B-to-B Marketers: Are You Utilizing SlideShare?

slideshareWhen we think of utilizing social media in the marketing mix, SlideShare is probably the most overlooked and underutilized tool. There are over 60 million unique visitors a month to SlideShare sites with over 215 million page views.

Users are not only looking for good content, but also shared insights and SlideShare gives you a platform for both. Plus, you get the added bonus of using the other social media tools to promote your Power Points.

Lots of marketing departments, even if you tell them how great a tool it is, their push back very often is we don’t have time to develop one. My position is that between sales, marketing and the C suite, there are plenty of Power Points already existing that highlight and focus on issues that help differentiate you and help set you up as an industry expert. Here are some places to look:

  • Industry or association speeches that a C suite executive have given regarding an important issue or trend and their position on it.
  • Presentations to key customers on ways you can help solve their problems.
  • General positioning  Power Point on what makes you different.
  • Distributor-focused Power Point that talk about ways you support them.
  • Contractor-focused Power Point of the tools available to them from you to help them do their job.
  • New products with features and benefits.

I recently read an article by David Waring in Social Media Examiner –7 Ways to Use SlideShare for Your Business, that I found to be very  useful. He gives tips and examples on things as basic as creating well-designed slides, to how to work to get high rankings with key words and phrases by using key words in the file name and tag names. He also gives you tips on  how to grab attention using  how-to guides and  list titles.

The long and short of it is if you haven’t tried it, you have nothing to lose. You may be surprised what kind of views and leads you may get. I’d like to know your thoughts after you’ve tried it.

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Tips on Getting the Most out of SlideShare

SlideShare is gaining traction more and more and it’s not just for slides. SlideShare is averaging over 60 million visits a month and 120 million page views. That means great traction for your SEO and you can target buyers/influencers via tags and channels (customize content).You can also use it for lead generation and there’s a great post in social media examiner,how to generate leads with slideshare that you may find interesting

It’s now owned by LinkedIn and they are doing a great job making it easy to connect with your LinkedIn contacts and groups.

So if SlideShare is becoming so important, we should start paying attention to the details on what and how things should be put up there. I recently read an article by Roger C. Parker in the Content Marketing Institute’s daily updates on a to-do check list (you can download it here) to make sure you’re getting the most out of SlideShare.

He outlines 22 tips on proofing, uploading files and even tips on working with PowerPoint. Here are a few of his points that hit home with me:

  • Are slide titles and text consistently placed and aligned?
  • Other than the title slide, are they numbered?
  • Does your presentation title appear at the top of each page?
  • Did you add your firm’s name, URL and contact info at the bottom of each page of your handouts?
  • Did you convert presentation files to Adobe Acrobat to preserve text formatting?
  • Did you check each link after uploading to make sure they work?
  • Did you create links between SlideShare and social media sites like LinkedIn and Twitter?

I guess the point is the devil is in the details and if we all take some time, we’ll get more out of our efforts on SlideShare. Roger suggested if you want to learn more you could read The Marketer’s Guide to SlideShare by Todd Wheatlan.

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