In the never-ending quest to find more ways to promote your business online, there are more opportunities than simply using social media and your website/blog. One of the most overlooked options is SlideShare. Here are the top 10 reasons why you should be using SlideShare to market your business now.
1. An Excellent Source of Traffic
In a word: distribution. Sure, there are millions of people who log onto the internet every day and head straight for Facebook… but there are also millions of them who search for quality content on topics of interest and a good majority of them end up on SlideShare. In fact, SlideShare receives over 60 million unique visitors each month. That’s a lot of potential viewers of your presentation – and possibly to your website.
2. Qualified Traffic from Business people
SlideShare’s main demographic is business people. These are users that are seeking high quality content, particularly for B2B purposes (a recent visit to Alexa.com showed the majority of top searches for the site were all about business). With the right tags, you can easily attract the customers you are seeking.
3. Lead Generation
Every small business owner is looking for sales leads, right? Did you know that you can add a lead generation form to your SlideShare presentation? Simply select the option that adds a short form where viewers can leave their information in order to download your presentation and ask for further information (it’s up to you where it is inserted, beginning, middle or end). These leads can even be integrated into third-party CRM software programs such as Salesforce.
4. Ability to Embed Complex Designs
One really nice feature of SlideShare presentations is the ability to enhance them with audio, video, lots of images and a complex design that makes it eye-catching. You can upload presentations on everything from your annual P&L to a full eBook, an infographic or a how-to video.
5. Analytics
When you opt for an entry-level paid account, you also get access to analytics for your content. You can find out who is accessing your presentations, from where they are being referred and which ones are the most popular with your target market.
6. Easy Optimization
It’s no less difficult to upload any type of content here than it is to upload a video to YouTube. SlideShare intuitively figures out what type of content it is (video, audio, etc.), automatically formats it horizontally or vertically, and even pulls text from your presentation to use as meta tags. Doesn’t get much easier than that to optimize online content!
7. Quality Inbound Links
Because SlideShare is a highly ranked site, inbound links from the site are great for SEO. All you have to do is link your SlideShare presentations to your website to gain a quality inbound link.
8. Gain a Loyal Following
Just like on YouTube, users can subscribe to your SlideShare content to be notified any time you post new presentations. These are the people who are already interested in your content and should easily convert to customers. Plus, you can find people you are already know through social media sites and email contacts and connect with them on SlideShare.
9. Connect to Social Media
When LinkedIn bought SlideShare recently, the move allowed LinkedIn users to add presentations to their profile. This is another great way to build links between highly ranked sites – and allow your social media followers to easily access the content.
10. Presentations Become a Digital Marketing Kit
Can you quickly tell prospective clients where to find information on your company in a visual format (which most people prefer)? Prepare a SlideShare presentation that functions as a digital marketing kit and you can provide a one-click link to their request for more information. Don’t forget to add a lead capture form!
SlideShare is a very inexpensive way for a small business to create professional presentations that will reach a wide audience while building high quality links. Create a presentation in almost any software, upload your content and you’ll have new leads flowing into your office in no time at all!
