When 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.
