Let’s face it. When you think content marketing, your brain immediately thinks blogs, eBooks, and whitepapers. But, what about presentations? If you neglected this medium in 2013, I want to encourage you to take another look at presentations in 2014.
Here are few reasons why:
You Have a Story Worth Sharing
Let’s first establish that you have a story to tell. This story will often take 500-750 words to communicate online but what if you can do it with one image or a series of images.
Enter the world of presentations.
Your product, service, or organization can easily be showcased through the medium of a presentation via sites like SlideShare and SlideBoom. Take advantage of the opportunity to tell a visually engaging story rather than defaulting to the written word every time.
Below is a fun example of a compelling start-up story. (Note: This is my own company).
Becoming a Thought Leader
People all over the web are looking for someone to lead them. They want expertise. They want new knowledge. They want something of value and benefit. A presentation will provide you with this opportunity to showcase your knowledge in a visually compelling way. The old Chinese proverb states that a picture is worth ten thousand words. Imagine how many stories you can tell through big images via a presentation? A ton.
Here is Guy Kawasaki showcasing his expertise about publishing via SlideShare.
Get Ranked
A strong organic search presence is what every great marketer desires. Luckily, sites like SlideShare are incredibly search-friendly. Their platform will automatically transcribe the copy from your presentation making it one of the web’s best hidden gems. The lesson for you: Build presentation content around the search terms your business dominates and you will win.
Lead the Way
If you are doing the marketing grind day in day out, you are probably focusing all that time around the main objective of capturing leads.
When you upload your presentation to the web, you can sit back, and watch the leads get captured through innovative lead capture forms tied to your presentations.
Share with the World
The best thing about a presentation on the web is that you can embed and share it everywhere. Just think YouTube but for PowerPoint. If you want to share a message with your LinkedIn Group, post your slide deck there. Want to share it with your friends? Post to Facebook. Your Twitter feed? Use tools like AuthorStream to accomplish it.
Measure Your Success
Once you have done the hard work take joy in knowing that all your efforts were measured. Total views? Check. Traffic sources? Check. Social actions? Check. It’s a beautiful thing!
As you are finalizing your marketing plan for 2014, make sure you consider using the art of presentation with your strategy. You will be amazed.