What's in Your "Show Notes" View?

Earlier this month, Google inadvertently released financial information during its analyst day. The company mistakenly included notes from an internal strategy meeting in a PowerPoint presentation provided to analysts. Ooops!

Google tried to "undo" the damage by taking down the presentation, but by then, it was too late. Leaked news spreads fast. Stories and speculation on the leak flooded the internet.

What can we learn from Google's gaff? It may sound obvious, but here goes: never post PowerPoint presentations in their "as-is" condition. First, read the presentation thoroughly. And remember, the slide show is not the only portion of a PowerPoint file you can read. Do not forget the show notes.

Special reminder to investor relations teams: If you absolutely must post a PowerPoint presentation publicly, remember to write (or re-write) the show notes for your intended audience...and then convert the PowerPoint presentation to a PDF file using the show notes format.

Go beyond making PowerPoint-to-PDF conversion a mere habit: make this your corporate communication policy. Here are two reasons why:

1. The show notes can put a presentation into context for your intended audience. You can tailor your notes to more accurately describe the content of your slides. This makes the presentation more powerful.
2. When you convert to PDF, the pdf file is not easily editable. This means people can't add their own commentary (or their own show notes) -- to your packaged presentation. You can control your messaging better with a pdf file than with a posted PowerPoint presentation.

For extra impact, you can even post an audio or video file to accompany the presentation. It's becoming increasingly important for investor relations departments to fully understand the impact that blogging, podcasting, and vlogging has on disseminating key company information.

Google is known as a web and tech savvy company -- so I was surprised to hear about such an obvious breach in what should be a standard online communication practice. The good news is: you can learn from their mistake. And when a technically sophisticated company like Google makes a major blunder like that, it's a good time for IR departments everywhere to review their presentation policies.

PS: (If you're in IR and your management team needs to learn more about online presentation policies and best practices: give me a jingle or drop me a line. I give compelling presentations on state of business blogging, podcasting, and online presenting for corporate communicators!)

¶ 3/13/2006 12:15:00 AM