How to use SlideShare for Business: The Success Formula

I’m finally getting around to watching the recordings from Social Media Marketing World 2014 and these notes came from the presentation by Todd Wheatland.

Why use SlideShare?

You can get a huge number of leads for only $19/month (pro-version)
SlideShare gets 60 Million visitors/month (your website does not)
SlideShare has great SEO
The primary intent of SlideShare users is business (as compared to YouTube for Facebook)

4 Ways SlideShare Can Help You

1. Producing content

Get new ideas by browsing and searching
Customize your content just for SlideShare – the extra 10% effort you put in will give you big results

2. Distributing content

Big on-site audience
Huge search traffic – people feel more comfortable with the “neutrality” of the content they find on SlideShare
Player can be embedded
HTML 5
Widgets/ social sharing help people easily share

3. Promoting content

Connect with influencers directly
Add the social power of the LinkedIn integration

4. Measurement

Analytics on each SlideShare
Pro account has more analytics

How to Attract More Eyeballs on SlideShare

1. Know the platform

It’s a very visual platform and there are different sections some of which are a function of what’s trending and some areas are hand-curated by SlideShare.

2. Different triggers

Homepage:

Today’s Top SlideShares – categorized to your interests and hand curated by SlideShare – unique appeal with your cover thumbnails and titles)
Trending in your network – Very important to connect your LinkedIn and SlideShare profiles here
Featured
Latest Conferences
Trending in Social Media (can be less visually exciting but needs to be shared – ask people to share it for you on social media)
Recommended and search results

Look at what other SlideShares are coming up and see what you can do better.

3. Audience and content objectives

Be intentional
Who is this content for
Where are they in the buying circle
What do you want them to do with it
How does it relate to your other content

4. Format

Vertical versus horizontal: GO WIDE (horizontal) – content promoted is always horizontal format.

Some non-digital natives might respond better to the vertical format because they are printing it out.

**SECRET TO GETTING LEADS FROM SLIDESHARE: Embed a link with “more information”. Example: “If you Like this, here’s a place to get more in-depth information.”

Side note, I’ve also seen people give “Top 31 Tips” where the last 10 tips are available through an opt-in for example.

Or use the Pro account to embed the optin directly into your SlideShare deck.

Good example of a business doing this well is Travel World Passport. Here is what they are doing right:

Useful information
Links to optins
Click to Tweets on quoteable images
Links on the last page of their SlideShare to their other SlideShares – what’s next