On Wednesday, June 30 at 11:00 a.m. Central, Comet Branding Radio will revisit a show from earlier this year with SlideShare Founder, Jonathan Boutelle and Marketing Manager, Daniel Lu, as we talk about when the SlideShare concept was created and how you can promote your personal brand with SlideShare. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN.

SlideShare is a source for you to “Upload and share your PowerPoint & Keynote presentations, Word & PDF documents on SlideShare. Add audio to make a webinar. Capture leads with your presentation.”

Many of you have seen how Laura landed a position at Comet Branding through my SlideShare presentation, “Laura Gainor Utiliziing Social Media.” She created this presentation to compile her “get hired” strategy to get the attention of the Comet Partners, Al Krueger and Sara Meaney. This is one example how you can differentiate your brand and reach a large audience through social media.

You can also check out this presentation, created by SlideShare themselves, as to why you should SlideShare.

Boutelle and Lu will be joined Comet in a discussion to talk further about these SlideShare features. There are numerous creative and unique ways on how you can present your brand, while utilizing recent SlideShare feature updates.

Below are Laura’s top 10 ways SlideShare can be utilized:

1. Provides a seamless way to embed presentations/resumes/documents into blogs, distribute via Twitter/LinkedIn/Facebook/Websites.

2. Businesses can discover new trends and interesting presentations related to their interest on SlideShare.

3. SlideShare offers companies a way to share presentations discreetly on intranets as well as on private sites.

4. Consumers can join groups on SlideShare and establish themselves as an industry expert.

5. Consumers can easily incorporate social media tools into their SlideShare presentations to help them go viral.

6. People can embed SlideShare presentations into their LinkedIn account to boost their profile and offer enhanced resume/work experience.

7. SlideShare helps boost search engine rankings for documents (use this to become an industry leader; promote documents/deliverables).

8. SlideShare helps bring life to case studies.

9. SlideShare offers branded channels for businesses.

10. SlideShare can get you a job! Get creative and create your own virtual resume, displaying your capabilities and talents to potential employers.

How have you used SlideShare? Tune in on Wednesday, June 9 at 11:00 a.m. Central and share with us. CLICK HERE TO LISTEN.

I recently stumbled upon this social tool called Formspring.me. Formspring is a question and answer site founded in November of 2009. Formspring is a way to ask questions and share knowledge, and ultimately, get to know a person better. At first glance, Formspring is just an honesty box where friends can ask each other questions and this has brought about some controversy especially with high school students and cyber-bullying, but I feel it could make my blog writing a whole lot easier.

Well, here is where you come into the story. Help me, Help you. Everybody has questions, especially when it comes to social media. If you would allow me to, I would love the chance to try and answer your questions and increase our social media know-how in the meantime.

Now, I’m not positioning myself as a social media guru, master, expert, wizard or any of the other various titles. I’m a PR + social media professional who continues to learn each day, likes to find out answers and solve problems. I also think I’m pretty good with search engines. If I can find an answer, voila!, we have blog content. If not, it will give us an opportunity to extend the question to the great social media community. Collectively, we’ll find an answer.

So your mission. Go to Formspring.me/AndrewWiech and ask me a question about social media. I’ll do my best to find an answer, provide my opinion and increase our collective knowledge.

At Comet, we often receive advance copies of new books on the topics of public relations, marketing and social media, some of which are noteworthy and others that are not. However when this book arrived unannounced, I was stopped in my tracks. The name alone piqued my interest.

As the left brain of this outfit, Sara was absolutely titillated (yes, titillated) by the abundance of data and statistics collected in Socialnomics, to prove the point. It’s my kind of book. But it’s not just a book for data nerds like herself. It’s a book for skeptics who are holding out on their conclusions about the influence of online media upon our way of life. It’s a book for believers seeking more proof for their dinner table arguments. It’s a book for business people looking for more information about how the world is changing around them.

Even after a few pages, the conclusions are undeniable. Something is happening. And a lot of it is happening online.

It’s an exciting time of information evolution and communications revolution. So what? Well, the so what is determined by what you decide to do about it. You have two options: 1.) keep on doing what you’re doing or 2.) get on this high speed train before it leaves without you.

Have you seen the video companion to the book? If you haven’t, you are missing out on something 1.45 million other viewers have found fascinating.

Erik Qualman (@equalman) is the author of Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we live and do business. Socialnomics made Amazon’s #1 Best Selling List only after three weeks of publication & has been in the Top 100 Best Selling Business Books List consistently since its launch in August. Qualman is a frequently requested International speaker of the Fortune 500 and has been highlighted in numerous media outlets including: BusinessWeek, The New York Times, CNET, San Francisco Chronicle, Mashable, USA Today, Forbes, CBS Nightly News, and The Huffington Post. He has been fortunate to share the stage with Alan Mulally (Ford CEO), Lee Scott (CEO/Chairman Walmart), Jose Socrates (Prime Minister of Portugal),Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo (Nokia CEO), Julie Andrews (Actress) and Al Gore (former Vice President).

Join us on Comet Radio to hear from Erik about his insights, his experience and maybe some of his predictions for what comes next. It’s sure to be an interesting conversation.

Our recliner seems to like the new space. I think it’s found its new home.

It is safe to say we’ve settled into our new home on the corner of Water and Buffalo in the Third Ward.

Please stop by, say hello and check out our new home full of creative energy.

Thanks for saving the day, Souperman. Saving the Third Ward from hunger, one day at a time.

Following this interaction, we continued to have a conversation with the bartender and received some great recommendations of places to visit. My friends and I had an enjoyable experience at Comet Cafe, which was enhanced because our bartender was eavesdropping on our conversation.

In my opinion, the same is true in social media. Just look at Twitter. How many tweets are sent each day? I don’t even consider myself a highly active Twitterer but according to my TweetStats, I average 2.6 tweets per day. Multiply that times the number of users on Twitter and you have a lot. If one of those updates is something negative about a business, it’s important to respond immediately. By not responding, it might show to your followers that you’re not listening. Social media has given companies a tremendous opportunity in terms of customer service. The ability to listen and respond to the online conversation personifies a business and that personality is something that I look for as a consumer.

Likewise, the conversation is constantly happening in traditional PR. Editors and publishers build out content calendars and journalists are out reporting. In PR, it’s our job to listen to that conversation and decide if our client has the right voice to contribute. There are even Web sites dedicated to connecting reporters with proper sources. Help a Reporter Out is an excellent example. Through this Web site, journalists receive the expert opinions that they need to construct a credible story and sources get the earned publicity that they need to grow a business. Each day, HARO sends out three emails from journalists requesting expertise insight on a particular issue. If a client has some information that will enhance the story, we pitch it. It’s the definition of win-win.

Do you look for and support companies with an online presence?
Any personal stories of social media interaction with a business?

The logo for my fictitious PR firm from college.

1. Getting a crash course in traditional PR in the real world – Wisconsin Lutheran College is a small, private liberal arts college that doesn’t offer a ton for students looking to pursue PR. I majored in business and communications and took whatever classes my advisors and I believed would translate well with the PR profession. One of my PR classes had us create our own PR agency and gave us an actual client. Our PR and Social media shop, Spark, did its best but that work doesn’t compare to real life experience. Honestly, it’s pretty cool to be able to dive in and learn more about real world public relations from Al, Sara and Kristin.

2. Moving to a rad new space – As you probably know, we recently moved offices. We use to be located on the corner of 5th and Walker. On the first of February, we loaded up the Budget truck and moved to the Mercantile Building on the corner of Water and Buffalo, with a stop at IKEA in-between. The new space is awesome! For some reason, whenever I start a new job we pack up and move to a new space within the first month. It happened while I was working at ThirdCoast Digest too. Jon Anne Willow from TCDigest jokes I have the super power of transience.

3. Makin’ Movies – In order to inform the public that we were moving to a new office space, Al had the idea of making a stop motion movie of the iconic Comet Branding recliner finding its new home. To implement this plan, Kristin and I took pictures of the recliner “walking” up the sidewalks of Water Street to the new space. Besides the snow and bitter cold, it was awesome to be a part of this process. We got a few honks from cars passing by. Apparently lugging a chair down the sidewalk means that you know your way around Milwaukee, because two people stopped me to get directions. One of my favorite moments was documenting the story through Twitter and having my friend Ryan respond, “I really don’t understand what u do.”

This past month has been full of adventure already and I can’t wait to see what is in store next.

My buddy Ryan doesn't understand my job.

One NFL Sunday, some friends and I decided to go out for dinner. We decided to sit in the bar to watch the game and the host informed us to grab any table we’d like and a server would arrive shortly. With eyes fixed on the big screen, five minutes flew by with still no greeting from the waitstaff. Our internal alarms were buzzing, but we were entertained by the game. After a delayed arrival to our table, our server asks us, “What can I get you?” one of the cardinal sins in hospitality, especially when we didn’t even have menus or waters on the table yet.

First impressions matter, not only in a restaurant but especially in the professional world. This principle has been instilled in my mind ever since my first restaurant job at Pizza Hut. How you present yourself to a client or a customer sets the tone for the conversations to come. A strong handshake and genuine smile doesn’t only sell entrees and drinks but can build a trusting relationship with a client.

From my experience, first impressions are also important in the realm of social media. Past employers have Googled my name or read my previous tweets. When I set up my mother’s Facebook account a couple years ago, I told her she wasn’t allowed to judge what she saw. Now, whenever I post an update, I think about what she will say when she reads it. If I think it will make her blush…it’s probably not appropriate. Having this in the back of my mind has been a great benefit. (Thanks Mom!) Learning that filter can go a long way in establishing a professional social media presence, which can only lead to more positive things.

Has anyone learned this lesson the hard way?
My background is food service. How does PR translate to other industries?