SLIDESHARE HOW TO GET MORE
FROM SUPER-SIMPLE TIPS FOR CONTENT MARKETING

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Introduction Whether you are new to SlideShare or just want to get better results from the content you publish on this platform, consider these quick ideas that cover: How SlideShare can contribute to your content marketing strategy Ways to create more compelling conversations How to use SlideShare to repurpose your content Formats you may not have considered How to increase the views and shares you get How to track your performance And much more! While you may be familiar with some of these tips, you’ll likely pick up a few new ideas that you can start using right now.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Start With Your Content Marketing Strategy Who she is: What demographic group(s) does she belong to? What is her job title? Her typical challenges: What questions might she have, or what might she be struggling with in relation to your topic? Her unmet needs: What guidance can you offer to help fill those gaps? Her position in the purchase funnel: How close is she to making a decision? Her goals and interests: What is she likely trying to accomplish, and what will she care about most as she works toward that goal? START WITH YOUR CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGYBE INTENTIONAL WITH YOUR AUDIENCE AND CONTENT OBJECTIVES: Know what audience you want to speak to, how the information you plan to share will help them, and what action you want them to take next. It may be helpful to keep your audience personas in mind as you craft your SlideShare deck. Make sure you keep the following details top-of-mind:

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Start With Your Content Marketing Strategy Plan a simple discussion Often, the best SlideShare presentations are those that create interesting conversations and do so in a way that’s easy for viewers to understand and follow. Keep your story simple, and use images whenever possible, to show rather than tell.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Start With Your Content Marketing Strategy Include a call to action Insert a clickable link in your slide deck to make it easy for the user to take the next desired step. Typically, calls to action are placed on the final slide but you can include them earlier in the presentation if you are concerned that your viewers might not make it all the way through.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Start With Your Content Marketing Strategy Plan your sharing strategy just as you would for any campaign Think about ways to motivate people to share your content so that it trends on SlideShare. This can include: Embedding your SlideShare deck in a blog post on the same topic Posting it on your social networks Timing your launch to coincide with relevant industry events or seasonal activities Reaching out to thought leaders (both those included in your presentation and also those who might simply find it useful) to get it on their radar Including your SlideShare presentations in your email newsletters and promotional e-blasts Including the SlideShare link in a press release (if it’s newsworthy or aligns with a newsworthy event)

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Create Your Content LESSON LEARNED BY CMI: In the past, we made the mistake of trying to use similar covers for a series of SlideShare decks (consistency is great, right?). But we found that if the covers were not differentiated, people got confused and would not view additional presentations in the series. Now, we maintain a common element for any series, but then make sure to differentiate with colors, bold keywords, or other creative elements. CREATE YOUR CONTENTSTART WITH ONE KILLER COVER SLIDE: On the SlideShare home page, all visitors will see is a cover thumbnail. So the more eye-catching your cover image, the more people you are likely to draw in to your presentation.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Create Your Content Grab attention with a powerful headline A killer headline is the No. 1 way to get the attention of SlideShare’s editors and get featured on the site. What can you do to help your headlines stand out? Try a few of these tips: Ask, “Would my target audience want to read this?” If you don’t focus on your readers, it will be nearly impossible to grab their attention. Entice, but don’t exaggerate. It’s better to offer useful, honest information with real value than risk angering readers because your presentation doesn’t deliver on the promise of its headline. It’s OK to be a bit of a tease: If you give away all of the important information in the headline, people won’t feel the need to read more. Use numbers and lists: Using numbers in your headline gives the audience an idea of how quickly they’ll get the information they came for. Check out the competition: Get a sense for how other businesses are positioning their SlideShare offerings, so you can identify potential opportunities to distinguish your content. Ask and you shall receive: Use titles that take the form of a question to pique readers’ curiosity (and ignite their desire to satisfy it). Take advantage of headline optimization tools, like CoSchedule, or KingSumo.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Create Your Content Make it dynamic SlideShare decks shouldn’t be static, one-way presentations. They can be used to draw your audience into an ongoing conversation that takes place across all the content platforms you use. Make it interactive — include hashtag, ask questions... open the door to engagement with how you present content. — Karen Webber. Users can rapidly click through the slides of Salesforce’s SlideShare to simulate a story being told with flipbook-style animation.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Create Your Content Visual appeal is the key The best presentations are those that tell a story in visual form, so emphasize pictures over text — this includes video and infographics, as well as static images. SlideShare has partnered with Haiku Deck to help users create eye-catching visual decks. You can access this directly in your SlideShare account by connecting to Haiku Deck in your Account Settings under Apps.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Create Your Content Integrate media SlideShare isn’t just for “slides” anymore. It has evolved into a multi-format content platform that works well with a wide range of media. Consider these ideas for enhancing your SlideShare content: Insert HD video. Embed a real-time feed of your company’s blog. Run live streaming video. Add audio narration to slide decks. Load “tall” documents like reports or infographics. SlideShare credit: LinkedIn Pulse.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Create Your Content Extend the life cycle of existing content With 60 million unique visitors each month, SlideShare has tremendous reach that can give your existing content the additional exposure it needs to be more successful. Try repurposing your popular blog post content, white papers, live event presentations, videos, and more.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Create Your Content Consider these additional ideas from the #CMWorld community We run regular webinar series. We upload the decks to @SlideShare afterwards, embed the YouTube recording, and send it to all registrants. —Crys Wiltshire Creating a @SlideShare from Twitter chats is definitely a great idea! You could also repurpose a podcast or a hangout, or curate visual quotes along themes like #startups, or #entrepreneurs, or #VCFunding. —Tulip Strategies Break down key points of a presentation into @SlideShare, then embed video at end. Include a [call to action] back to [your] website! —Cathy McPhillips

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Create Your Content Proof it to perfection Nothing derails your authority on any platform like publishing sloppy, error-filled content, and SlideShare is no exception. To ensure that your presentations uphold your company values and quality standards, follow the proofing process that Roger C. Parker recommends in 22 To-dos for SlideShare Success: © 2012 Roger C. Parker | www.publishedandprofitable.com | 2 TOPIC QUESTION YES? N HANDOUTS Presentation title Does the presentation title appear at the top of each handout page? Contact infor-mation Does your firm’s name URL, and contact in- formation appear at the bottom each page? Page numbers Does the page number appear on each page of your presentation handouts? Typography Are header and footer type faces, type size, and type style appropriate & consistent? Alignment Does header and footer text align with the slide thumbnails on each handout page? Text frames Did you add slide frames, or borders, to handouts only when necessary? UPLOADING Conversion Did you convert presentation files to Adobe Acrobat PDF’s to preserve text formatting? Links Did you check each link after uploading your presentation to SlideShare? Notes Did you create Notes pages to rehearse your narration and improve SEO results? Tags Did you double-check the tags appearing with your SlideShare presentation? Video Have you explored ways to use video to rein- force key ideas in your presentation? Promotion Did you link your SlideShare presentation to Facebook, LinkedIn, other social media? © 2012 Roger C. Parker | www.publishedandprofitable.com Roger C. Parker’s Published & Profitable SlideShare Proofing Checklist PROJECT DATE TOPIC QUESTION YES? NO? SEE SLIDE # SLIDES Layout Are slide titles and text consistently aligned and placed on each slide? Slide number Does the slide number appear on each slide, except the title slide? Typeface choices Are typeface choices consistent with the type- faces used elsewhere in your marketing? Fonts Unless you converted your visuals to PDFs, did you limit your typeface choices to those SlideShare supports? Type size Is the type size used in slide titles and lists consistent from slide to slide? Line spacing Is text line spacing consistent from slide to slide? List spacing Did you add extra space between items in bullet or text lists? Proper nouns Did you double-check the spelling of proper nouns, industry-specific terms, and jargon? Graphic Are graphics properly aligned with adjacent text and graphics? Borders Have you been consistent in your use of bor- ders around graphics?

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Optimize Your Content’s Viral and Engagement Potential OPTIMIZE YOUR CONTENT’S VIRAL AND ENGAGEMENT POTENTIALINCREASE YOUR CONTENT’S REACH: While the SlideShare platform has universal appeal, it’s particularly well-suited to business users. This is a place where people are genuinely going to search, ask questions, and look for solutions to their problems — making it the perfect launchpad for the content you want to spread virally.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Optimize Your Content’s Viral and Engagement Potential Take advantage of SlideShare’s unique features SlideShare has a wide range of settings, tools, features, and options that make it one of the most customizable platforms for content marketing. For example: Get featured: SlideShare rewards presentations that are recently created and uploaded by featuring them on its home page and relevant category pages (such as Leadership, Marketing, and Technology). The more often you post, the greater your chances of making it onto one of these leaderboards.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Optimize Your Content’s Viral and Engagement Potential Follow SlideShare’s Upload Campaigns calendar Time your content to take advantage of the hot topics SlideShare will be highlighting each month. This will help if you’re looking to get your presentation featured. (Download SlideShare’s Upload Campaigns calendar.)

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Optimize Your Content’s Viral and Engagement Potential Access free analytics tools Anyone with a SlideShare account can get important viewing and sharing stats, as well as insights about their audience — including demographics and traffic sources — by accessing SlideShare’s free analytics tools. These tools can provide a more in-depth understanding of how your SlideShare presentations perform, including: Geographical distribution: Measure and analyze user engagement by understanding where your users are. Traffic sources: Understand how your audience is discovering your content, and evaluate which channels work best for extending the reach of your presentations. Timing: Understand seasonal variations in your view count and whether certain days of the week and month perform better than others when posting content.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Optimize Your Content’s Viral and Engagement Potential Distribute your presentations whenever and however you want Flexible settings enable you to make SlideShare decks private, set a schedule for a private deck to go public automatically at a certain time, share them only with selected people, and/or make them viewable only when embedded on certain sites. We use private @SlideShares for our event presentations, where people have paid for an event. At some point we make all our private presentations public, so it’s good to already have them on @SlideShare. —Cathy McPhillips

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Optimize Your Content’s Viral and Engagement Potential Use SEO to maximize findability Naturally, you will want to build your SlideShare content around the search terms your business dominates. And the more places you embed, share, and post about your presentations, the more authority they’ll receive organically on search engine results pages (SERPs). But SlideShare also provides some basic SEO tools that you should be using to give your presentations an extra boost. Once you’ve logged in to your account, click Edit on any of your uploaded SlideShare presentations to access your Settings and adjust your metadata. Here, you can: Create your SEO title: This will become part of your URL, so make sure it includes the exact presentation title. (Tip: SlideShare creates the URL based on the file name of your presentation document, so it should be named strategically before you upload it to the SlideShare platform.) Optimize your presentation description: Make sure it’s accurate, catchy, and includes your target keywords. Give a good description to your readers as to why they should continue reading. Add tags: Though they aren’t as powerful as meta-keywords, SlideShare tags will help your presentations show up in more onsite searches.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Optimize Your Content’s Viral and Engagement Potential Link to your social media profiles Connecting to your profiles on Facebook, Google Plus, and LinkedIn makes it easier for you to share your SlideShare content and get your followers to interact with it where it’s most convenient for them. To do this: Log in to SlideShare and go to Account Settings. Select the Social tab, and next to each of your accounts, click on Connect. Enter your log-in ID and password, and click on Allow Access. In the dialog box that pops up, check the options you would like to enable, and save your settings.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Optimize Your Content’s Viral and Engagement Potential Maximize the benefits of LinkedIn + SlideShare SlideShare was purchased by LinkedIn in 2012. Now that the companies are connected, linking your profiles can give you a boost in credibility and visibility on people’s feeds on both platforms. In his presentation at Content Marketing World 2014, Todd Wheatland shared a few recommendations for cross-posting SlideShare content on LinkedIn: Customize your messages when you post into LinkedIn Groups: Don’t just spam groups with a generic message — and don’t repost the page description, since it will be automatically included already. Instead, target a few key groups for any of your presentations, and begin a conversation with your post, rather than just blasting out a link in hopes of some views and shares. Go beyond Groups posts: Send your SlideShare content to individuals with whom you are connected — but do so sparingly. Post to Twitter, too: If your Twitter account is linked to SlideShare, you can tweet about your content right from the share form. In addition, by doing this, any retweets you receive will be counted as an additional LinkedIn share.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Configure Access and Lead Generation CONFIGURE ACCESS AND LEAD GENERATIONSET YOUR ACCESS LEVELS: Depending on marketing goals, you can choose to make your presentations private, grant unrestricted access by making them public, or restrict access by gating the presentation and requiring viewers to fill out a lead form. Most of ours are public and ungated. We want to be a thought leader and provide help. Sometimes we gate @ download. —Cathy McPhillips

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Configure Access and Lead Generation Decide whether or not to gate While gating your SlideShare presentations can provide your business with valuable information on your audience, do so sparingly, and only in cases where you’re giving your customers something of value in return. If sharing is more essential to your marketing goals than lead generation, it may be helpful for you to give control to the audience and allow them to bypass the lead form, if they so desire. If you are looking for thought leadership and brand awareness as well as lead generation, mix it up with your presentations by gating your meatier presentations, and leaving others ungated. Determine the goal of each presentation upon creation.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Configure Access and Lead Generation Gather the specific information you need If you are a pro user, you can also access tools for customizing the placement of your lead forms and the information you require in order to enable viewing. (These features will soon be available for all users.) To do this: Open your SlideShare presentation and click on Connect Leads. Under Campaigns, set up your lead form, and then click Advanced Options. Select the “Get in Touch” button to enable viewers to contact you through your presentation. Select the position in which you would like to place your lead form. Select whether you would like to collect a mailing address and/or phone number. Click on Add Question to capture additional information in your lead forms.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Measure Your Results MEASURE YOUR RESULTSTRACK HOW YOUR CONTENT IS PERFORMING: A pro account will enable you to access a suite of analytics tools, which do a great job of breaking out the typical actions that take place on the platform, such as views, downloads, and social shares. You can quantify actions that take place on embedded SlideShare content, making it easy to ensure that no views are left uncounted.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Measure Your Results Here are a few different types of reports you can pull Top content report: This provides a basic snapshot view of how your content is tracking over a selected time period.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Measure Your Results Uploads report: This is like a status shot of SlideShare actions, which can be anything from commenting, “liking,” emailing, or downloading, to social actions that relate to specific social channels like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Measure Your Results Latest views report: This snapshot of the latest 1,000 views of all of your content provides a real sense of where people are coming to your presentations from, including the keywords they were searching on, the referring URL, and their organizations/ISPs.

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Get Inspired Page 21 Maximize the benefits of LinkedIn + SlideShare GET INSPIREDTHINK OUTSIDE THE BOX: The sky’s the limit when it comes to how you can use SlideShare for your content marketing. If you need some additional ideas, check out these examples from the #CMWorld community: We embed @SlideShare presentations into blog posts & e-blasts, as well as use them for social media content. —Crys Wiltshire

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Get Inspired I’ve been talking to my clients about using SlideShare to publish collections of the branded cartoons we’ve created. An anthology. —The Cartoon Agency Velocity Partners

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FROM SLIDESHARE | Get Inspired You can use creative content that doesn’t just inform — you can ask questions, driving engagement and feedback. —Tyler Narducci Velocity Partners

MORE SLIDESHARE RESOURCES ABOUT CONTENT
MARKETING INSTITUTE (CMI) Visit Content Marketing Institute’s SlideShare channel to get more ideas and examples of successful content marketing. And, for helpful tips on other content marketing topics, don’t miss our weekly #CMWorld Twitter Chats. Content Marketing Institute is the leading global content marketing education and training organization, teaching enterprise brands how to attract and retain customers through compelling, multi-channel storytelling. CMI also runs the Intelligent Content platform focusing on content strategists, and the Content Inc brand platform on entrepreneurs and startups. CMI’s Content Marketing World event, the largest content marketing-focused event, is held every September in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, and the Intelligent Content Conference event is held every spring. CMI publishes the bi-monthly magazine Chief Content Officer, and provides strategic consulting and content marketing research for some of the best-known brands in the world. CMI is a 2012, 2013 and 2014 Inc. 500 company.