How to Use SlideShare: Benefits and Best Practices for Marketers

LinkedIn is widely known as a professional networking goldmine. The platform offers a wide range of tools to aid business professionals in their endeavors, including the information host SlideShare. 

When used correctly, SlideShare can be a valuable resource to marketing professionals looking to extend their efforts to the maximum potential. 

But how do you use SlideShare? And how does it fit into your marketing plan?

What Is SlideShare?

SlideShare is a tool offered by LinkedIn that allows you to share slideshow presentations, infographics, videos, and other materials online. The basis is to make professional knowledge easily accessible by sharing it with an online audience.

What’s great about SlideShare is that the presentations can be made public, so there’s no limit to the number of people you can reach.

It’s also a user-friendly host that allows you to upload complete PDFs, PowerPoint and OpenOffice presentations, Word documents, and more.

SlideShare boasts “18 million uploads in 40 content categories” – that’s an immense amount of information available at your fingertips. The content is high quality and posted by leading experts who want to share their knowledge with the world.

In short, SlideShare is a valuable resource if you’re looking to learn about any number of different topics – or to share your own knowledge.

Also, did we mention it’s free?

Types of SlideShare Presentations

When it comes to sharing knowledge and reaching a global audience, SlideShare opens up your possibilities. But in case you’re wondering how to use SlideShare to best display your information, we’ve put together a list of the types of presentations you can create.

Informative

Informative presentations are concise and direct. Their purpose is pretty clear – to inform the audience. These presentations often cover facts that are broken down from dense material into smaller digestible pieces of information.

Informative presentations include research and analytics results, background content information, and more.

Instructional

Instructional presentations are used to teach something to your audience, providing directions to guide them through things like navigating software or using an online tool.

These presentations are usually longer and more time consuming and can range from basic instructions to more advanced direction.

They are most commonly found in the form of video tutorials, but slideshows also work well.

Stirring

This kind of presentation is used to spark interest in your audience about the topic being covered. Narrative driven, real-life stories and examples are often used to evoke emotion in the audience and make a significant impact.

These kinds of presentations are motivational and encouraging, and often end with a strong call to action to create movement within your audience.

Persuasive

The purpose of persuasive presentations is very straightforward – to convince your audience of your point. It requires supportive facts to enforce your argument and often presents your point as a solution to a problem. 

Similar to stirring presentations, persuasive content typically ends with a strong CTA that encourages the audience to make a decision and act based on the information that has been provided.

These kinds of presentations often include debates and business proposals.

Benefits of Using SlideShare for Marketers

SlideShare can have a myriad of benefits for marketing professionals looking to extend their efforts. Adding SlideShare to your marketing plan can boost your content marketing strategy, one of the core foundations of any good business aiming for success. 

The resource is especially valuable to marketers who are looking to use LinkedIn to strengthen their company's brand and hold a competitive edge within their industry. 

Increase Exposure

For starters, you have the potential to reach a massive audience. SlideShare earns 25 million views each month – that’s a lot of potential eyes on your work.

More views means more exposure and thus more followers. This can lead to an increase in sales prospects, greater networking opportunities, and potential business partnership offers.

Repurpose Content

You don’t have to post all new content on SlideShare. It’s a great platform to help you repurpose top performing content in a fresh way!

Have a long form blog post that’s had a lot of views? Transform it into an easily digestible presentation on SlideShare.

This will allow you to deliver the information in a new way, continue to promote the material, and thus greatly expand your audience!

Establish Yourself as a Thought Leader

Sharing your knowledge via SlideShare will allow people to see your innovative and forward thinking mindset.

You’ll be able to establish yourself as a thought leader within your industry, and people will turn to your presentations when they need information on your specific area of expertise.

Deliver An Educational Resource

In addition to the numerous benefits SlideShare has when it comes to sharing your content, it’s also a great place to seek out information.

With content posted by a world of experts, the amount of quality material you have at your fingertips is practically limitless.

Use the resources available to you to constantly expand your knowledge of your industry and gain new knowledge on fresh topics – both of which will help you maintain a competitive edge within your field.

The Marketing Guide to Using SlideShare

Putting together a full presentation can be a time consuming and daunting task. How do you know where to start?

If you’re struggling with how to create a SlideShare presentation, don’t worry!

We’ve laid out the three primary steps for putting one together – planning, creation, and post-launch. If you follow these guidelines and best practices, you’ll be a presentation pro in no time.

1. Planning

Before you create your SlideShare presentation, you should plan out its content and your strategy for it.

What is the overall goal of sharing this information? Are you hoping to gain followers? Boost website traffic? Establish your authority within your industry? Determining the purpose for your presentation will help you shape it toward a target audience.

Make sure you have your material outlined and ready – you should be fully prepared to put it into a comprehensive presentation.

You should also consider how long you want your presentation to be – longer content containing 40-60 slides generally receives more views that shorter content.

2. Creating

Once you’ve planned out the goal and theme of your presentation and you have the materials ready, it’s time to make your SlideShare content!

Make your cover slide bold and descriptive to attract viewers and clearly tell them what your presentation is about.

Take a look at the cover slide of this presentation by Leslie Samuel about establishing yourself as a thought leader:

The slide is colorful and well designed to attract attention from the audience. The title is bold and in theme with the colors of the overall slide, which maintains consistency. Finally, it clearly describes what the viewer will gain by clicking on this slide deck. 

In order to optimize for searchability, include keywords in your title, description, and tags. If you want to drive traffic back to your website or other content, remember to include backlinks in your presentation. SlideShare allows you to include working hyperlinks within your work.

Consider your design carefully – you should include an engaging visual element in your presentation, as people respond to it more strongly than simple written content. Include pictures and infographics where appropriate.

You should arrange your slides in a way that develops a narrative and shows a clear, linear train of thought within the presentation.

Finally, if you want to build upon what is presented within the slides, you can add an audio narration feature to your presentation. Simply upload an MP3 file and attach it to your document, and your audience will have access to a fully developed audio and visual presentation!

Remember that presentation above about establishing yourself as a thought leader? Consider the points discussed in this section and pay attention to how they've been utilized throughout this deck: 

3. Post-Launch

After you launch your content, you’ll need to promote it to boost your views.

One of the best ways to do this is to share it on your social media channels. Additionally, you can also embed the presentation into blog posts or a relevant page on your website.

One your content starts gaining traffic, SlideShare has a free analytics tool that allows you to track your number of views, downloads, and shares it receives.

Analyzing your content is an important step in the creation of a SlideShare presentation, as it allows you to track the impact of your work and keep tabs on what resonates with your audience. This way, you can assess the efficiency of your content and promotion efforts, and improve them for the future.

Present Your Best Work

Producing a consistent stream of content is great for consistency within your marketing strategy, and filling up your SlideShare profile will certainly impress your viewers.

However, make sure that you're only sharing presentations that have been thoroughly planned and carefully created. Shallow content will reflect poorly upon you and your brand. 

When you know how to use SlideShare effectively as a marketing tool, you will see big results. Every presentation should add substantial value to your channel and benefit the audience in an impactful way. Sharing only the highest quality of content will help to create a sustainable growth impact within your larger marketing strategy.