by Are you using SlideShare as a social media marketing option?
Have you considered SlideShare as a conversion tool?
SlideShare is useful for sharing highly informative presentations with your audience, but it’s also a hot social platform. Many businesses are missing out on the huge potential of SlideShare as a social marketing and lead conversion tool.
In this article you’ll discover four simple ways to use SlideShare to improve your marketing and lead generation.
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Why SlideShare?
LinkedIn owns SlideShare, which means the platforms work seamlessly together. By participating on SlideShare, you have an important connection with the biggest professional social media platform. If you want to show your expertise in your industry and become a thought leader, the LinkedIn/SlideShare combination is an undeniable powerhouse.
Sign up for SlideShare Pro at no cost. Beyond just uploading static presentation slides, you can also upload video—a perfect opportunity for repurposing webinars or company videos.
You can even upload content that you make available only to a select audience. Just share the link with your VIP customers and they’ll have access to your exclusive content.
An important feature of any platform you work with is analytics—the dread and delight of all social media marketers. With SlideShare’s analytics, you can find out which presentations are most popular and enhance those with additional conversion options.
#1: Collect Emails From Viewers
LeadShare is SlideShare’s way of allowing you to collect the emails of people who download your presentations. You can simply insert lead capture forms within presentations, documents and video.
For example, you can set your contact form to show while a user is looking at your slides. The contact form will show up after the tenth slide, at the end of the deck or via a permanent display button on the slide player.
And the best part? If you embed your SlideShare deck on your website or other social networks, the contact form remains intact.
Another option is to set your form to show when a user downloads your original presentation or PDF file.
Regardless of which method you use, you can see your lead captures in the LeadShare section of your Pro Dashboard. As an added bonus, the information is also emailed to you.
To capture the most leads, upload content to SlideShare on a regular basis and make sure your lead form shows on your download.
#2: Include Links in Slides
If you want to move people to your website, lead magnet or contact form, embedded links are key. SlideShare lets you include live links starting on your fourth slide and going all the way through to the end of your presentation.
You can add links to your presentation within PowerPoint or Keynote before you upload your slides.
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The last page of Uberflip’s clever presentation The Content Marketing Funnel of Love has a Subscribe to Our Hub button at the end. When users click it, they are whisked away to the Uberflip splash page.
As an aside, I like that the mailing list is easy to sign up for. Uberflip keeps the form short and sweet—users don’t have to jump through a lot of hoops.
By keeping your form questions or requests to a minimum, you’re more likely to get a response.
#3: Add Visual Calls to Action
Your calls to action are what move users to complete your targeted task. You can’t be subtle and expect to get clicks. Be loud and clear—use graphics such as arrows and buttons combined with text to ask for the click-through.
Jesse Desjardin’s popular SlideShare Why You Suck at PowerPoint has three different asks on the final slide. He asks viewers to share the presentation, download the presentation and tweet it out. If he’s wanting to get the word out, it’s working—this SlideShare presentation has almost two million views!
If you didn’t use clear calls to action in your previously uploaded presentations, don’t sweat it. SlideShare is the only platform that allows you to update your posts without losing the social sharing counts and views.
It’s worth taking the time to go back and update your old presentations with visual calls to action and links.
#4: Create an Enticing Description
The description you use for your SlideShare presentation is just as important as your slides, links, calls to action and contact forms.
What you write here not only helps users, but also it’s important for SEO. Ann Smarty says, “The text you include here is what the search engines see. What you say and how you say it can improve your SlideShare natural rankings dramatically.”
Within the description, you can include links to your company website, blog or email sign-up form. But don’t feel like you have to limit yourself to the usual links—point people where you want them to go. For example, I linked my Pinterest SlideShare to both a pin and my website.
Many companies are ignoring the opportunity to enhance their descriptions for SEO and other important factors. Don’t make the same mistake!
Over to You
Think ABC: Always Be Converting. While the usual suspects—your website, Facebook, etc.—are important, don’t discount SlideShare. It offers an often-overlooked lead gathering opportunity.
You can present your valuable content in an interesting way to a new audience, watch how it performs and tempt your new audience to connect with you.
Maximizing your content’s effectiveness by creating SlideShare presentations is something wise social media marketers will be taking advantage of. It can be fun too.
What do you think? Do you use SlideShare to gather leads? What tactics have worked best for you? Please leave your comments and questions below.
