By Chris Lee

Online presentation website Slideshare is an important business network, ranking in the top 300 most-visited websites in the world the site with eight minutes being the average time that its 28 million monthly unique visitors spend on the site.

Slideshare enables users to upload PowerPoint and Keynote (Mac) presentations, as well as Word and PDF files, tag them and allows others to embed the presentations in their own sites and further share that content with new audiences.

To learn Slideshare best practice, NMK spoke with James Whatley, marketing director of word-of-mouth marketing agency and extensive Slideshare user, 1000heads.

How does 1000heads view Slideshare? Is it just another spoke in the social media/link building wheel or is it a critical front line channel for you?

I guess for us at least it’s changed over time; first starting out as just another content placement site like Flickr for photos and YouTube for video. However, like those other examples, you get out of Slideshare what you put in. At first the sole use was for uploading presentations post-event for any guests to view or download afterwards, however – over time – the social aspects have built out and actually, you can do a fair bit of community building through it too. Being able to see who favourites, embeds and comments on your slides is a key tool to expanding your network and actually has been the spark for many new conversations with new connections.

In regards to the holistic PR element it makes sense to use commonly known sharing sites whenever releasing any kind of PR. I’m sure as a journalist you’d much rather receive a link to a Slideshare presentation for you to browse at leisure than you would a 7MB PowerPoint attachment each morning.

Have you got any examples of where you have advised your clients to use Slideshare as a WoM channel? What were the outcomes?

We advise all of our clients to use Slideshare for many different reasons. Nokia, for example, use Slideshare for sharing larger ideas that wouldn’t normally get the bandwidth internally to get seen and actually, when it comes to larger brands, building internal word of mouth can sometimes be one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal for growing business. Inspiring culture change, sharing ideas and ultimately being a real catalyst for change.

I see your Word of Mouth presentation was viewed 5,000+ times, embedded 14 times and liked a great deal on Facebook. That was a single page illustration rather than a presentation, what was the thinking behind that?

Alas, the truth is not that exciting! The ‘What is Word of Mouth’ infographic poster we had commissioned for our 10th birthday last year was originally hosted on our own servers available for all and sundry to download when they wanted. However, within an hour of it going live the response was so high that our IT department insisted we moved it. Slideshare is handy in that you can upload PDFs as well as PowerPoint files and actually, it made much more sense to host it there as we managed to not only capture the data that you’ve uncovered above but also save our IT department from having a nervous breakdown.

If anyone else has an infographic or a one sheet they wish to share, then I would definitely recommend using Slideshare to host this as the stats you have access to really do make a difference.

What do you see as the key value of Slideshare?

Often, when explaining the site to others, I’ll say ‘It’s like YouTube, but for Powerpoint.’ They’ll look blankly at me like I’m from Mars and then I’ll continue with: ‘No no, it’s much more exciting than it sounds, I promise’.

The key value of Slideshare for me is twofold. First, we as 1000heads get to share some of our thinking in the format widely accepted in businesses across the world and second, my personal favourite, is that people don’t tend to upload that much rubbish. PowerPoint is seen as a boring and uninspiring format and this is simply untrue. The ‘featured’ section of Slideshare has a whole wealth of great presentations available to view every day and it’s this, self-curation if you will – the idea that no one really wants to upload a bad presenation, which makes the site so valuable.

Do you recommend other sites such as Screencast.com or Prezi.com as well?

Yes, but only where necessary. If you’re making changes to the user interface of a website [like Flickr for example] then I’d 100 per cent recommend creating a screencast explaining the changes and why.  Would I recommend creating a Facebook application to host and create video? No probably not – YouTube already does that for you. It’s just about picking the right tool for the job.

What are your top tips for companies which haven’t explored Slideshare yet as a channel to market?

1. RESEARCH. Go and look around the site. Who’s doing it well, who isn’t? What – in your eyes – makes a good presentation? What decks in your company do you already have that are sharable? Is anyone in your company already using the site? If so, how?
2. SHARE EVENT PRESENTATIONS. If you’re speaking or appearing at an event it’s common best practice to have your slides available to download or view within around 24 hours after the event. This is a great way to build connections and also, if someone is looking at one of your awesome presentations, what’s to say they won’t start digging around to see what other great things you’ve one.
3. BRANDING. This is an obvious one but often easily missed. For us, we’re @1000heads on Twitter, our website is 1000heads.com and so it follows our Slideshare account is at Slideshare.net/1000heads. You should do the same.
4. EMBED. If you have a company blog, then start embedding content. Be it your own or someone else’s [in fact the latter can be an even better opportunity to build connections], get it up on your site, add some commentary and start a debate. Slideshares can be great catalysts for conversation and ultimately, whose blog doesn’t want that?
5. INVEST. Like any social network, you get out what you put in. If you just use it as a content farm, then fine. Host your decks there and have done with it. However, if you’re prepared to invest time in building your network – make sure you include Slideshare too.