Promoting YOUR art or craft with SlideShare - Take Your First Step
June 23, 2011
SlideShare is a great way to promote your art or craft. The free online service provides easily accessible usage information such as the number of views on each of your SlideShare presentations. You can allow viewers to download your presentation or opt-out.
I'd say you have nothing to lose, and much to gain! It is a great way to create a short lecture about your work, or insight into your special technique.
COST:
SlideShare is a FREE site for the basic service and this has worked quite well for me to experiment and build my skills with this new marketing tool. There is also a fee-based SlideShare if you want more information on traffic analytics.
Almost everyone’s computer comes with Microsoft PowerPoint or Apple Keynote. It is pretty easy to get started. All you need are great images for your digital presentation and you are on your way.
Do all your slide/image/text preparation in PhotoShop/PowerPoint/Keynote. You can not edit your SlideShare presentation once it is uploaded. If you find any mistakes after uploading, you will need to fix the mistakes in your presentation and upload a new corrected presentation (replacing the old presentation).
By browsing other peoples' presentations on SlideShare you will see that some create very effective presentations without audio! I did this for my first presentation. Create your presentation on your computer and upload it to SlideShare. Add text to your images or slides instead of audio. It is that simple!
Be patient with the uploading. Depending on the size it can take a while.
UPDATE 2014:
ADDING AUDIO to SlideShare is no longer possible.
To add audio... create a Powerpoint presentation with audio, convert to video and upload it to YouTube as a video.
This is pretty easy to do. You really don’t need a lot of technical skills, just the risk-taking guts to experiment and learn from mistakes along the way. Your only cost will be a microphone and headset (if you don’t own one already.)
Purchase a microphone/headset combination at your local electronics store which costs about $50. (I did not buy the most expensive microphone/headset, but selected a basic option which has worked out really well.)
SOFTWARE for adding Audio:
To get started with your audio software first visit a site called “How to Podcast”. This will give you a step-by-step guide on how to podcast without breaking the bank. This is the home of the free podcast tutorial that will take your podcast from concept to launch -- and for minimal cost (brought to you by, Jason Van Orden, author of “Promoting Your Podcast”). UPDATE 2022: The "How to Podcast" site appears to no longer be available. NPR has an article titled "How to Start a Podcast, According to the Pros at NPR" that provides useful information.
The focus of this site is how to create a podcast, but essentially a podcast is just an MP3 file. You need an MP3 file to upload to SlideShare and synchronize with your slides. This site has all the information you need, but if you ever get stuck (it is sometimes really frustrating to learn a new technology on your own), just type your question into Google. This is how I find answers to my questions.
Audio Editing Software (Audacity) and Lame MP3 Encoder are both available online for free. There are free tutorials online too so you don’t need to spend any money on editing software. The one I use is called Audacity. There is no need to buy expensive audio editing software when you are first starting out.
There are multiple pages of information, and even video tutorials to watch. While I don’t know how to use most of the options in the Audacity editing software, I can still create very acceptable quality podcasts and audio MP3 files.
Go to Audacity to get started.
That's it for today.
Next week, I will help you get started with a few more tips.
You have your assignment.
Get ready for the next tutorial.
This post was updated on February 5, 2022.