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Did We Just Invent A New Form of Blogging?

Authors: Jay Baer Jay Baer
Posted Under: Content Marketing
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word-words-wordsJay Baer Blog PostSlideShare is one of the most underrated content platforms in existence. Owned by LinkedIn, SlideShare is essentially the YouTube for presentations. Although, it’s not just presentations these days, as SlideShare’s 60 million monthly visitors also upload and view infographics, documents and other file types. SlideShare has even gotten into the video game, as you can easily embed YouTube clips into your presentations if you have a SlideShare Pro account (I did this in Youtility – The Five Minute Version presentation).

Pro accounts also give you the ability to collect lead data when people download your SlideShare content. We’ve been doing that for awhile here at Convince & Convert, and each year generate thousands of new subscribers to our popular daily email.

There are several great resources for how to create a sound presentation on Slideshare, including this one and this one, so I won’t trod upon that ground. But I do want to raise awareness for a new type of SlideShare that you might be seeing a LOT more of in the future.

The New Presentation Blog Post Hybrid

The new type of presentation is essentially a written blog post or manifesto, delivered word-for-word in slides. Historically, the words on slides are thematic guideposts that the speaker then uses as a springboard. But in these new blog/slide format (I’m hereby coining “BlogShare” to describe these) the language on the slides is a linear narrative – almost like a flip book of words. Given that the rest of social media and content marketing is moving steadily more visual, it’s fascinating to see presentations – which started visual, and where best practices have always been around fewer words – moving toward a more copy-centric style.

The hot new presentation format is about words first and foremost, not pictures. (tweet this)

Given how much harder blogging has become, plus the built-in audience on SlideShare, this is a fascinating technique with which I definitely an going to experiment, and you should too.

3 Great Examples of BlogShares

One of the first BlogShares I noticed was this gem from U.K. content marketing agency Velocity Partners, about the dangers of too much content that doesn’t resonate with the audience.

Gary Vaynerchuk has been using BlogShares to promote his new book, and to deliver his ideas in a somewhat more expansive format. Since Gary doesn’t have his own blog (but does write occasional posts on Medium, and creates video posts now and then) this use of SlideShare fits neatly into his Digital Dandelion strategy.

Check out how the words are the star here, even though the graphics are very nicely executed.

An even more stripped-down version was launched last week by Tamsen Webster of SME Digital, who created this gem about the lie of content marketing. Essentially no graphics in the classic sense, but Tamsen’s words pull you through the presentation, and there’s no chance of you not really knowing the author’s point (as is often the case with photo-dominant presentations on SlideShare).

These BlogShares take inspiration from the presentation technique PechaKucha, where the speaker presents 20 slides, each for 20 seconds each. It keeps thing moving briskly, and keeps your attention.

I like BlogShares, and believe this blog post + presentation mash-up has a bright future. How about you?

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