SLIDESHARE
When the National Investment Company Service Association (NICSA), the association for operations professionals in the investment industry, wanted to extend its reach and leverage its efforts, CEO Theresa Hamacher turned to social media. Among the platforms she uses is SlideShare and with great success. She posts presentations there “because it's a public forum like YouTube, so others can access it.” And, the presentation format of NICSA's content allows her to “convey technical information in an easy-to-digest format.” As an example of the power of SlideShare, NICSA posted a presentation on the new hedge fund rules in Europe, which has received a whopping 12,000 views. See Figure 17.4.
FIGURE 17.3 Wintergreen Advisers on Pinterest
FIGURE 17.4 NICSA's SlideShare Post Gamers 12,000 Views
SlideShare is more of a tool than a social network and it's something you should absolutely be using with your company. SlideShare is a website that allows you to share and view presentations in the form of slideshows, PDFs, or video, making it incredibly easy to spread content. It's becoming one of the go-to methods for sharing presentations and distributing information between businesses and customers.
SlideShare gets 130 million page views and 60 million visitors each month. Companies are finding they can increase leads, distribute content, and position themselves as experts in their field by uploading high-quality presentations to SlideShare and sharing among their networks.
Why Would I Use SlideShare for Financial Services?
SlideShare has many applications for the financial services industry. Here are just a lew.
■ Great for SEO – SlideShare is excellent for search engine optimization, helping your website to pop up in searches and to link and direct people back to your page. With SlideShare, you can generate referral traffic from links on your other networks, your business channel, and natural Google searches, and use it to cross-pollinate your social platforms.
■ Position Yourself as an Expert – Having a presentation on SlideShare helps to position you or your organization as an expert in whatever topic or industry you post in. SlideShare presentations are viewed as high- quality business materials where people can learn valuable information and spread information easily. See Figure 17.5.
■ Low Cost, Easy To Use – You can always test the waters with Slide- Share's Basic Free membership, which lets you peruse the website, watch presentations, and share with your network. If you want to get more involved and load videos/presentations, consider the Silver Pro Plan at $19/month. This gets you their analytics program, private uploads, 10 video uploads, and basic branding control. The $50/month Gold Plan gets even more features.
■ Repurposing Content – Imagine all the ways you could utilize SlideShare to your advantage. If you wanted to set up a webinar for your customers, you can post it to SlideShare and develop an even larger audience, or if you have an excellent PowerPoint presentation, you now have an easy platform to distribute it among your followers.
■ Use Analytics to your Advantage – Analytics are provided on your SlideShare dashboard, so you can log in and find out how you are doing, see how many people have viewed your presentation, and even find out the path people took to arrive to your page with the traffic and geography
FIGURE 17.S Use SlideShare to Position Yourself as an Expert
sources. As with analytics on any network, these stats are very valuable for assessing how you are doing, how customers and clients are interacting with your brand, and how you can see what practices work best so you can continue forward in the most powerful way.
Client Development – When you upgrade your subscription to Silver or Pro, SlideShare offers a feature that allows you to create and name a campaign to add to any of your slides, files, or presentations that you wish. In a part of your presentation, whether beginning, middle, or end, you can create a custom message and ask for a name, e-mail address, or phone number from the viewer. You can offer a newsletter or free download and, if the viewer is enjoying your presentation, he or she can opt to receive your company's newsletter or special offer.
If you are a financial professional, business, or advisor who wants to position yourself or organization as an expert, and you have presentations and information to share, SlideShare is the place to be.
