7 ideas to turn PowerPoint slides into social media marketing gold

Although PowerPoint has been around for years, it is still the king of presentation software tools.  It is an absolutely critical arrow in my business marketing quiver … and for some reasons that might surprise you!

Here are seven ideas to use PowerPoint slides to create new value for your social media marketing efforts:

1. Populate Slideshare

When I teach my classes to experienced marketers, I am always surprised to learn how many people have never heard of SlideShare.  This is one of the fastest and easiest ways to start to populate the social web with great content because face it, we ALL have PowerPoint presentations!

Quick story to illustrate the power of this platform. Before a class one day, I uploaded my presentation slides to SlideShare so the students could access them later. Within an hour, the slides had already been viewed 150 times — none of the views were from students, because I had not taught the class yet!  It’s free, it’s fast, it’s flexible and there is a premium option that allows to you to collect detailed analytics on your views. Do it.

2. Spice up a blog post

You need to have some kind of entertainment value in your blog posts to keep people’s attention these days. One of the easiest ways to do this is to mix up the media you use. If you have a PowerPoint slide deck that you want the world to see, why not embed it in your blog post?

I’m not a techie kind of guy but even I can do this!  One of the sharing options under each SlideShare presentation is “embed.” Copy this code, paste it in the “HTML” view of your blog editing platform and voila! You have a great multi-media blog post.

And keep in mind, you also have the option to share other great presentations you find on SlideShare.  This is an easy way to find excellent content and spread the social media love to somebody who has created something great.

3. Embed in LinkedIn

Did you know that you can display Slideshare presentations in your LinkedIn profile?  This is a simple and effective way to show what you can do to prospective employers, clients and business partners.  Why not include a compelling description of your business or a captivating graphical resume? Here is how PowerPoint presentations show up on LinkedIn:

4. Create your art

I’ll let you in on a big secret. You know those funny illustrations I include with my blog posts? I don’t use PhotoShop. I have used PowerPoint to create every original illustration I have ever used!  The latest version of PowerPoint has rich photo editing capabilities for the blogger on the go. I don’t have a whole lot of time to create these blog post graphics.  I need to whip something up in 10 minutes or less. The ability to manipulate art, add text, shapes and other objects is perfect for the busy blogger.

The illustration below shows how I used some fo these tools to create a recent blog post graphic:

5. Make an eBook

What is an eBook any way?  Is it a book?  Is it a brochure?  Some of the best eBooks I have seen are simply enhanced Powerpoint presentations.  PowerPoint is an ideal format to combine content with interesting graphics and illustrations in an effective and inexpensive way. My free blogging eBook was originally created in PowerPoint.

6. Integrate social aspects with traditional marketing projects

I’ve been thinking about ways that companies can get content to move virally within an organization and certainly PowerPoint has to be a key ingredient. Think about leveraging a PowerPoint presentation to connect with customers in a number of ways. Let’s say you have created a helpful PowerPoint presentation to teach people how to save money with one of your products. Think about what you can do to leverage this deck within a social media strategy:

  1. Post it on Slideshare. Shorten the link on bit.ly so you can track all clicks to the link.
  2. Embed the SlideShare post on your blog
  3. Have all sales employees highlight the post and bit.ly link on Twitter, Facbeook and LinkedIn updates
  4. Use the presentation link to be helpful (not “salesy”) in Q&A forums like Focus, Quora, and LinkedIn Group Discussions
  5. Embed the presentation in your customer eNewsletter
  6. Encourage your sales team to use the link to be proactive in helping customers with this value-added content

7. Create premium content

One of the cool thing about SlideShare is that you can make the presentations private.  This way, you can easily create exclusive VIP content that requires a password to your most valuable customers and business partners.

What is the most creative way that you use PowerPoint?  Why not share some ideas in the comment section? Thanks!

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