4 Ways SlideShare Can Enhance Your Content Marketing Effortlessly

Individually and collectively, communications professionals—in healthcare and every other enterprise for that matter—produce tons of materials everyday. Here’s how to stretch your budget and get extra marketing impact from nearly all of it.

We (ourselves included) routinely create bales of “communications stuff” in all the classic formats…brochures, web pages, speeches, patient education info, PowerPoint lectures, video clips, etc. You name it. In one form or another, marketing communications people craft content to educate, inform, motivate and connect people and ideas.

Now, ask yourself… “Can this also be a SlideShare deck?”

SlideShare [www.slideshare.net] is sort-of-similar to YouTube as a searchable, online community for sharing presentations. A doctor’s PowerPoint lecture is an obvious candidate, but it doesn’t have to stop there. Almost anything you've prepared can also become a SlideShare deck. The platform supports PowerPoint, but it also supports documents, PDFs, videos and webinars. So whatever communications material you already have might easily convert.

Why? There are several good reasons to create a SlideShare presentation as an adjunct to your already-completed work. It will not be appropriate for everything you do, but some of the top benefits of rolling it over to an alternate version include:

• Increased online visibility – The SlideShare site is a busy place, and Google and other search engines take notice of the millions of visitors and pageviews each month. With the proper use of keywords you are expanding your search engine visibility, reaching a wider base of viewers, and improving quality assurance for your content.

• Sharing is its reason for being – Connecting with people and prospects is only part of the task. Everyone benefits when engaging content is also shared. Your deck can attract comments, be designated among visitor favorites and be easily spread via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and other social networks. It can be imbedded in blogs, websites and special purpose email messages.

• Lead generation and new business – Presentations can inspire call-to-action inquiries from viewers through visibility alone. But using the platform's Leadshare feature, you can discover who views certain presentations and get inbound campaign-specific lead forms. (Leadshare can also be used for market surveys or event RSVPs.)

• Extended marketing exposure with low cost and little effort – The SlideShare BASIC plan is free, so there’s no cost to begin. SlideShare also offers upgrades of SILVER ($19/month), and GOLD ($49/month) with additional, and often useful, bells and whistles. On the effort side, the platform is easy to upload and use, it connects smoothly with dominant social media platforms, and it accepts your existing work in variety of formats.

SlideShare is a widely viewed and easily accessible platform for public or private presentations. What’s more it is an excellent online means to connect, share, inform, educate and engage visitors. So, with every message you create, consider if this highly versatile tool can enrich your communications message and extend your online content marketing reach (almost) effortlessly.

And on related topics: listen to Managing Your Hospital Online Presence: SEO is Not a Silver Bullet Anymore, from our SHSMD Connections 2013 podcast series, as well as this previous post, Why You Need to Be More Aggressive About Internet Marketing.

See how Healthcare Success transforms doctor marketing by generating exposure and increasing qualified leads in part through next-level doctor SEO!

Lonnie Hirsch