SlideShare has been dubbed “the sleeping giant of content marketing” — and for good reason. The site attracts 60 million unique visitors per month, generating 215 million page views, and is growing in use. In the past two years the percent of B2B marketers using the platform has more than doubled from 17% to 37%. And that’s precisely why you need to add it to your social media marketing mix. It’s the only major content marketing platform left where B2Bs can generate buzz from day one that has yet to become overcrowded by your competitors.

With 70 million professionals looking for quality content that’s probably not being delivered by your competitors, you are presented with the best opportunity to strike. Here are five ways you can take advantage of SlideShare to attract more eyeballs, generate new leads and position your company as a thought leader:

  1. Image is everything. When creating presentations, keep the slides to a minimum, use strong images and large, clear font. Even in your e-books and whitepapers, make sure you include graphics; articles with images get 94% more views than those without.
  2. Think outside the box. SlideShare is heavily visual and was designed to share presentations, infographics and considerations checklists. It recently evolved as a space to share documents, e-books and videos. Consider creating informative materials such as how-tos or whiteboard videos to gain traction for your company. SlideShare has proven effective for startups, large companies and everything in-between. You can figure out what works for your company by trying new materials and tracking analytics, content views and downloads through SlideShare.
  3. Keywords are key. When posting to SlideShare, optimize the slides and tag the document with correct keywords relevant to your content. More than to your content come from a targeted search, which allows you to discover a wealth of new leads. SlideShare is highly ranked by Google, and by having strong SEO, your content could rank on page one. In fact, 20 percent of SlideShare’s site traffic comes from Google searches. Social Media Examiner suggests using your keyword as a filename when you have to save your presentation as a PDF to upload it to SlideShare. This small change can make a big difference when it comes to search engines.
  4. Promote away. Share your SlideShare content link directly on your social networks and on your blog to maximize ROI. You can also generate interest in your presentation by formatting it to SlideShare’s guidelines to increase your chances of being featured on the homepage.
  5. Keep Doing Your Homework. SlideShare gives you real insight into what’s working on its site through its “most liked design” page. Take the time to review the presentations that are resonating on SlideShare to inform the creation of your materials.

Do you plan on increasing your use of SlideShare? Are you already on the network?

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