by Meredith Corsillo
SlideShare is the world’s largest online presentation sharing community. With over 60 million unique visitors monthly, and over 16 million registered users, (http://www.slideshare.net/about ) SlideShare is a community where business professionals and individuals can research topics, get inspiration for their presentation or simply check out a sales deck without an annoying sales rep.
SlideShare was launched in 2006 and was acquired in May 2012 by social media powerhouse LinkedIn. LinkedIn just recently reached the 200 million registered user mark, and is the world’s largest online professional networking community, so the SlideShare acquisition is a perfect fit. The SlideShare app integrates with your LinkedIn company page so you can showcase all your professional presentations seamlessly, while keeping more real estate for yourself on your LinkedIn profile.
SlideShare is effective for storing, sharing and studying presentations. The ability to embed presentations into a blog or website is also a very handy feature. Businesses, educators and entrepreneurs are all target-users for SlideShare, which makes the demographic very similar to LinkedIn’s.
If your business is new to SlideShare, here are 10 tips to help you get the most out of its community and start sharing your presentations online:
- Create a main Company profile including a well-branded username that represents your business or your objectives well. Your company name should be used to build your brand. For example, www.slideshare.net/yourcompanyname (minimum of 3 characters with a maximum of 25 characters).
- Fill out your profile information completely. Profile fields include your location, phone number, About Us, all other social media URL’s such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn and a tags field where all your keywords go. Make sure to include a link to your website.
- Try to include your company contact details, address and web address url within the first few slides in case people don’t watch the entire presentation, and make sure your company branding is within the footer of each slide.
- Always include clear links back to your website within your slides to drive users there.
- Keep presentations visual and eye catching, without being overly wordy.
- SlideShare adds navigation around your presentations, so make sure to leave enough space around your slides so there is no important information too close to the edge that could get covered.
- Ensure your title is captivating and contains targeted and unique keywords for search optimization.
- Cross promote your presentations to all other social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and Google Plus. You can even add snapshots of them to Pinterest.
- The description of your presentation should be compelling and contain relevant keywords. You can also add your website address (unfortunately this will not be clickable) and your full business address and telephone number (ideally exactly as Google has it in your Google Places account).
- If you find yourself using SlideShare a lot, it may be worth looking into a “Pro” account. They start at $19 per month and will allow you to capture leads, upload larger Hi-Res images, track presentations you share by getting alerts when a user views your shared presentation, and many other features that business users value.
Even short Powerpoint or Keynote presentations take a good amount of time and resources to prepare, so use these tips and let SlideShare help you to maximize your return on investment.
