If you’re using presentations in your business you should have a look at SlideShare Marketing. SlideShare is an amazing slide show platform that offers the convenience of storing presentations online but more importantly, can make those presentations available to roughly 60 million people that visit the site each month. Think YouTube for PowerPoint.
If you’re not using PowerPoint or KeyNote, rethink how you are distributing your white papers, special reports or even user manuals. Quality content is king but “content” today is not the exclusive domain of text. To truly engage your audience you need to have a visual element and “presentations” are the quickest and most effective way to accomplish that. SlideShare.net makes it easy.
Why are we so hyped on this platform? We love the exposure. We love the fact that the last presentation we uploaded got over 100 views in the first half hour and we hadn’t even shared it on Twitter or Facebook yet. And we really like the fact that when working with prospects and clients we can email a link to our presentation rather than send a PowerPoint file that typically takes forever to open (assuming it makes it past the company’s firewall).
What SlideShare Really Brings to the Table?
First let’s look at what the marketing tool can do for your small business. Next, we’ll get into more details about how to use it:
- Authority. It’s a great “thought leadership” platform that will enhance your reputation as an authority in your field.
- Eyeballs. SlideShare comes with a built in audience of nearly 60 million and averages 153 million page views per month.
- Ranking. Just as YouTube videos appear on page one so do keyword optimized presentations. In fact given its focused nature, a presentation may have a better chance for favorable ranking than a blog post or article.
- Distribution. Presentations can be shared and embedded by anyone. SlideShare has partnerships with LinkedIn, Twitter, Google Hangouts and Freeconference.com making it exceptionally friendly as social media content.
- Leads. If you go for the Pro version you’ll have the ability to track specifically who is viewing and who is downloading your presentations.
- You’re in good company. Most of the content on SlideShare is generated by small businesses like your own but there are a few notable exceptions. The White House, Pew Internet, Dell and the advertising giants Ogilvy and JWT are but a few of the “brand names” who see and use the value of the platform.
Truth is most business owners have already done the “hard work” and have powerpoints or keynote presentations that can be uploaded to SlideShare. So the theory here is that you’ll be able to start using this tool faster than you may have originally thought.  Remember, when you’re reviewing those presentations that are just sitting in a file on your computer, to see if there is a natural way to break them out into multiple SlideShare presentations. You don’t want to overload your presentations with too many slides. A great target is to have 5 to 10 slides per presentation.
One last tip… Make sure you maximize the information on first and last slide of each presentation. The first slide is going to be the ‘ad’ for your SlideShare that entices viewers to start reading and clicking through your slides. In addition, use the last slide for your ‘Call-To-Action’. For example, you can invite viewers back to your website or blog for more helpful information about a specific topic. You could also look to include a phone number, email address or web address on the final slide — and be sure to give viewers a reason why they should do what you’re asking.
Having a goal for your presentation will help you decide on what your call to action will be.
Don’t pass up this great new SlideShare marketing tool you have at your fingertips, that doesn’t cost your business a dime and has a growing audience of business professionals. By adding this tool to your marketing mix you will build your reputation, build traffic, content (and links back to your website) and ultimately, drive new business. Acquire assistance from an internet marketing expert.
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