There are better headlines than Would You Put Your Life On Slideshare?
I know because I have written them.
Ask me why I used it and I’ll tell you it is because I received an email notification today that told me yet another person decided to follow me on Slideshare and that got me thinking that I really ought to do something with it.
I Haven’t Uploaded Anything Yet
Don’t rub your eyes, you read that correctly. I haven’t uploaded anything yet.
I know the guy who supports a half dozen blogs isn’t using Slideshare with this one. Whatever is his problem. Why wouldn’t he take advantage of the massive audience that it might provide him with.
Why wouldn’t he look at all of the people who have signed up to follow him on Slideshare and meet their needs by providing an upload or even some uploads.
If you have a built in audience and you don’t take advantage of it aren’t you missing an opportunity?
The answer is maybe.
I have a chunk of subscribers here who have signed up to follow my posts. Some do it via RSS, some by email and some by carrier pigeon or smoke signals.
But when I look at my stats it seems clear to me that not everyone is following my words as closely as they could be. It is not just because a once active comment section is a little bare either.
It is a gut feeling and a disturbance in The Force. Ask my old buddy Master Yoda and he’ll tell you things are off around the blogosphere.
And he’ll also tell you there is no try, just do or do not.
Would You Put Your Life On Slideshare? Or Something Else?
I’ll ignore your questions for a moment and talk about followers and subscribers first. I am not convinced that followers and subscribers are reading all they have signed up for.
I think quite a few of them are overwhelmed by material they signed up for and underwhelmed by much of the actual content so they aren’t keeping up with it all the way they could.
It begs the question of whether I have a real audience waiting for me on Slideshare or not. Active users have different sorts of behaviors on different platforms which kind of reminds me of children.
People tell me my teenager is one of the most well behaved and nicest young men they have ever met. I am glad to hear that.
Did I mention that I thought about killing him 983,928 times this past weekend. That little pisher has different behaviors too, only it varies between parents and strangers.
Hell, it sounds like he is more like me than I should like. I was a good kid most of the time but I was also hell on wheels and sometimes the apple doesn’t fall as far from the tree as it could or should.
2015 Is About Fun
My good friend Groucho is correct. If you are not having fun you are doing something wrong.
Someone made a comment to me about how serious I am and I had to shake my head because it used to be people asked me if I was ever serious.
Clearly they don’t know Jack as well as they should and clearly I am not having enough fun.
It is not especially important to me that people think I am serious or insouciant. The reason the comment caught my eye was because I recognize I didn’t have enough fun in 2014.
That is a sad comment.
Granted 2014 was filled with lots of moments that were as pleasant as colonoscopies and root canals but I am a man who knows how to take that kind of crap and make it into something silly.
Yet I realized I didn’t do that enough last year so this year I am focused on having more fun. Some of it will be slapstick, some of it will be serious and some of it will be something else but there will be more than 198,322 smiles.
Hopefully that will include some other people too because trying to smile 198,322 times will add lines and wrinkles to my face. It is ok to have a few but best not to look like a Shar-Pei.
Maybe I ought to look for something funny to put on Slideshare so that massive prospective audience will have something funny to share.
I suppose I could put my life on there but I don’t know how funny that would be. Actually it would be very funny. If I told you some of the stories about my family you’d be certain I was writing a script for some silly television show or movie.
Hell, I still might choose to become a hobo and live my life on the rails. That could make for some great blog fodder and if I take some good pictures it might make for some great slides.
But that is assuming someone would do more than must follow. That is assuming they would actually read it.
“You can’t become a better writer without doing a lot of reading and writing and part of how you find more material to write about is by getting off of your computer and living.
If you don’t spend time in the offline world you miss things. You miss moments, some important, some less so but you can’t see which is what without being there.
And that my friends is why I keep a very short list of blogs to follow. There just isn’t enough time.”-Do You Read The Blogs You Follow?
Yeah, crazy old Jack just quoted himself again but there is a rhyme and reason to it.
I am telling you about my intention, sharing real parts of life and my philosophy. Â Because sometimes you recognize it is the little moments that matter and you know the great stories are best written by those who try to live them.
2015 is the year of fun and finding ways to take possibility and turn it into opportunity. Maybe you’ll read about it here or maybe you’ll see it on Slideshare.
I don’t really know because I’ll be living it.
I have also never used it, but thanks for giving me something else to spend my time on…
@disqus_NUOw8Cr8gi:disqus Always happy to help. 🙂
Now I have to figure out what this tool is. Thanks for sucking me into something else!
@Daddysincharge:disqus It is actually a pretty good tool and something that can be very effective when used properly.
I’m down w/the plan for 2015.
I don’t even know what slideshare is.
@Lardavbern:disqus Slideshare is an interesting tool. You use it to create presentations about a wide variety of topics.
If you are looking for information on topics or resources you can use/include in blog posts it is not a bad place to go. Almost every presentation is available for embedding in a post.
Thanks for the tip.