SlideShare started life as a place for people to upload PowerPoint presentations they were using at a conference or event.  Over time it has evolved into a content marketing platform for any form of digital content, and is now the world’s largest site for sharing presentations.  Nowadays you can upload any sort of presentation – Word or PowerPoint and insert videos and infographics.  Presentations can be linked to the SlideShare website itself or embedded in a web page and the point of uploading your presentations is to share it with others.

Why should you use it to market your brand or business?  There are many compelling reasons why you should include it in your marketing activity, including the impressive stats:

–          It’s one of the highest traffic sites on the internet currently – it has a reported 50 million visits a month, and has over 100 million users (worldwide).  This gives sheer exposure to a vast potential audience.

–          It’s a business platform – professionals use the site to seek and share information.

–          It’s really easy to upload so not a time-heavy activity.

–          Your presentations can be shared through other social networks – it’s an easy update to post.

–          You can track the success or failure of your presentations.

–          SlideShare identifies text from your content so you don’t need to optimize the page – they do it for you – it’s great for SEO as is very credible for search engines, but make sure you’ve done your keyword research and include relevant keywords in your content.

So what should you use SlideShare for?  Use it to:

–          Promote thought-leadership and expertise without blatant self-promotion

–          Share business methods

–          Generate brand awareness and create leads

–          Find new information and better business techniques

–          Drive activity through social media.

The important thing to do as ever is to make sure people find your presentation.  A simple way to do this is to add a link to your SlideShare account to your website.  Use social media for what it’s meant for – sharing information via links to your presentations, among your contacts.  If you direct your contacts to your presentation and they click on it, someone is actually consuming your thought leadership and knowledge.  This is what makes it potentially such a powerful marketing tool.   If you want to look into SlideShare further, here’s a useful guide to help you understand how to use it successfully.  10 Tips for Landing on the Front Page of SlideShare.

Have you used SlideShare for your business?  Share your thoughts on how you found it.