How to Use Slideshare to Build a Stronger Personal Brand

Anna Fox

3 years ago

As marketers, we are faced with a multitude of platforms and content tactics to reach our audiences. As the amount of content created on a daily basis increases and trends in content consumption change, it’s necessary to experiment with new forms of content and new platforms.

Platforms that enable us to create, distribute and embed visual content should play a central role in our marketing and branding

One platform that’s silently been building a reputation as a visual platform powerhouse for quite a few years is Slideshare.

Here Are a Few Reasons Why I Like Slideshare:

1. It’s Easy To Use

Slideshare is a free and user-friendly platform. It’s a matter of uploading your Powerpoint or PDF presentation and you’re ready to go.

It also helps diversify your content formats which is always good for your content strategy!

2. It’s Embeddable

If you can embed it, you can easily repurpose it and so can other viewers. Slideshare is a great way to keep your brand forefront and center as it travels to other sites, posts and platforms.

3. It’s a Content Discovery Platform

Marketers and bloggers are always on the lookout for useful content to curate and share with their respective audiences. Slideshare is an excellent discovery platform. One simple keyword search brings up endless content opportunities.

It’s also a great discovery tool for Brands to discover community members and the content their community is creating around their brand.

How to Use Slideshare for Personal Branding?

For many who are hoping to build their personal brands, it is last on the list of helpful social dashboards. Yet, it offers a unique and effective way to increase the power of your social brand.

The lack of over-saturation means your chances of visibility are also increased. Plus, using a visual branding method that sticks in people’s minds. Everything from a logo to a certain style can be used to great effect, giving you an immediately recognizable format.

Here are some ways you can build your own personal brand using the slideshow network.

You may also want to read: How To Turn SlideShare Into a Traffic Driving Machine

Upload Conference Presentations

Not everyone can attend a conference. But those who can’t will still want to benefit from the information, and you can help them to do that.

Slideshare is the perfect platform for presentations used in conferences. Not only will you reach an online audience that couldn’t attend, but people who saw it and want to refer to or share it can do so.

Anyone who speaks at public events, from huge expos to small meetups, should be using Slideshare. Here’s one great example of a conference deck that makes a great Slideshare upload. So far it has generated over 70K views!

Don’t forget to utilize the official hashtag of your event to get into the popular feeds and get discovered by participants and offline audiences.

Increase Your Authority

People who have slideshows know their stuff. At least, that is the perception. Breaking down a topic into easily understandable and visual pieces is a great way to show you truly understand the subject.

When you show yourself to be an authority on the topic, your reputation online grows. This is the essence of brand building; you have to show that you are worth listening to. Slideshare is a great tool to achieve that end.

There are organic search visibility benefits to it too. Expertise is likely to be a ranking signal as this article by Digital Eagles explains very well.

In order for your Slideshare activity to be visible, don’t forget to embed your uploads to your site. Here’s a detailed guide on embedding all kinds of files, including Slideshare, to your WordPress blog.

Tell A Story

Not just any story, but your story. Let people know who you are, where you came from, and how you have gotten where you are now.

The visuals of a presentation let you tell a story in an engaging and memorable way, filled with visual cues and memory or emotion-triggering images. Don’t just be a presenter, be a storyteller.

It is no secret that visual content builds empathy, so make the most of that to create a relatable brand!

Emiland De Cubber’s deck is a great example of a memorable personal story told via a presentation:

If you create a presentation telling your story, don’t forget to embed this Slideshare on your About page!

Be Immediately Recognizable In Style

There are some boring-looking Slideshares out there. In fact, I would say that makes up the majority. Sure, you can get the more dedicated in your industry to stick with a bland-looking collection of bulleted slides, but they will immediately forget who created it.

Use tricks that you would normally use for other content on your slideshow. Have a bright and eye-catching cover image. Make the headline really pop out and grab the viewer by the collar. Don’t overcrowd your slides, and instead present the info in an appealing way.

Most of all, remain consistent across all presentations. Have a style that is immediately recognizable, so your fans will always know who made the presentation. A great example of visual consistency is DataReportal:

To create your own visual identity try this tool called Creatopy which allows you to create visuals of all sizes and for all purposes. One of my favorite features is the ability to create one image in multiple sizes making it possible for you to re-use your slides across social media channels in different dimensions. Additionally, their banner maker lets you animate those images as well, and their collection of icons and visual elements is simply huge.

To create a slide in Creatopy, register an account (the tool is freemium and I am still using their free account) and create a new asset using one of these dimensions:

Size	Dimension
4:3	1,024 × 768 px
16:9	1,920 × 1,080 px

Here’s my example that took me a couple of minutes to create:

You can save these templates and re-use them from upload to upload after customizing some elements and retaining the overall look and feel.

Go With Traditional Essay Formats

Blog posts are formatted for online viewing. And slideshows are just another medium for the same kind of content, right? Wrong!

Actually, you should follow a much more traditional essay style, similar to how you learned to write in school. Present your objectives or points right off the bat, then spend the rest of the slides elaborating.

If you need help structuring your presentation, consider using Text Optimizer’s Question Research feature because it gives a solid overview of any topic:

If you are creating a Slideshare upload on content marketing, start with these questions!

This will tell others what is coming, and keep them invested. When you have a format that encourages rapid skimming like a slideshow, you want to give some extra incentive to stick it out and really listen to (or read) what you have to say.

Make People Want To Engage With A Clear CTA

So many people forget to include a call to action with their slideshows! It’s maddening because it completely goes against the fundamental purpose behind having content in the first place. You are not just throwing data at someone, you are trying to engage an audience.

How can you do that if you don’t direct them towards that engagement? You can’t, and that is why the lack of CTA’s on many otherwise awesome Slideshare presentations is a clear indication of why they are not more well known.

Send people to your social media profiles, to your website, and ask them to share your presentation. Ask them to follow your profile to keep an eye on new content. Ask them for their opinions to elicit a comment or two.

Not spurring the reader into action is one of the cardinal sins of content creation.

Don’t forget to track your Slideshare CTA effectiveness using Finteza, which is a great tool for monitoring referral traffic as well as understanding whether this traffic is interacting with your conversion funnel:

Monitor referral traffic from Slideshare

Connect With Other Platforms

Whether you are embedding it into a blog post or sharing it directly on LinkedIn, you should be spreading your Slideshare around as much as possible.

Share on social media, and try to widen your audience by pushing it on platforms you know to get the highest level of engagement. Pinterest is another great one, as it matches the visual tone of the medium. If you used an eye-catching cover like suggested before, you will be sure to find success on pinboards.

Conclusion

Slideshare is amazing. Using it can be a fantastic way to establish your brand in a visual way. And you can present yourself as an authority and a storyteller, spreading yourself across the web with very little effort. But you have to know what to do.

The good news is that it is pretty simple, as you can see from the easy-to-follow tips above. Just a bit of effort towards creating quality content and some focus on connecting with interested viewers, and you will reap the benefits. Good luck!

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