leaving mystery in can be a great idea. "Tease the link," is advice I share with Internet marketing newbies. Our tendency is to drown with explanation. PowerPoint's framework accentuates our tendency to, "Drown with the profound". Haiku Deck does the opposite.



Haiku Deck is about the clean line and leaving mystery in. Great tools make tendencies better. Where PowerPoint made bullets its currency HaikuDeck makes IMAGES their magic. The difference is significant. Haiku Deck's image focus builds magic into the PROCESS of creating a story.



Storytelling is Haiku Deck's real ASSIST. Online stories need amazing visuals. We don't like to read online, so the more "video-like" your content the leaner your content feels and the more engagement Haiku Deck's "tease don't drown" approach creates.



The right tool can make good Internet marketers great and great Internet marketers fantastic. Haiku Deck is exactly that kind of a cool tool. Highly recommended and valuable for any Internet marketer or communicator trying to tell a story online (and who isn't these days :).



My Haiku Decks:



Think Asynch



Stories Are The New Ecommerce





A Mobile World



Future of Web Design 1: No More Boxes



Future of Web Design II: A Mobile Ubiquitous Web



Future of Web Design III: Semantic Web Is A Game