SlideShare for Business

Participating in the SlideShare community enables you to upload and share your business’ videos and slides. Ultimately, your goal is to attract and illicit some interaction from your target audience. Similar to other social sites, you can use SlideShare to promote your business message. Some ways you can use your business SlideShare account include:

  • Upload your company presentations (PowerPoint, PDF, Keynote, iWork or OpenOffice formats are permitted) to share with new and existing customers.
  • Publish tutorials about your products to enhance your business’ support services.
  • Share slides from business presentations as a means of reference and promotion.
  • Develop conversations with other businesses that relate to your industry.
  • Add insightful comments to enhance other presentations in your particular market.

To bring an extra dimension to your presentations, SlideShare tools now allow you to synchronize audio with your slides. Now let’s discuss some specific strategies for your business’ SlideShare profile.

Review Your Library of Existing Presentations

It is best that the content you choose to upload to SlideShare is appropriate and significant to your target market. If your presentations are beneficial to your target audience, potential customers will be more likely to find your presentation in a search query, more likely to “like” your presentation, comment with feedback and share your presentation with their network. Additionally, if your presentations are relevant and valuable sources of information, your audience will also feel more compelled to return to your SlideShare channel in the future.

The best type of presentation to upload to your SlideShare channel should focus on educating your audience. Review your existing presentations / documents / videos for content with tips or step-by-step advice that your customer would be interested in. Some material you may want to consider include:

  • A slide show with how-to’s or tutorials about your company’s product
  • A newsletter with the top 10 tips for getting the most of your industry’s service
  • A recording of a past webinar with industry tips and techniques
  • A whitepaper discussing helpful tools and resources your customers might need

Your business already has the information and expertise needed to make a dynamic SlideShare channel. Ultimately, it’s just a matter of formatting it into a style that will resonate well with your customers.

Set Up SlideShare for Business

As with your business’ other social media tools, the first place to start is creating a SlideShare profile. This is where you can create a snap-shot of your company’s most significant and attractive information. Take advantage of all the profile headlines you are prompted to complete, especially Work, Industry, About, Website and Tags.

Ensure you remain relevant and true to your brand. Your SlideShare profile will help browsers determine if your business is relevant to them and worth exploring further, so keep your profile details informative and applicable to your product or service.

Integrate With Other Social Media

SlideShare offers exceptional sharing features that will significantly help promote your brand. To get the word out about your product or service, your SlideShare presentations can be found and shared by an impressively wide audience. Here are the special applications SlideShare has developed to increase your sharing capabilities on the web.

  • FacebookApp: Through your SlideShare account, you can easily import your existing presentations into your Facebook account. This allows you to share your business presentations worldwide and generate even more views and online traffic.
  • LinkedIn App: SlideShare has also developed an application allowing you to easily import your existing presentations into LinkedIn. This also allows you to gain more online exposure and boost online traffic.

To maximize the use of SlideShare’s Facebook and LinkedIn applications, you are also permitted to sync the 3 accounts. This will allow you to upload to any one account and it updates instantly on all 3 portals.

Additionally, it’s important to take notice of SlideShare’s recent introduction into the mobile world. SlideShare is now accessible on iPhone, iPad and Android mobile devices. Users are able to view, navigate through presentations and share vie email, Facebook and LinkedIn. Although you can’t upload presentation from your mobile device yet, it is only a matter of time. This on-the-move connectivity radically enhances your business’ customer reach and visibility.

Capture Leads

Your SlideShare profile also allows you to execute a LeadShare campaign to increase your presentations’ exposure, while collecting leads. You can either upgrade your business’ profile to a SlideShare PRO account in order to leverage the leads feature or you can simply create a customized LeadShare campaign in which you pay accordingly to the type of leads your business is interested in capturing. Essentially, your business’ LeadShare campaign can be fully customizable and it will allow you to:

  • Choose a select group of documents or presentations for your campaign
  • Customize your lead questions
  • Select specific countries to target
  • Receive emails any time a lead is collected
  • Measure and control campaign performance

The LeadShare feature is an ideal solution for businesses who want to reach potential customers through their presentations.

SlideShare Best Practices Checklist

Educate your audience -avoid the hard-sell. Upload material that fulfills your customers’ needs, answers their common questions or helps them solve a problem. The more value you offer, the more credible you become.

Connect your profile with other social sites. Utilize SlideShare’sapplications for Facebook and LinkedIn to automatically update your business’ profiles.

Leverage documents and videos. Aside from presentation slides, incorporate your company’s articles, publications and video files into the mix.

Engage with other users. Take full advantage of the other features in SlideShare you can use to connect with customers and peers including your Wall, favourites, Followers, Comments, Events and Groups.

Offer fresh and current material. Try to stay as up-to-date as possible in terms of the material you choose to share on SlideShare. This can establish your company as a go-to source for valuable information.

Tag your SlideShare content. Be sure to use the right tags or keywords when uploading content to your account. This is an effective way of ensuring your presentation gets found by someone browsing the site.

Include call-to-actions. SlideShare supports clickable URLs, so place a call-to-action or a URL at the end of your presentations.

SlideShare Tools and Resources

  • SlideShare Blog: Keep up on the latest SlideShare news and features straight from the SlideShare team – http://bit.ly/ecoGG
  • SlideShare’s FacebookApp: Integrate and sync your SlideShar ewith your Facebookprofile – http://on.fb.me/irZx3
  • SlideShare’s LinkedIn App: Integrate and sync your SlideShare with your LinkedIn profile
  • SlideShare101: Learn the benefits of using SlideShare for your business – http://slidesha.re/7fVnFT
  • Social Media Today: Learn how to generate leads on SlideShare – http://bit.ly/gTyWgJ
  • LeadShare: SlideShare’s service for collecting customers leads with your SlideShare material
  • SlideShare Advertising: Promote your business on slideshare.net – http://bit.ly/heAa1m

Find out more about Choosing the Right Social Media Platform for Your Business with Emarkable’s Social Media Services and sign up to receive our Social Media Tips.

We are always happy to answer any questions. Contact the team by phone on (01) 808 1301, or email us at info@emarkable.ie

You can also sign up here to automatically receive one of 52 digital marketing tips every week.

 

Richard Coen

With over 21 years of experience in Digital Marketing, 31 years in sales and 25 years in business development, Richard assists companies to develop key growth strategies on a local or international basis. He can assist marketers to achieve balance in their approach to key areas affected by the growth in digital marketing.