As I sit slowly losing my mind as my flight from SFO to BOS is delayed yet again (for the second time in three weeks) I'm gazing around the terminal listening to the boys next to us dropping the F-bomb every other word, the woman sitting behind my colleague with the "I ate an 18-Wheeler" tee and the dude with the really sweet five inch 'fro. If there is a better time to give you the timeline of my recent social media experience with SlideShare.

On December 18th at 7:32pm I Twittered:

as much as I dislike slideshare, it is awfully easy to use

It was picked up by my Jaiku integration and I completely forgot about my comment as I posted some slides up to my blog. The next day I had this email in my in box:

Hi,

Your Jaiku comment came up in my feed. I would love to know why you dislike SlideShare

I find that we learn the most from people who don't like the site for some reason. And if you have a moment to reply, I would appreciate your reply. And no, I won't take offense at criticism. I am genuinely curious.

regards,
rashmi
SlideShare cofounder

oâ€"â€"â€"-oâ€"â€"â€"oâ€"â€"â€"â€"o
Rashmi Sinha
CEO, Slideshare

I was astonished at how quickly Rashmi had touched base and how willing she was to get feedback from me. I immediately sent her an email with a few of my thoughts about why I wasn't an overall fan of SlideShare, which she answered within hours with some really helpful tips and tricks for using SlideShare (FYI, I asked for permission to reprint this information.

This is such a wonderful example of how powerful using social media can be for identifying your community and talking with them directly about their likes, dislikes, preferences and more. It was very basic:

1) Search social media tools for mention of your company or product;
2) Encourage a dialog with the person who comments on your company, especially the negative comments;
3) Facilitate a conversation with the person, learning what you can and possibly creating a stakeholder in your brand;
4) Lather, Rinse, Repeat;

Are you monitoring your social media reputation? You should be!

/kff

/kff