Should You Use Slideshare?

Slideshare.com is a great platform for getting more traffic to your website. The key is to be active, gather followers, and create quality slideshows. The above is a great example of a slideshow that was crafted well.

Let’s discuss what components were included on this particular slideshow that is appropriately about using Slideshare. If you haven't taken a look at it at this point, now may be a good time.  Just go through all of the slides.  Here are some of the reasons why this is a good presentation:

Slideshare Gets a Lot of Traffic

I have several slideshows currently up on Slideshare.net.  Each on its own doesn't get that much traffic or views.  And some get more views than others on average.  But imagine if I had hundreds of these slideshows.  How many views would I have then?  How about thousands?  You get the picture.

Your Formula for Success with Slideshare

​I think if you simply use the bullet points above as a guide, you can easily implement your own great slideshows.  Use the presentation itself as a guide and just implement many of the points.  Do this often and get many slideshows up to the site.

Content Ideas

You don't know how many times I have perused Slideshare just for ideas on what to write about for my blog.  It's a wonderful brainstorming tool as far as I am concerned.​

Build a Following

Just like any other social site, Slideshare allows you to build a following.  And like others, users will typically follow you back.  It's like anything else...the more engaged you are in the platform, the more you are going to get out of it.  And don't even think about going there to solely promote your products.  Sure, a small amount of promotion can go a long way. 

But make sure the value ratio is high.  In other words, you will get much more love from the community if you offer great content with no commercial intent far more often than you put up offers.​  Just think about what you would like to see if you were visiting the site and take it from there.

Supports Multiple Formats

PowerPoint presentations aren't the only format that Slideshare supports.  So if you have a free report that is in PDF format, or you want to add an infographic, that is very much supported.  So you could create PDF documents that you could make available as a free download and encourage Slideshare users to share it.  This is certainly one means of possibly going viral.  It certainly can't hurt!​

As you can see within the slideshow above, Slideshare also allows you to share videos.  So now you have yet another avenue to upload cute videos of your cat.  Seriously though, that's probably not the most optimal use of the platform :)​

Social Sharing is Built In

You won't have to worry about adding social sharing components in your slideshows because it's already built in.  That means when you publish, anyone that views your slideshow has the potential to share that via their social channels.  That is just way too great to not take advantage.​

Pro Features Currently Not Available​

In the slideshow, it describes about going pro which gives you some added benefits of​ smart analytics and lead generation.  Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, Slideshare is not accepting any more pro members, stating that they are going through enhancements of those features.  But if you check back at a later time, they may make it available again.

Uploaded content to slideshare is probably not going to make your traffic explode, although it technically is possible.  But it is going to give you some decent exposure.  It's yet another platform to build You, Inc. or your company.  It is liked by search engines (so optimize those descriptions, people) and it has a lot of active members.  Make sure you are one of them!​