I regularly use Slideshare in my day-to-day B2B marketing work and the results are amazing! If you are trying to develop a content marketing strategy for your small business, Slideshare is an excellent vehicle for distributing your material and driving traffic to it. While Slideshare contains a wealth of presentations, it is still a very underutilized platform by B2B marketers. Here are a few of the benefits I’ve seen so far:
1. Slideshare presentations drive search results
If you’ve set your presentation up correctly when loading it to Slideshare, paying attention to the relevant keywords, etc., then you should start to see your presentation show up in related search engine results before too long. When I’ve embedded Slideshare presentations on a blog post, I’ve seen results for both my blog post and Slideshare presentation appear on the same results screen. Nothing like getting twice the bang for your buck.
As an example, I created a blog post for BESLER Consulting that has maintained the number one spot on Google for the search term “LACE Risk Score” for months and it drives amazing traffic to their website. (http://www.besler.com/lace-risk-score/). The post is relatively concise, but includes a highly relevant, although very simple Slideshare embed of a worksheet. Moreover, the direct link to the worksheet on Slideshare ranks at the top of page three for the same search term (http://www.slideshare.net/beslerconsulting/lace-index-scoring-tool).
Bear in mind, a short worksheet is not the typical in-depth content that usually works well on Slideshare. But, it is very useful to the audience who craves that material and I did some optimization to the description as well. Slideshare will convert the text of your document into a transcript which also enhances SEO.
2. Slideshare makes repurposing content a snap
We all have slides hanging around from a customer presentation or webinar. Dust them off and with a little sprucing up, you can begin sharing that content with a much wider audience. It’s a great way to get your content marketing off the ground and prove its value to internal constituents and potential authors.
3. File formats are suitable for mere mortals
At a minimum, you can use PowerPoint to create slides that get noticed on Slideshare. Most everyone can put together a slide deck and have it look decent, even if you’re not a graphics expert. Slideshare is also great for hosting PDFs, so think white papers, infographics, and other high value content. The more time you take to thoughtfully prepare your presentation material and make it look good, the better chance it has of standing out on Slideshare. Invest in the look and quality of the material as your resources allow.
4. Social sharing is easy
The buzz about social selling is everywhere. Of course, the fastest route to sharing material online is by curating relevant third party material. But, if you’re determined to build trust and, ultimately, relationships with prospects, then it’s essential to let your own expertise shine. Once you have great content on Slideshare, it’s easy to share it on Twitter, LinkedIn, or just about anywhere else. In fact, Slideshare presentations can be easily added to LinkedIn profiles and played directly within Twitter.
5. Slideshare presentations embed easily into websites
As I mentioned above, embedding Slideshare presentations into your website or other websites is a snap. The advantage to embedding a Slideshare presentation is that the user has more ways to interact with it than if you just linked to a static presentation from your site. For instance, they can scroll the presentation within the page itself, make the presentation fullscreen, interact with lead development forms, and more.
6. Slideshare presentations are valuable to those searching for topical content
I’ve personally used information found in Slideshare presentations from other authors to help me think through subjects, persuade others, and source material for stage presentations. I’ve talked with other B2B marketing professionals who have done the same. The fact that Slideshare presentations show up in search results makes it even more likely that someone researching a topic will stumble across your material and spend time interacting with it.
7. You can get leads from Slideshare
Slideshare allows you to setup a simple lead generation form directly within your presentation. You can choose where in the presentation you would like form to appear. This service also integrates with Hubspot and Marketo if you wish to bring leads directly into those systems. Keep in mind, this is now a paid service that Slideshare offers, but it’s not very expensive compared to other channels and has the potential to deliver highly engaged prospects.
8. Link to anything
You can embed links to other websites, forms, and other assets directly within the content of your Slideshare presentation. You can also include links using services like Click To Tweet which allows users to post information from your presentation directly to Twitter for instance. You can link to just about anything after the third slide in your presentation.
These are just a few of the tangible benefits I’ve seen. If you would like to find out more about using Slideshare in your B2B marketing efforts, check out the great articles below. Happy reading!
Seven ways to use Slideshare for your business
The Complete Beginner’s Guide to Slide Decks: 10 Actionable SlideShare Tips for Maximum Results
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