B2B Content Marketing With Slideshare

You know who hates Powerpoint presentations? Everybody.

So it was a bit surprising that a Powerpoint presentation was what I landed on when looking for a conversation piece to use with some leads that had cooled down and fallen out of the funnel. I had seen a few really good presentations on SlideShare and finally a lightbulb went off. It is one of the most visited websites by business professionals so why am I not leveraging it?

Figuring out how to create great a Slideshare for my business was the next step. First, why do so many people hate presentations with slides? I think that is more of a consequence of delivery than design. Great slides convey the information without the need for further explanation. People would love a whole presentation of great slides that can be consumed in minutes if it wasn’t accompanied by somebody droning on for half an hour.

A picture is worth a thousand words

People are able to consume information much more quickly visually than they are by listening or reading. Think about when you read blog posts. I’ll bet that at least half of the time you only read:

  • The headings
  • The subheadings
  • The bulleted lists
  • Bold or italicized words
  • The images

A Slideshare consists of basically only those things. It dispenses with the words and gives you the only good stuff.

Tools:

Google Presentation

If you already use Powerpoint then I would recommend sticking with the tool you know. If you don’t then I wouldn’t start with it. Google Presentation is far easier to use which is one less hurdle when you are getting started. They have some templates you can use depending on what you’re sharing as well as color/font themes to use. (Marina is my favorite.)

Google Sheets

More than any words or pictures data is what drives a point home. You can process your data in Google Sheets and then use your tables, graphs, and charts directly inside your presentation. (You can do the same with Excel and Powerpoint.)

Canva

You can create a whole presentation inside of Canva and achieve something that looks great. But the other reason I’m listing them here as a tool for content marketing is that they have templates and icons that you can use to present your data in aesthetically pleasing ways.

Canva presentation templates

Pablo

You might already be using Pablo for sharing quotes on social media (and if you’re not you should check it out). Just as a quote and a picture works on social media, it works in a presentation as well. This is probably the easiest way to create them and there is a huge library of images to choose from.

B2B Content Marketing

Your content marketing plan for your business likely involves blogging, a mailing list, and possibly infographics, YouTube, podcasting, or publishing ebooks. All excel at different things. I think a Slideshare is has two huge benefits that make it an essential part of your content marketing strategy:

  • It is a great way to quickly educate a business person on a topic related to your business.
  • They establish you as an authority on the topic.

Tips on Creating a Great Presentation

I’m just going to link to this post for some tips on creating a Slideshare presentation. For me the key points are:

  • Keep it short (10 slides or less if you can) and sweet
  • Have a great title
  • Create a template now to use going forward

Underdog Action Plan

Look at your content calendar or your list of blog post ideas. Create a presentation out of one of them instead of writing a blog post. Post to Slideshare and then promote it on your blog and social media.

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