Should Slideshare Be A Part of Your Marketing Strategy?

As B2B marketers, most of us spend a great deal of time preparing Keynotes, Powerpoints and decks. For years, all of this work was put in Archive folders on our computers, never to be used again. Thanks to Slideshare, presentations have become shareable, which makes them a valuable new marketing tool. But how do you know if it’s worth it for your company? And how do you create Slideshare content that people actually want to share?

Pros of Slideshare

• Users can store and share their presentations in one place and be part of Slideshare’s online professional community.
• Users can easily add synchronized audio or YouTube video to presentations.
• The site has 12 million unique visitors per month.
• It boasts over 100 million users.
• Users can track the success of a presentation with provided analytics.
• It is connected to a variety of social networks for sharing and generates embed codes.
• Marketers can use the program to demonstrate thought leadership on industry-related topics, promoting their brand through content and expertise.

Cons of Slideshare

• It is possible that your content could be used in a different way than you intended.
• As with any marketing tool, it takes an investment of time to use Slideshare well enough to see effective results.

Key to Slideshare Success

Using Slideshare effectively for marketing requires as much content strategy as any other tool. Presentations should be interesting and shareable, offering an interactive experience for viewers. The ability of Slideshare to outperform more traditional formats, such as white papers, lies in its easy integration of more compelling audio and video elements.

Once an engaging presentation has been created, it must be shared strategically as part of the overall marketing strategy. LinkedIn and blogs are particularly suited to Slideshare presentations, but they can also easily be posted to Facebook, Twitter and Google+. While one perk of Slideshare is that your presentation will show up in Google search, marketers should not rely on that for exposure. Instead, put your presentation in the hands of the people who can use it, be they colleagues or consumers.

Has your company tried Slideshare? Show us your favorite presentations below.

(Image credit: Sylvain Kashair)