Straight from the mind

In my 1st post on SlideShare, I tried giving a low down on what SlideShare has in store for all and why it becomes an upcoming Social Media channel. In this post, I will try and put together a set of steps that businesses/companies could follow to make the best use of SlideShare to share information and their branding.

Create your Profile…
You need to start off by first creating your account and selecting the appropriate Account Type. For a business it would mostly be “company”, unless your a Marketing/PR firm or a Non-Profit who have their specific account types. Once you have confirmed your account, login and complete your profile by giving the description of your company, uploading your logo and entering the tags that best describe your company and the work done. It would be best to fill in every information in a detailed manner, as that is what people are going to look at first when they stumble upon your company on SlideShare.

Upload Great Content…
Now its time to dig out all the content(Tuesday TechTalk slides, White papers written by your employees, presentations that you made to your clients) that your company has generated over the years and is just lying under virtual dust in your Content Management System and post it to SlideShare. Any content that you think would be of great help to others and could draw some eyeballs to your account is a good post. Post content that acts as a proof to the profile information that you provided. Remember we are trying to use SlideShare not only as a knowledge sharing medium but also for your branding, so before you upload your content you need to dress it up.

1. Design 1 or 2 good templates and push your presentations in these templates before uploading them to SlideShare. By doing this people who have already viewed and liked some of your presentations before will be able to identify your other presentations in the search listings and prefer to pick them over others.
2. Let the first slide of your presentations have the company logo, authors name and company website along with the subject of the presentation.
3. Make sure your template has your company logo and/or your  company name in the footnote on every slide, certifying that the content is yours and at the same time giving it a professional look.
4. The last slide of each presentation could have a citation to the author, when and where was this presented, a link to the blog or document that briefly describes this presentation and the email id for feedback or more information on this presentation.

Publish your presentations with the appropriate title, description and tags so that people get a good idea of the presentation before they scan it slide-by-slide.

Socialize…
SlideShare provides quiet a few social networking features that would help you build your social graph. Start of by searching for people and company profiles in your field and start following them. Review their content and provide them with feedback, favorite presentations that you really liked, comment on them, provide them with a link to your own presentations on the same topic and ask for feedback. Basically you need to start a conversation, social media is all about starting a conversation, collaborating with people and  building communities.

Share your Content…
Socializing within SlideShare is a good thing to do, but you can even attract people from outside SlideShare by embedding and sharing your presentations on blogs and other social networking platforms. Make sure that you blog about each of your presentation giving in-depth explanation of your presentation and using the embed code provided by SlideShare to embed your presentation in your blog post. SlideShare has even built apps. on Facebook and LinkedIn, so you could even add these apps to display your content on your companies profile or fan page on these social networks.

One of my personal favorite offerings from SlideShare are their wide range of widgets and presentation playlists that you can embed on your blog and website to display a feed of your presentations.

SlideShare Business…
SlideShare recently launched SlideShare Business that provides a new way to reach professional audience, connect with more and the right people by advertising your content to them, but I would recommend to go for this only after you have built a good profile by following the above few steps.

The above steps provided by me are by no means exhaustive, there would be many other ways by which you could make use of SlideShare as a social media channel to promote your company and its work.

How are you using SlideShare to promote your business? Share it with me in the comments

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

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

Storing and Sharing…
SlideShare allows you to upload and share presentations, documents and spreadsheets of a wide variety of formats whether its from Microsoft Office or OpenOffice. It even supports upload via email and import from Google docs. Your files can be shared publicly  to 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. Each presentation also comes with and embed code which can be used to embed it on blogs or other websites.

Accounts…
SlideShare started of with accounts for individuals but has recently launched 7 new account types for Companies, Non-Profits, Universities etc. So unlike before when companies 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 have company specific options. Very soon SlideShare would be launching custom features for different account.

Networking…
SlideShare has a decent set of networking tools that you can leverage upon to build your social graph. You can follow like minded people to get their latest updates. You can favorite a presentation for future reference. You can create or join groups of users that share 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 be embedded on your blog or website to provide a feed of your presentations to your visitors. The Facebook and LinkedIn Applications allow you add a presentation gallery box on your profile and can be viewed by your connections.

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

SlideShare Business…
SlideShare recently launched SlideShare Business that provides a new way to reach professional audience, connect with more and the right people by advertising your content to them. With AdShare you can promote your content to a community of professionals, by displaying your document next to documents on SlideShare that are from the same category or of similar content. LeadShare converts your content visitors into leads by enabling you to add a lead form within your presentations. This is more like a replacement of the traditional white paper and micro site campaigns.

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

The past few months had been really boring, frustrating and anti-creative on the professional front and this break or mini vacation as I call it, was very much awaited by me. I have been to Mahabaleshwar quiet a few times before but this was the first time that I was going with my family. Thought of writing this post to share my experiences about Mahabaleshwar, which could even act as a tour guide to others.

Getting There ….

Getting to Mahabaleshwar from Mumbai is pretty easy and quick. It would take you around 6-7 hrs on a luxury bus for the complete journey . I would recommend taking a sleeper coach that departs late in the night from Mumbai and arrives early in the morning at Mahabaleshwar. The same is recommended while getting back to Mumbai. You even have other options like a Volvo bus or a tourist car which are equally comfortable. Bookings can be done at any travel agent in Mumbai.

Where to stay…

Mahabaleshwar has a plethora of small and large hotels that you can stay in. If your not having your own vehicle to travel around Mahabaleshwar then i would recommend selecting a hotel in and around the market place. Nell’s House, Hotel Dreamland, Hotel Lakeview, Silverine being some of the good ones. If your very low on budget there are many small hotels on the market road. Staying in a hotel away from the market place comes with the added facilities of a peaceful environment and a beautiful scenic view from your room itself.

Hotel tariffs vary based on the season and type of hotel you check into. Mahabaleshwar experiences daily 2 hrs of load shedding, so if your very particular about your staying conditions make sure that your hotel has a good generator(most of them will have an inverter which is connected to only 1 lamp per room) and provide round the clock hot water through the tap.

Where n What to eat…

If your a vegetarian then Mahabaleshwar is a pleasure ground for you  and you need not worry, coz 75% of the food outlets out there are pure vegetarian. Meat eaters have quiet a few options around the market place which include Hotel Aman, Nukkad, Shere-e-Punjab that provide very good non-vegetarian food.

You would be sinning if you haven’t paid a daily visit to a ice cream parlour at Mahabaleshwar, which is famous for Strawberry n Cream,  Mulberry n Cream(my personal favorite) and many other fresh fruit ice creams. I would recommend going to Bageecha Ice Cream Parlour on the market road and trying out their entire menu as that is one of the best outlets I have been to out there. Another place that is a must visit is the Mapro Factory, the waffle cone ice creams and grilled sandwich out there are the best i have ever had and at the same time you can even shop for your favorite crushes, squashes and jelly sweets. Mahabaleshwar is even famous for chikki and fudge which you will get anywhere in the market place, Wilsons being one of the best shops to pich this stuff.

What to see aka. Sightseeing….

Located in the Western Ghats[pic] and having one of the few evergreen forestsin the world it is one of the scenic beauties to be watched in India. The entire sightseeing at Mahabaleshwar can be divided into 4-5 tours, each having a duration of 3-4 hours and costing around 350 - 550 INR.

• Tour 1 - Pratapgad Darshan[pic] [ Duration 150mins ]
  Pratapgad Fort, Bhawani Temple, Shivaji Statue[pic], Pratap Garden, Tomb of Afzal Khan
  The Pratapgad fort was one place where i could atleast see some kind of maintainence happening and efforts being made to keep the place clean which is very unlike other spots I visited
• Tour 2 - Mahabaleshwar Darshan 1 [ Duration 150mins ]
  Panchgani Mandir, Window Point, Tiger Spring, Echo Point,  Savitri Point, Monkey Point, Marjori Point, Arthur’s Seat…
  The Arthur’s Seat is known as the pride of Mahabaleshwar as you get one of the best views of the valley from that platform. The rest of the points are either on the way or around this point.
• Tour 3 - Mahabaleshwar Darshan 2 [Duration 150mins]
  Kate’s Point[pic], Needle Hole Point, Elephant Head Point, Strawberry Garden, Sunset Point[pic], Lodwick Point[pic], Venna Lake
  Needle Hole and Elephant Head point are nothing but Kate’s Point looked at from different directions. Venna Lake is a drop spot after the tour where you can go for boating and it even has a mini Chowpati. The lake is really big and very good for boating.
• Tour 4 - Panchgani Darshan [Duration 150mins ]
  Table Land, Parsi Point, Jam Factory
  Table land is one of the biggest plateaus in the world and you can try your hand on hose riding and para-sailing. Insist on your tour guide to take you to the Mapro Factory and not any other factory, coz some tour guides would take you to some small factory to make the tour quick and get their commission from the factory owner for the products you buy.

Other than these tours you can even go for the Wai Darshan if you like visiting temples and the Sunrise point for which you would have to wake up at 5:30 in the morning.

One spot which you would not find in any of the tours but is a must watch is the Roman Catholic Church[pic] at Mahabaleshwar which is near the market place. Its more than a century that the church has been built and has one of the smallest parishes(10 families) in the world.

Do not depend on your credit card when you travel to Mahabaleshwar coz 8/10 shops or outlets do not accept credit cards, you would have to withdraw cash from one of the few ATMs hidden in the bylanes of the market.

I have had some the best and most memorable times of my life when i have been to Mahabaleshwar and i hope this post helps you to have a pleasant vacation too