Advantages:

• Increases the chances of being optimized on search engines as these slideshow sharing services allow you to tag your slideshows with relevant keywords and their pages get indexed quickly on Google (and other search engines).
• If your slideshow is really useful, it’s most likely that a user would be querying for that information on one of these popular websites, thus getting you some relevant leads/audience.
• Most of these websites will let you share your presentation on your website either by embedding it or simply sharing your link with your friends/clients/leads.
• Instead of attaching a 3-7 MB presentation to your prospective clients via e-mail, you can simply send them a link to your presentation on the web! Saves time to download, saves e-mail space (with so many attachments being sent out everyday) and most of all, is way slicker than sending a Keynote/Powerpoint via e-mail.

The 5 places:

1) Slideshare.net

In my opinion, the most important of the lot, this is the place where you can upload your presentation and present it even during a meeting or embed it on your website. The slideshow function buttons and interface is the smoothest with Slideshare compared to other presentation sharing services.

2) Linkedin

Linkedin allows you to sync your Slideshare slideshows so that it would show up on your Linkedin profile. This is very useful to get your Linkedin audience to see your presentation. Click on the images below to directly go to it (you need to be logged in to Linkedin)

3) Google Docs

Uploading a slideshow on this and publishing it allows you to share a link with anyone via e-mail/IM so they can have a look at your slideshow. Just as Slideshare you can also share this on Linkedin.

4) Docstoc

The last two on this list are actually documents/slideshows repositories which are now well optimized on search engines. You will be able to capture a large audience through Search engines on Docstoc and you would also be able to befriend people on Docstoc as a mini social networking feature of the website.

5) Scribd

Scribd has been around for years but it’s now even more slicker. Another good place to put up your presentation.

Every once in a while you come across a great ad copy and this is one of them. I received it in my inbox a couple of days back but just got the chance to open it. When you think of it, ‘keeping it short’ is a good (universal) rule for an ad-copy too. Very plain, not very creative, just a few statements, yet so impactful! I love it! What are your thoughts? Let me know in the comments section below :-)

• Share your wisdom - you write more than just a blogpost? may be an ebook, or a whitepaper on your expertise? Upload it on Docstoc
• Connect with other businesses by adding them as a friend on Docstoc
• Put up your latest company offerings on Docstoc, start off with your company profile! Here’s ours:

• Sell your premium content through “DocStore”

Bottomline no matter what your business, you can surely use Docstoc to promote your products and services either directly (with promotional docs) or indirectly (by way of promoting your expertise with a help doc).

Interesting stats about Docstoc:

• Alexa has it at position 720 globally and 477 in America which is not too bad.
• Here’s a graph comparing Docstoc with also started off well as a document-sharing website:

Hope that was one helpful tip. Another (social/professional) networking website to add to your daily dose of social media interactions! :-)

Faster and more relevant search results

With Caffeine, Google aims to use new infrastructure and technology for ‘indexing’ (process of storing a website’s information and organizing it against search results) more information, faster, more comprehensively and show them to the user in an even lesser time. I digged around the web and found an excellent and comprehensive test by Mashable. Click here to view their review and learn how the results differ from the old Google algorithm.

Social Media and Google

You may have already seen the right-hand side bar search options that allow you to search for content on various social media such as blogs, forums, etc. Although, with Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, even more UGC (user generated content) in the form of images and videos is being uploaded. In order to cope up with all this, Google needs to be able to show real-time search results as new data is being uploaded every second by the web 2.0 community.

How can you prepare your website for Google Caffeine?
If your website was on the top 10 on the first search engine results page, it is likely that it moved out of it. No worries, if your site has that authority with all the backlinks it needs, its likely that it will boost up back in the top 10 slot if it follows some simple, logical and effective guidelines for search engine optimization (SEO).

If you have no idea what we are talking about, feel free to get in touch and discuss how SEO can help your business and how you can set it up for Google Caffeine!

• Keep it fresh Whether it is your company news, your personal learnings in business, new product launches, sales promotions - keep your content fresh on your website, on your other social media networks.
• Be there in social media! Not to sound too presumptuous, here’s a quick-list of networks your business has got to be on: Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube (Got no videos? create one - product launches, testimonials - the ideas are endless)
• Follow web design compatibility standards Always think about the skeleton of your website, the layout, the elements used - does it show right on all browsers? is it a good resolution? are you using the latest web designing language and W3C compatibility standards?
• Be the long-tail: Be more relevant to a narrower targeted audience. Care about those who care about your product/service. With Caffeine, they are more likely to see more relevant results.

Is it live yet?

While there is no official date known for the release; it is being said that already some of Google’s Data centers are serving results based on the Caffeine algorithm. It’s never too late or early to get your site optimized for Google! Start here.

Be smart, do a little research and make sure that your ad campaigns appear crisp and clear. Some other tips for a good ad-copy:

• Utilize high resolution photos - even if that means paying for stock photo at websites. Some recommendations: istockphoto.com, bigstockphoto.com, corbis.com
• Make sure that you hit “Save for Web” and not “Save as” to save your final ad-copies/images. There’s a reason why they have that.
• Try using “web-safe colors” in your color selection palette. It will ensure uniformity of your final image on computers with different graphic configurations

Hopefully, your copy will not look like the one above! Happy marketing!

I came across a well-researched article by eMarketer exploring various aspects of online marketing such as video, search engines, social media and its impact on consumer behavior and governance. It also talks a little bit about internet penetration numbers in the US and the fact that US is still not in the top 10 list of global “broadband leaders,” a measure that takes into account household penetration and the quality of connection. Hope you get some interesting food for thought for your marketing ideas in the new year!

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1007406

Here’s the link to download the e-book for free here. You may also buy a physical copy on Amazon here.

It is interesting to see how the city’s trying to attract more visitors in a down economy. They have recently launched a campaign advertising their YouTube channel - not sure how old their channel is but they have given it a fresh look with new videos/playlists and an ad campaign striving to increase subscriber-base, video views and eventually more hotel reservations at Vegas!

On a side note, I did a quick Alexa find to figure which are the top sites for the topic ‘Las Vegas’ and here’s a snapshot:

::Website @ Alexa Traffic Rank::

Vegas.com @ 8363
LasVegas.com @ 37,073
VisitLasVegas.com @ 37,505

After finally graduating from business school, it’s time to get down to business. Today I’m happy to introduce you to Webventurous - a new venture that will provide end-to-end web strategy solutions that are not only scalable but also fit well with your business strategy.

While I’ve provided web services in the past, Webventurous brings with it solutions which are more enterprise-centric, research-driven and fundamentally more useful to the business. In a down economy companies will find lean, efficient and business-focused websites a worthy investment.

If you or someone you know might be interested in our services, visit our website! If you or your referral opts for our services*, we will gladly register their domain name for the first year for FREE.

*Conditions apply

Gradually but painfully (for viewers) Google seems to be squeezing revenue from every video played to increase revenues.