Present Yourself: Slideshares

Have you mastered LinkedIn, dominated Facebook, and taken over Twitter? Are you in need of a new challenge in the social media and content marketing space? In that case, you may be ready to Present Yourself at Slideshare.

Present Yourself: Using SlideShare to Grow Your Business  starts off with some encouragement to use visual content in business. Most of the book discusses various ways in which you can use SlideShare for research, content marketing, and various other purposes. For me, this is not completely convincing. A slide deck strikes me as the perfect medium for one situation: when you are speaking to a large group of people and want to give them visuals to look at while you explain things.

Otherwise, slide decks are not as clear as a blog post, not as engaging as a video, not as attractive as a photo, and not as share-able as an infographic. Most of the uses described in this book seem to me to be examples of situations in which some other medium would work better. For example, the authors recommend uploading speaker guidelines for your event to SlideShare. Why not put them on your website or in an email? They suggest making a slide deck showing your team and pinning that to a Pinterest board, but why not just pin the photos of the team?

Still, these chapter have interesting and useful tips on a lot of things, from giving presentations to organizing conferences. You might see a better medium for some of their ideas, but they are still good ideas.

In between those two parts of the book is a chapter called “Getting Started” which gives a really good explanation of how to set up a SlideShare account and some of the benefits of using a Pro (paid) account. If you need help with that, this book is excellent.

This may not be a book that everyone needs on their shelf. It could be a very useful resource for some people though:

• If you have a lot of PowerPoints you’d like to share, this book will give you ideas for doing so.
• If you want to make better slide presentations, this book has suggestions and resources for doing so.
• If you’ve been considering a Pro subscription at SlideShare, this book gives a clear description of the benefits.
• If your set hangs out at SlideShare a lot and you want ideas for how to join in, this book could be ideal.

And, as I said, if you just need some new realms to conquer and SlideShare is on your list, this is the best book I’ve seen on the subject.

[Disclosure: The publisher of this book sent me a copy for review. I am not paid for reviews, and you know I always tell you the truth.]