One of the best ways to share information with customers and clients, and to gather new readers, is through presentation style websites. From a visual perspective, they have a lot in common with a PowerPoint presentation, but they can offer quite a bit more since they are on the web and interactive for those who visit the site. Readers will be able to go through the information as quickly or as slowly as they choose.
A number of different high quality sites are available offering this type of service today. Let’s examine some of the features of these free services and see which one will suit you the best, or whether you want to use more than one.
Slideshare
Based on Web 2.0, Slideshare is a slide hosting service that allows users to upload their files publicly or privately in a variety of different formats. They can use PowerPoint, which is very common for these types of slides, or they can use PDF, Keynote, or OpenDocument. It is then possible to view the uploaded slides on the website, as well as on handheld devices. Another great feature is that you can also embed the slides to other sites, including your own home website if you choose.
The original intent of this type of site was so that businesses would be able to share their files and information with their employees more easily. Since there are private settings, this is still one of the uses for it. However, content creators and marketers have seen that there is far more to the slide hosting sites than just in office content. While many may not realize it, you can also share your videos on SlideShare. It’s not as powerful as YouTube, and it doesn’t have as far of a reach, but it could still be a good place to add a video.
authorSTREAM
Another good option that many may want to choose is authorSTREAM. After someone uploads their presentation, they are able to edit their settings, and then easily share it on popular social networking sites such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. It’s also possible to convert the file to video, PPT, or flash, and then download it for your use. One of the other nice features of the tool is that it offers some basic analytics, which will allow users to trace their views to see how successful each of their slide presentations is.
It is relatively easy to use, but some people do complain that the animations that you can use in the presentation are somewhat bugged, and they don’t always work properly. However, if you aren’t using any animations, it should not be an issue.
SlideBoom
SlideBoom offers both public and private files, as do the other options on this list. It allows download to email, PPT, social networks, and embedding into sites. It supports PPT and PPTX, but it’s important to note that it doesn’t support as wide of an array of files as SlideShare. For example, it does not support PDF, Keynote, or audio hosting. While users will not be able to put music into the presentation, they can add sounds if they wish. However, the system doesn’t support audio synchronization.
SlideServe
SlideServe offers the ability to upload both public and private files, and users can download in PPT, email, to social networks, and to embed the files. It works with PPT and PPTX files and offers text comments. While it doesn’t allow for video implementation to the slides, it does have a player that offers a number of features, including full screen, play/pause, next and previous step, thumbnails, transitions, animations, narrations, sounds, and music integration. Naturally, you can also assign title, description, tags, and category. You can easily see the views, embeds, favorites, and comments.
SlidePub
SlidePub only has a public offering, which means this would not be the ideal solution for a company that wanted to post files just for their employees to use. Users will be able to download the files to email, put them on social networks, and embed them into other sites. It also offers support for HTML5. It supports PPT, PDF, and PPTX. While the player works fine, it does not have quite as many features as some of the other options out there. It offers next step, previous step, thumbnails, and transitions only. You will be able to see the number of views and embeds, as well as comments.
Best Practices for Using Slide Content
Slide content hosted on these various sites can provide your company with a lot of benefits. It gives potential customers and readers a new place to find out more about you and to read your content. You can link to your site and to social media from the slides as well. You have the potential to have a lot more eyes see your content, which is always a very good thing.
When you are posting info on your slides, it’s a good idea to use original material or repurposed and reworked content so that the search engines do not see it coming up as being something duplicate that’s already on your site.
The content that’s on the site should also be very easy to read. You do not want to crowd a large amount of text onto the small space of a slide. Instead, make sure that you limit the number of words on each slide, and that you use a clear and legible font that’s large enough to see, even if someone has relatively bad eyesight. In addition, keep in mind that graphics can work well on these types of sites as well, so you should feel free to add some, as long as you don’t go overboard.
Whenever you give a presentation, make sure that you turn it into slides, which you can put on these sites. You want to make sure that you have plenty of new content up regularly, as this will help you to find more of an audience, and one that will return time and again. Of course, make sure that the very first slide in the presentation, the cover slide, is as good as it can possibly be from a visual perspective. This is what will draw in the audience. Finally, create a great headline to get as much attention as possible.
As you can see, there are plenty of fantastic reasons to make sure that you start using one or more of these slide sharing sites today. Most of them are very easy to use, and they are yet another feather in the content marketing cap. They are more popular than many might believe, and it’s an area that you should not neglect. Put in the work, and you will see your audience start to grow. It is a fantastic way to market, and you will also find that your customers are often more likely to share this type of content.
Meta: Creating constant, quality content is a great way to expand the customer base and improve readership. Sites such as Slideshare and SlideServe allow you to host content on easy to read slides, which the customers can then go through at their leisure.