In early 2010, Laura Gainor was running her own photography and design business in Charlotte when her husband Brian found out he was being transferred to Milwaukee. They had just three weeks to move.
Laura decided to take advantage of the move and pursue a full-time job in social media. She targeted a job opening at Comet Branding. She used a broad range of social media tools to get the attention of her potential employer, but one of her more innovative tactics was using Slideshare.
Laura did not send them emails or a resume initially. Instead, after getting their initial attention, she neatly summarized her background and the trip around Milwaukee in a Slideshare presentation (see below).
Laura was featured on the Slideshare home page, in their newsletter, in local press and on PRweek. The presentation has 48,329 views as of this writing. Comet was so impressed that they scheduled a Skype interview a few days later and offered a job at Comet as PR and social media strategist soon after.
Laura Gainor Utilizing Social Media
By the way, her efforts continued to pay off: Laura is now working as the Social Media Manager for GMR Marketing in Milwaukee, after they too recognized her successful social media efforts.
The Slideshare Secret: It’s Not Just About The Content
Slideshare is one of the best social media platforms for sharing your ideas, driving web traffic, enhancing your brand, and even increasing sales. Take a closer look at Laura’s story and you’ll notice she built up the suspense to her Slideshare presentation. Most people do the opposite–slap together a deck, upload it and then hope it gets viewed.
The lesson here is, your Slideshare presentation is just one piece of the puzzle; you need to think about marketing angles ahead of time. You need to be creative and unique and relevant. Read Jon Thomas’ recent article, Slideshare Presentation How To, 5 Tips, to learn how to craft a strong presentation.
One of my favorite recent Slideshare decks (by Elaine Ellis of The Trada Group) was for Boulder Startup Week. The Office-inspired slides garnered nearly 9,000 views in a week.
10 Reasons the Office Should Move to Boulder
Ok, let’s get to the tips. Let these promotion tactics and tips guide your Slideshare content strategy.
15 Slideshare Marketing Secrets
So you have a killer Keynote, PowerPoint or PDF uploaded to Slideshare. Now what? Here are 15 other ways to market it and achieve the best visibility. If you’re lucky (or perhaps pay for the privilege), your slideshow might get featured on the Slideshare site and go viral!
1. Upload Slideshows Optimized For Slideshare
A presentation that was designed with a speaker explaining each slide along the way loses a little something when just clicking through the slides. An e-book can be shared on Slideshare but might be a bit harder to read there.
Slideshare is great for a lot of things. But if you really want your content to take off and get results from this unique platform, design your presentation for Slideshare.
Pay close attention to your title, description and tags.
2. Focus On A Single Social Network for Sharing
Log-in to Slideshare and use the buttons to the left of the presentation to share it on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. Slideshare has several featured slideshow lists on their front page. The “most shared” list for each of these social networks are an attainable goal for many businesses.
According to Tiffany Monhollon Wilson, digital content manager at ReachCast, these are crucial to potentially getting your Slideshare in one of the “hot” featured spots for Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
She suggests asking your community to share it on one specific site: “We’d really appreciate if you would share this on Twitter to help us hit the most-shared on Twitter feature!”
3. Utilize Hashtags on Twitter
On Twitter, include relevant hashtags pertaining to the industry or company in your slideshow. Don’t forget to @-message influencers in your industry as appropriate. AND do not abuse these share tactics. If it is not highly relevant it will not work.
4. Blog About It
Write an article and embed the presentation on your website, blog and Facebook page. Encourage your readers to share or embed it also.
5. Embed On LinkedIn
Install the Slideshare application on LinkedIn (find it in applications under the More menu). You can choose to automatically include slideshows you upload to Slideshare, or you can upload them manually to LinkedIn. If you have a company Slideshare account, invite employees (voluntarily) to do this as well.
6. LinkedIn Status Sharing
Update your LinkedIn status with a direct link to the presentation. LinkedIn is a business focused social network. Those highly active on this site are looking for relevant, easy to consume content focused on business.
7. LinkedIn Groups
Post the link with a brief summary in relevant LinkedIn Groups. Asking challenging questions is also a good way to entice people to view the slideshow.
8. Use Email Lists
Send a summary and a link to the slideshow to your email distribution list. You can also do a teaser campaign ahead of time and “build up” to the Slideshare presentation release (similar to what Laura did).
Look for other email list opportunities. If this was a conference is there a conference list you can promote through? If invited to speak, is the host company or organization willing to share to their email list?
9. Facebook Sharing and Tagging
Share the link directly on Facebook. You can “tag” any people or companies mentioned in your slideshow by including the @ symbol in front of their name. That way, your post will appear on their Wall also (depending on their Wall settings).
Note: You have to first “like” the company or be connected with a person to tag them. This tactics can also be abused. Don’t tag people or brands that are not highly relevant for the sake of promotion.
10. Create A Slideshare Event
If you have an event with multiple quality slideshows, make sure you create a Slideshare Event to group them together.
Upload the presentations quickly after the event, even before if possible. Tweet about the Slideshare event to your attendees, including the event hashtag, and copy @Slideshare.
Jason Keath of Social Fresh says several of their events have been featured on the front page of SlideShare as a result of this tactic.
11. Use Ad Targeted Traffic
Consider running Google AdWords, LinkedIn Ads or Facebook Ads targeted to keyword phrases in your presentation. On Facebook, can also target the same individuals or employees of companies mentioned in the slideshow.
This method is best used when you have calculated the amount you are willing to pay per lead generated by your Slideshare presentations. If you are highly organized, this turns your Slideshare decks into interactive landing pages.
12. Build Anticipation On Twitter
Send out a series of tweets pertaining to the presentation. Ask provocative questions to engage viewers, or include something like [PRESENTATION], [SLIDES] or [SLIDESHOW] at the end of the message to draw more attention to this unique content type.
The most easily retweeted content on Twitter is images. Slideshows are also easily consumed and shared. Advertise the content type.
13. Advertise on Slideshare
Pay to have your deck featured on Slideshare’s home page. SlideShare editors feature 15 presentations on the home page daily. It’s not cheap: Featured presentations are $399 a day, and the presentation of the day is $999.
You must apply apply, and they will get back to you within 24 hours. I have not paid before, but I assume if your content is halfway decent, they will gladly take your money! Fortunately, I have had a few slideshows designated as “featured” organically.
14. Is It Newsworthy?
Write a press release about your topic and submit it to a service like PRWeb or PitchEngine along with the embedded slideshow. This will work best, of course, when there is actual “news” value in the presentation.
15. Turn On Slideshare Lead Generation Options
Consider Slideshare’s LeadShare paid options. LeadShare is available as part of SlideShare PRO accounts ($19 for 30 monthly leads; $49 for 70 monthly leads; or $249 for unlimited monthly leads). LeadShare notifies you with a Slideshare user’s information when they download your presentation or fill out a custom contact form.
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Do you use Slideshare for marketing? What tips do you have that we might have missed?