Why Slideshare Is An Uber Cool Way To Reach Out To Your Customers

In our last post we talked about how you need to be willing to experiment with different types of content and see what works before you know what kind of content marketing mix works best for you. Presentations have always been a popular part of the mix especially for B2B online marketing although it need not be exclusively a B2B marketing tool.  However, with time being a constraint it’s often difficult to get someone’s time commitment to sit in on a webinar or go through a one on one presentation. A self service presentation which is possible to go through on demand at one’s own time can often be more appealing and that’s probably why Slideshare has become as popular as it is.

Along with blog related activity and articles we often work with our customers to create very short Slideshare presentations which carry a single or very focused message about their products or offerings. We’ve found that these are simply great ways to reach out to customers and drive even a single valuable aspect or benefit of the offering across just a handful of slides and conveying a short crisp message. Traditionally, one would expect a slide presentation to be a comprehensive demo with detailed text and images which walk through a product but we tend to prefer using a combination fewer words and expressive images to just drive enough interest in a minutes time to  generate some curiosity about the product or business and explore some more.

For example… here is one on the importance of content in the online marketing space which we created to embed on the front page of our website to explain to users what the essence of what we do is all about.

Here are some reasons why we think Slideshare presentations are a great addition to your online content and help you reach out to more customers:

• They are on-demand viewing: users can access them and go through them when they have the time and need not set aside time from their schedule to go through them. More and more people actually take the time to go through presentations (as long as they are fresh and interesting) which means they are likely to get noticed.
• They are very sharable: This is perhaps the best reason to try out Slideshare presentations. Whether internally among the Slideshare community which alone has a large user base or on sites like Linkedin and other social networks, they can easily be shared on large communities and get noticed by people within your vertical or industry. Also since they are easy to embed in blogs as I’ve done above, there is a good chance people will help syndicate your slide show on their own blogs and sites.
• They show up well in search results: which is exactly what you want from any content you publish and Slideshare presentations don’t disappoint here. If they are well titled and tagged, they make for great search able and useful content for users who are searching for more information around your space.
• They are engaging & educational: which simply means they are perfect for demonstrating something in an interactive way and you can easily incorporate links to live examples, other web pages with more detail and use them to do what you would during a live presentation in the given time frame.

So if you are experimenting with different types of content to reach out to users try adding Slideshare presentations to your mix. You may just grow to like this versatile medium of content marketing just as much as we do.

If you have links of Slideshare presentations that you’ve done share them with us and post a link to them in the comments section. We would love see them.