Slideshare gets about 78 million visitors a month and has an Alexa Rank of 123. It's possible for even the little marketer to get featured if your presentation is good enough. Plus the competition for eyeballs isn't all that great, which means you can get lots of traffic.
In fact, as I'm writing this, I see 4 slide shows that were posted just 1 day ago that all have over 100,000 views. In one day! Of course these videos were featured, something you should aspire to when making your presentation.
How Do You Make a SlideShare Presentation?
First, you need either PowerPoint for PC, Keynote for Mac or the free alternative - OpenOffice.
Next, choose your topic. If you've got a blog, look at your posts and find the most popular ones – the ones that were commented on the most and shared the most. These are topics people are obviously interested in.
No need to reinvent the wheel or get all fancy with your information. Just like a blog post, you're looking for content that is helpful, informative and hopefully entertaining.
Make an outline for your presentation – sort of a bullet point summary of what you want to say.
Source your images. Don't skimp on this, because on SlideShare the images and presentation can count for more than the actual content. Make sure you don't infringe on any copyrights when locating your images, and give credit to image sources in your SlideShare description.
Choose large images that really capture the eye, and preferably images that also evoke emotion. It's much better to have a small amount of text on a large image, than a lot of text and a small image.
Remember: This is a slide show, not a book. Lengthy paragraphs should either be shortened or broken into several slides.
Don't use bullet points, at least not the way you're used to using them. If you have bullet points, place just one point on each slide. Get rid of any bullet points that can't hold the viewers attention on their own.
Choose fonts that are easy to read but also interesting to look at.
Make your presentation 800 x 600 – it's the perfect size for SlideShare.
Your Cover Slide Is Your Ad For Your Presentation
Put your very best, most captivating picture on the front. Remember, people can only see the first slide before they open your presentation, so make it a doozy. Your first slide has to sell the viewer on clicking on your slide show. If it doesn't, you won't get the view.
Insert a link to your blog in your last slide, along with a strong call to action. You can insert a live link in your presentation (URL with anchor text), along with spelling out the URL for those who don't realize they can click your link.
Name your presentation with your keywords or keyword phrase. For example, How-To-Bake-A-Cake or 9-Ways-To-Increase-Conversions. SlideShare will then likely take your exact title and place it after the .com for your URL (known as the slug.) For example, www.slideshare.net/sue/how-to-bake-a-cake. This can help you tremendously with SEO.
Along the same lines, include your keywords in your description as well as in your presentation. Yes, Google will “read” your SlideShare presentation, plus SlideShare itself will post the text as a transcript at the bottom of the page. And since SlideShare is a PR8 site, you'll get some good, non-spammy backlinking juice.
Getting Your Presentation Featured
Take a look at SlideShare's home page...
And notice all the different ways you can get featured on that page. You can be listed in Top; Featured; Top in a Category such as Business, Career, Education, etc.; Top in Latest Conferences; or Trending in LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter or Google+.
Once you get your SlideShare featured in any of these categories, your views can go through the roof, especially if you hit Top.
That's why you want to pay special attention to your timing. You want all of your new views to initially come on one day, not divided into two days, because the views you initially get help to determine if you will be featured or not.
Upload your presentation 20-24 hours before SlideShare changes the Top Presentations of the Day.
It appears (and this could always change) that SlideShare changes the Top Presentation of the Day at around 8-10 pm EST.
So assuming this is still true, you'll want to upload your presentation around 11 pm EST. Want to be sure and also maximize your potential views? Refresh the page every so often until you see new featured SlideShares, and then upload your presentation at that time.
SlideShare is a Social Network, So Get Networking
SlideShare is like any other social network, in that you follow others and hope they follow you. So you'll want to interact, share other people's presentations, like or comment on presentations, etc. The bigger your network, the more views you can get to your presentations when you post them.
If you connect your SlideShare account to your Facebook account, then SlideShare will automatically connect you to your Facebook friends who are also on SlideShare, so you can very quickly start building your social network.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Unlike YouTube, you can re-upload your presentation to SlideShare. Why would you want to? Maybe you made a mistake, or you want to change your call to action. Or perhaps your presentation is becoming dated, but it's still getting traffic. The best part is, when you re-upload you still keep your slug, your views, your comments – everything.
Once you've uploaded your presentation, you can now embed it on your blog and also encourage others to embed it on their sites as well.
Be sure to tell your lists and your social networks when you've uploaded a new presentation, and ask them to check it out. The more traffic your presentation gets in the first 24 hours, the more likely it will be one of the featured presentations getting copious amount of traffic, courtesy of SlideShare.
Is It Worth The Work?
Most likely, yes. If your video gets featured and you've got a strong call to action, then there's no doubt it's worth it because you'll get new subscribers and new visitors to your website.
You can also re-purpose your presentations for YouTube to drive even more traffic.
You get a PR8 backlink for each presentation you place on SlideShare.
And since you can embed your presentation into your blog post, your post will become more shareable on social media and hopefully bring in more traffic.
So yes, it can definitely be worth the work. Just make sure your presentations look professional. View numerous presentations to get an idea of what's working best, and also go to sites like...
...to get more tips on how to effectively create slide presentations that get watched and shared.