What is SlideShare? How to Use SlideShare for Your Business
Think of SlideShare as the YouTube for slideshows. Launched in 2006, SlideShare was originally meant to be used for businesses to share slides among employees more easily. However, it has since exploded globally, now allowing anyone to host and share presentations for business or entertainment purposes.
With an estimated 30 million visitors a month, SlideShare is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. Individuals and organisations alike upload documents to SlideShare to share ideas, conduct research, connect with others and generate leads for their businesses.
How to Use SlideShare for Your 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 Open Office 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 synchronise 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 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 a SlideShare Profile
As with your businesses 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.
- Facebook app: 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 maximise 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 to 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 a 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.
