Alexa estimates SlideShare as one of the top 200 sites in the world. SlideShare claims to have 80 million visitors every month, the majority of which come through search engines.
That’s a lot of traffic—so how can you take advantage and use SlideShare to grow your content, increase your visibility, and market your business? By publishing content to SlideShare, you can:
- Turn on traffic to your website.
- Generate leads.
- Build authority and credibility.
- Increase your search engine visibility.
- Attract followers on your other networks.
- Increase engagement on social media.
Are there enough reasons to like SlideShare? This article will give you a clear idea about creating and publishing content on the platform and using it effectively for marketing.
What Is SlideShare?
SlideShare is a tool granted by LinkedIn that allows you to share slideshow presentations, infographics, videos, and other materials online. Its premise is to make professional knowledge easily accessible by sharing it with an online audience.
The great thing about SlideShare is that presentations can be made public so that you can reach up to an unlimited audience. It’s also a user-friendly platform that allows you to upload complete PDFs, PowerPoint and OpenOffice presentations, Word documents, and more.
SlideShare boasts “18 million uploads across 40 content categories” – that’s an enormous amount of information available at your fingertips. The content is of high quality, posted by leading experts who want to share their experiences with the world.
In short, SlideShare is a reputable resource if you want to learn about a variety of topics – or share your own knowledge. Also, did we mention it’s free?
With such high website authority, marketers have seen the SEO benefits of sharing their slides with SlideShare. Whether your goal is to gain exposure, gain website traffic, or be recognized as a thought leader, there are several ways to do all of these things by taking advantage of SlideShare’s vast and engaged community.
1. Create the Outline Document
The first step is to create an outline document on which your slide show will be based. To do this, refer to the blog post you’re repurposing, creating a document to plan the content of each slide.
It will give you an overall structure before you dive into creating the actual slides, and it’s effortless to edit and move things around while still in this format. You’ll notice that each slide contains only short, concise text.
Here are some general tips for creating this outline document:
- Minify the text on each slide—each slide needs to be easy for people to scan and move on to the next, keeping them engaged.
- Create title slides to divide the narrative and provide a sense of structure.
- Use bullet points liberally to help the audience quickly scan the information and move them through your presentation.
2. Increase Exposure
For starters, you can reach a massive audience. SlideShare generates 25 million views every month – that’s a lot of potential look at your work.
More views mean more exposure and thus more followers. It can increase sales prospects, offer more networking opportunities and potential business partnerships.
3. Set a Clear Agenda
After your cover and introduction slides have attracted your audience, the next step is creating a clear and concise plan of what your SlideShare deck will cover.
Setting the stage with a plan also helps determine the flow of the presentation from the beginning.
4. Use Lots of Visual Metaphors
As a general rule of thumb, PowerPoint-type presentations should not be text-heavy. They’re a complement to the speaker and not the other way around. You can usually include one large visual metaphor per slide and 1-3 sentences of image-related advice.
5. Include A Call-To-Action
In the last slide, you always need to include a call-to-action (in the form of a link or button), so the audience can get something extra. When they click the button or link, they leave the SlideShare presentation and enter a landing page with a small form that they fill out to get some more value.
It allows you to generate leads for your sales team, and a solid and traceable ROI makes SlideShare a precious social marketing activity.
6. Think Like An Infographic
SlideShare is not a blogging platform. It’s a visual platform. You need to optimize your thinking towards a more visual experience. The best presentations are those that tell a story in visual form. Putting too many words on your slides will make people not want to see them.
7. Repurpose Your Blog Posts
Content repurposing is brilliant, and it works remarkably well with SlideShare. You can convert most blog posts into a SlideShare presentation. It’s not a quick and easy task. Anyone who has done slide presentations can testify to the fact that they work very hard. However, it is worth it, as they allow you to access your content to a new platform. Better content on more platforms can mean better content marketing.
8. Create a Pre-Publication Incentive
Use embedded SlideShare presentations to get your audience to order your publication as soon as possible or to offer a reason to sign up. One of the easiest ways to do this is to create an electronic incentive — such as a bonus video, checklist, worksheet, interview transcript, or a preview chapter — that you can immediately send to people who want to purchase your content offering in advance.
9. Share on Your LinkedIn Profile
SlideShare can also be featured on your LinkedIn profile, which helps to:
- Show your expertise
- Generate leads from profile views
- Increase your Slideshare view count
to do this:
- Scroll down your profile to the select section and click on the + icon
- Click on the link option
- Paste in a link to your SlideShare
Your SlideShare will then be imported automatically, including the details you added to your SlideShare when you first uploaded it.
10. Grow Search Engine Visibility
As you’d expect, SlideShares appears in Google’s search engine results. If you’ve followed the model suggested here for repurposing an existing blog post, you effectively get another opportunity for your content to show up on searches for particular keywords.
In other words, for a single keyword search, you can have both your original blog post and your SlideShare showing in the same listing, not to mention other places where you reuse similar content.
In addition, SlideShares also appear on Image Search, showing the header slides of the presentation, which can help attract furthermore audiences.
Conclusion
Building a consistent content stream is great for consistency in your marketing strategy, and filling out your SlideShare profile will undoubtedly impress your audience.
However, make sure you’re only sharing presentations that have been thoroughly planned and carefully created. Shallow content will make a wrong impression on you and your brand.
When you know how to use SlideShare effectively as a marketing tool, you’ll see significant results. Each presentation should add substantial value to your channel and impressively benefit the audience. Sharing only the highest quality content will help create a sustainable growth impact within your larger marketing strategy. If you have any questions or doubts in your mind, you can contact us. Our experts are here to help you 24×7. Call now!