Spreading the word: The ripple effect of Slideshare

Last week I led a Twitter Mini Masterclass at Sheffield Hallam University with my colleague Joe Field and posted my presentation slides on to Slideshare. I was thrilled to receive an email from Slideshare to say it had been selected to be featured on their home page.

   

Slideshare Tweets

Slideshare also tweeted a link to my presentation via @SlideShareToday and @SlideShare. At this point in time my slideshare had 196 views. 

'Twitter Mini Masterclass' by @suebecks is featured on our homepage. slidesha.re/101jRwE
— SlideShare Today (@SlideShareToday) May 15, 2013

Best practices for using Twitter hashtags, search, lists, analytics and dashboards: slidesha.re/10zGZRL via @suebecks
— SlideShare (@SlideShare) May 16, 2013

IMPACT

In the space of five days my slideshare has had over 3.5k views and 29 downloads, 14 shares on Facebook, 36 via Twitter and 15 via LinkedIn. 

You can track this data on Slideshare each time you upload a presentation. (More in depth analytics are available via the Pro version). There is also space for viewers to leave comments; a very useful opportunity to receive feedback on your presentations. 

Once you have uploaded your presentation slides you can choose to share your work through your own social channels and grab the embed code to display the slide deck within your blog or website.

Steve Wheeler, Associate Professor at the University of Plymouth uses SlideShare to share his keynote presentations that he gives all over the world.  One of his most popular slideshares to date was an invited speech given at the Learning Technologies event in 2012, which has currently had over 54k views. (I would recommend following Steve on Twitter as @timbuckteeth). 


I've often thought it is a shame that conference presentations are not shared beyond the event and conference website. Using SlideShare enables access to a far wider audience and good use of tags will help viewers to find your presentations via the search facility within Slideshare. Accompanying or subsequent papers and documents can also be added as PDFs. 

I give all of my work a Creative Commons licence which means viewers can download and share with accreditation but cannot use commercially. 

I think it is suffice to say that sharing your work in this way is undoubtedly an additional and very effective way of disseminating your work. Whilst I can't expect every presentation to be featured the possibility that it might is a bonus!

Standing out in the #ocTEL crowd

Two weeks into the #ocTEL MOOC the mass of emails, tweets, Forum entries and now posts in the Google Community have grown like wild fire. I think the key advice I have taken on is that there is no way you can engage with all of it, let alone read it. Some of the messages are repeated in the different channels, so picking your favoured channel or two seems the best coping strategy. Simply reading other people's posts however is fine to start with but to really engage then you also need to join in the conversation to get the most out of it. Last week I joined the first webinar of the course which commenced with a poll asking how many people had engaged with the tasks set. The majority hadn't. My advice would be to give blogging a go. It is a useful way to collate information and reflect upon it. If you don't feel you are ready for publishing publicly, then create a private reflective blog. (You can select this option from settings).


Getting your voice heard 

For me I have found that Twitter is a great way to engage with a learning community and where a hashtag is used you can quickly see who is tweeting. For this course #ocTEL is being used. By searching for this hashtag in Twitter you can bring together all of the tweets in one stream. Start by listening to what others are saying and then jump in and reply to comments made, raise questions or simply retweet a useful tweet so that your followers can also read it.  

Other tools to view who is tweeting include Martin Hawksey's TAGSExplorer which visualises the tweets that include #ocTEL.

Another example is the twitwheel which shows interactions between tweeters.

I recently read an article in Inc titled 'Self Promotion: 6 Ways to get Noticed'. The caption below made me think back about my initial steps interacting online. Worried I would say something that others thought was daft, irrelevant or uninteresting. Say nothing at all and you are the wallflower; talk just about yourself can quickly sound like me, me, me.   

Effective self-promotion lies somewhere 

between being a wallflower and a flaming narcissist. 

The author's suggestions can be applied to the way we communicate using social media. 

Let your results speak for you

Promote others

Talk about what you believe

Admit your failures

Decide what you want to be known for

Put yourself out there

I know I have enjoyed reading both tweets and blog posts where I have felt I have seen the personal side of the author. This can still be done in a professional way - many worry that the personal and professional blurring of our online interactions is a bad thing, but this depends upon what you share. One rule of thumb I tend to follow is that if you wouldn't want your boss or your Mum to read it than don't broadcast it.