Friday, April 26, 2013

The Most Underrated Social Media Platform: Slideshare


BY: Rachel Metscher 
Tue 16-Apr-2013 22:44
http://ddcontent.comrz.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/014/Long_Slideshare_Main.jpeg
http://ddcontent.comrz.com/AfcIcon/Icons/Blank.gif
How many of you have clients looking to you to create content? Here is a chance to repurpose and reuse some of their content they hadn’t considered: Powerpoint presentations. For any marketer or communications professional looking for ways to build their client’s expertise you shouldn’t look any further than SlideShare.

If you don’t know what Slideshare is, it is the world’s largest community for sharing presentations. With 60 million monthly visitors and 130 million pageviews, it is amongst the most visited 200 websites in the world.

I am a huge proponent of SlideShare (I spent some time speaking with PR Week’s Tanya Lewis about the use of SlideShare and PR). Here is my personal example using SlideShare, back in November, I had the opportunity to present to a regional PRSA conference. Yay! Who doesn’t love the change to share their knowledge? Now, when I presented there was about 50 plus folks in the room. Not bad right? But, when I posted my presentation to SlideShare a few things happen:

1) More exposure. Since posting to SlideShare, the presentation has been viewed more than 450 times. Not trending on SlideShare, but definitely worth the investment of increasing my reach by 9X.

2) Bloggers looking for content can find you. Someone from the presentation also blogged about it. Bonus! He blogged on Vocus corporate blog and linked to the SlideShare posting. This was a key driver of viewers to my SlideShare presentation. Bonus: a reporter from my local market also covered the story too. Love it.

3) Increased credibility. Amazing when you can share your ideas and thoughts, folks seek you out for advice and expertise. Building expertise through showing your work. Huzzah, what every PR person wants for their client: ability to leverage their expertise and get noticed.

Best Practices for SlideShare
1.     Don’t post anything that is boring. Dancing cats aside, you should only post quality presentations that either teach or entertain.
2.     Use presentations with lots of images. Remember, you need to tell a story so if it is too text heavy no one will read it. Use visuals to tell your story.
3.     Make Sure to use the tags. This is how folks will search for you
4.     Sharing is Caring. After you post, make sure to share it on your social channels.
5.     Hello traffic. Who doesn’t need more views to their website? Incorporate your SlideShare presentation on your company blog and drive traffic.
Final thought: You or your client already have some pretty decent presentations that are probably worth sharing. Why not give it a shot?

This post appeared originally on my blog, metschermusings.wordpress.com/

1 comment:

  1. my sir said, there should be 'power' in your 'point'...dancing cats! lozz

    ReplyDelete