SlideShare: A Professional Social Media Channel-Royston Olivera

A lot has been said and written about how businesses are using the stalwarts of socialmedia like Facebook, Twitter and You Tube to build their brand name and connect withthe masses. All these channels being consumer facing portals have proven to be the bestfor businesses that directly serve individual consumers with products and services. Whenit comes to the Business to Business angle, it is the more professional network LinkedInthat has helped businesses leverage on its social graph of professionals. But it seems likethere is a new player on the block in the form of SlideShare.

SlideShare is a business media site for managing and sharing presentations anddocuments and currently boasts of having over 23 million visitors that view over 60million pages every month. Going ahead in this post, I will be giving you a low downabout SlideShare and why it becomes a critical element of the Professional Social MediaChannels

Storing and Sharing…SlideShare allows you to upload and share presentations, documents and spreadsheetsof a wide variety of formats whether its from Microsoft Office or OpenOffice. It evensupports upload via email and import from Google docs. Your files can be shared publiclyto all on the web or privately to some SlideShare users. You or the people your sharing

the file with can even download your file in the same format as uploaded. Eachpresentation also comes with and embed code which can be used to embed it on blogs orother websites.

Accounts…SlideShare started of with accounts for individuals but has recently launched 7 newaccount types for Companies, Non-Profits, Universities etc. So unlike before whencompanies created accounts and had to even specify DOB and gender of the company,now they can switch to the company account type where their profile page will havecompany specific options. Very soon SlideShare would be launching custom features fordifferent account.

Networking…SlideShare has a decent set of networking tools that you can leverage upon to build yoursocial graph. You can follow like minded people to get their latest updates. You canfavorite a presentation for future reference. You can create or join groups of users thatshare similar interests as you and interact with them by posting on the profile wall.

Widgets and Applications…SlideShare has an simple interface to create Widgets and Presentation Packs that can beembedded on your blog or website to provide a feed of your presentations to yourvisitors. The Facebook and LinkedIn Applications allow you add a presentation gallerybox on your profile and can be viewed by your connections.

Slidecasting…Slidecasts are nothing but mashups of SlideShare presentations and streaming MP3.OnSlideShare, in a few simple steps you can create a Slidecast thus making your slidesmore meaning full and sending the right message to the viewers.

SlideShare Business…SlideShare recently launched SlideShare Business that provides a new way to reachprofessional audience, connect with more and the right people by advertising yourcontent to them. With AdShare you can promote your content to a community of

professionals, by displaying your document next to documents on SlideShare that arefrom the same category or of similar content. LeadShare converts your content visitorsinto leads by enabling you to add a lead form within your presentations. This is more likea replacement of the traditional white paper and micro site campaigns.

You may find many file storing/sharing applications online, but the wide variety offeatures and the huge open community that you can share your content with makesSlideShare a great social media channel to try out.