Slideshare is a great way to share visual content, presentations, or even videos. By condensing your other content like ebooks or blog posts into slides, you can create a more visual piece of content to promote.
The presentation sharing site has been around since 2006 and was acquired by LinkedIn in 2012. There are more than 15 million presentations on the site about a variety of topics.
The number one topic on SlideShare is Business and Management with the top three most searched keywords being “marketing” “social media” and “Facebook.” This indicates a lot of potential for B2B marketers to post and promote content on the presentation sharing site.
I’ve pulled out a few recent presentations that do a great job explaining various topics to B2B marketers.
Crap. The Content Marketing Deluge. by Velocity Partners
This presentation by Velocity discusses the increasing amount of content being produced and how to avoid being added to the pile of sub par content. The slides begin by explaining how the “content is king” attitude is leading to incredible amounts of content being created - both good and bad.
Many companies are creating bad content with a catchy title, causing readers to be unhappy with the time they put into consuming the content. To avoid upsetting your readers, you need to be creating useful, engaging content that provides them some sort of solution or benefit.
Here’s one of my favorite points made in the presentation - “Pull out that pocket compact you have in your handbag or bottom drawer. Flip it open and look in the mirror. Now ask yourself, ‘Am I building a Great Content Brand or am I just building an efficient content machine?’ If the little round face in the mirror says,‘The latter’, close the compact and go revisit your strategy.”
The Fundamentals of Blogging by HubSpot
This presentation published by HubSpot is actually part of their Inbound Certification classes. The Fundamentals of Blogging covers how a blog will help your business, the logistics of crafting useful blog content, and how to promote your blog.
Past the simple “you need a blog” speech, HubSpot’s presentation goes deeper into best practices, and the “why’s” and “how’s” of blogging. Browse through the entire presentation to see SEO tips, how to write titles, and call to action ideas.
Here’s a great line from the slides - “Know your audience. If the content on your blog doesn’t appeal to your target audience – your buyer personas – you’re never going to convert all of that traffic into leads and customers for your business.”
10 Marketing Tips That Will Increase Your ROI In 30 Days by Nicole Elmore
This all encompassing SlideShare covers a slew of topics at their very basics. Nicole’s presentation features tips about blogging valuable content on a regular basis, incorporating social media into your marketing campaigns, and using effective on-page SEO to be better found in search.
My favorite takeaway from this presentation - at the minimum, add at least one lead generating form to your website. Then, follow up with these leads by providing valuable content that will interest them and answer their questions. The presentation offers this stat from MarketingSherpa: “Only 27% of B2B leads are sales-ready when first generated. This makes lead nurturing essential for capitalizing on the other 73%.”
A Dr. Seuss-Inspired Guide to Twitter by Hootsuite
This fun presentation put out by Hootsuite puts a Dr. Seuss twist on Twitter tips. The Slideshare goes over running a Twitter page from a basic level. The rhyming lines cover everything from how often you should tweet to how to mention someone in a tweet. It’s also a great example of how you can use SlideShare to upload a PDF.
My favorite line from the presentation:
“See Twitter is a great place to share and to chat
About what you’re doing, sure, but so much more than that.
Curate great content from other providers,
Be they bloggers, or clients or business insiders.”
5 Reasons Why Your B2B Marketing Needs To Use SlideShare by Square 2 Marketing
This slightly “meta” presentation (a SlideShare about SlideShare) explains how Slideshare is the perfect compilation of social media and content marketing for B2B companies. The presentation covers a few reasons that SlideShare is essential for B2B marketing: SEO, multimedia narrative, no-risk content, and easy to share content.
My favorite tip from the presentation is about lead generation with Slideshare. The presentation recommends including links to your site and landing pages through your slides, and encouraging conversions by keeping the characteristics of a SlideShare user in mind. Here’s the type of person the presentation recommends writing for:
- Interested in more visual content
- Social media savvy – especially for business
- Looking for short, easily digestible content
- Searching for quick solutions or guidance
The Sophisticated Marketer's Guide to LinkedIn: The Webinar by LinkedIn Marketing Solutions
LinkedIn created this presentation for a webinar on integrating LinkedIn into your marketing campaign. The presentation goes over the different ways to engage your audience on the social site: company pages, sponsored updates, and LinkedIn groups.
The presentation also delves into some best practices for posting on LinkedIn and some great examples of companies who are rocking on the site. LinkedIn suggests a bunch of different ways to repurpose your premium content for sharing with professionals on the social site.
My favorite part of the presentation is their “Sponsored Update Content Best Practices Cheat Sheet” which covers how to optimize content, manage updates, and optimize visuals for your sponsored updates. Here’s what they have to say about optimizing content:
- Always ask, ‘why would my audience read this?’
- Use concise and compelling intros and headlines
- Ask compelling questions to involve the target audience
- Include a clear call to action, regardless of the objective
- Test to see what works with your audience and then refine
How to Tell Your Story in 2014 (The Right Way) by Gary Vaynerchuk
This compelling presentation covers the changing scope of storytelling to consumers. Gary explains how you need to know your audience and convey your value proposition in a way that connects with the consumer.
Here’s a great line from the presentation - “Most marketers treat social media as a distribution channel...They are missing the fact that social networks are the first platforms ever that are actually a two-way conversation.”
Aside from the engaging message in the presentation, this is also a great example of a well-executed SlideShare. The slides do a great job telling a story, without needing audio from a webinar to understand the message or examples.
