Textbook Content Marketing on SlideShare

If you're not familiar with this online network, you might want to take a look. Just to give you an idea of its actual reach, the slide deck you see in the snapshot I took of the home page two days ago, depicts the site's choice of highlighting my short deck with quotes on influence.

I was logged in, and you can see the new feature that shows community reactions to my decks on the right hand side, which is new. The deck was featured above the fold and garnered 714 views by late Saturday afternoon, a few short hours since it was posted there. It had 1,084 by the time it was lowered on the home page Sunday.

We love stories, and a good slide deck is a calling card to spread ideas.

Content ideas that are all business

Make it an event

• create short and concise decks to go with your press releases or articles
• use small slide decks as an invitation to participate to an event
• search for an find other, like-minded companies or individuals and comment on their slides
• synchronize audio to visuals for a follow up deck after an event

These are low tech ideas to extend and anticipate events so that the people who cannot attend may still get a taste of the content. They also help you bridge online and off line experience -- useful reminders for participants. For an example, see the slides I created about this year's SxSW interactive.

You can still provide deeper content for conversion.

Say the event is a Webinar, use some of the ideas to provide added value to participants by including the best questions in a follow up Q&A. Or it could be an event where you hope to drum up attendance. Last year, I used a deck to convey why a panel proposed for SxSW would be helpful, complete with call to action link at the end.

Share the research

• develop a visually compelling deck of the results of your research
• translate the data into information graphically
• complement research results with compelling commentary -- for example, add qualitative information to quantitative research
• compare competitive data and facts by industry, or geography to appeal to customer segments

Infographics are all the rage these days. Good visualizations take into account scale, context, and fair comparisons. Decide what's your point of view and organize to tell the story visually. Here's a really good presentation deck about when data gets up close and personal where the author walks the talk.

Pay it forward

• collect smart quotes from your industry around a topic
• celebrate the achievement of a thinker, an athlete, a humanitarian
• flesh out a problem that ails your field in collaboration with other businesses
• present a time line of achievements for an industry, a cause, a project

For an example of quotes on marketing, see the deck I created in 2009. It has gotten the most views of all slides I posted to the network to date. It pays to be altruistic.

Play it back

• present customer testimonials as quotes for a product or service
• show customers daily lives and how they use your product (even better)
• develop a success story visually, defining the problem or challenge, and how the customer went about solving it with you
• run a contest with final deck depicting the top 5 entries

Writing it down stabilizes information. Playing it back visually is a smart way to reinforce it and help you win referrals.

My personal presentations are mostly visuals. However, at work, I have used many of the techniques I suggest in this post. Research data does very well, as do cases studies and Webinar follow up content. 

Where to use these assets

You can post PDF reports and videos to SlideShare as well. The network offers you the option to enroll in LeadShare -- see how it compares to the performance of Webinars and white papers. Even as you explore that option, there are many things you can do to optimize the use of your decks. For example:

• post them to your company blog to complement a topic
• use the SlideShare application to showcase your decks on your LinkedIn profile
• provide the link to your deck to follow up emails and newsletters with a special code to track how many view the slides from each communication piece

Compete.com puts the site slightly over 1.7MM unique visitors, traffic on par with that of Delicious, still according to Compete. SlideShare publishes its traffic at 29MM monthly visitors, and 80MM page views.

A focus on usefulness to your customers and goals together with integrated marketing get your material found and get you results. 

I even used the site when in need of adding visuals to an impromptu business meeting. What are some of the ways you have used SlideShare successfully?

This post is part of a series where we talk about blogging at work if you don't have a blog.

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Comments

[leigh durst]

Well done Valeria,

Another insightful post for the masses. Thank you for ALWAYS walking the talk.

- Leigh

[Valeria Maltoni]

Thank you, Leigh. I suspect it looked too much like work for people to like this post very much ;)