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Social media campaigns have long been a confusing area for some companies. One of the problem areas with creating engaging content on social media sites has been the expense of creating visually interesting content. YouTube and Vidyard are leading the way with content that’s based upon images. But they both require expertise and time to generate content.
News that LinkedIn has designs to connect with the new Slideshare web service is a sign that the future of social media for the B2B world is about to move into overdrive.
While Slideshare is nothing new, its connection to LinkedIn is exciting news to those of us charged with creating SEO content for B2B purposes. It gives us a fun area in which to play. And finally use those Adobe Creative Suite skills we paid for in college.
Also it’s really the only premiere site for business interaction, LinkedIn seems to be running the risk of becoming staid and predictable. While LinkedIn has remained pretty the same, other entities like Google have expanded their reach by absorbing YouTube (for example), and enriching their Google Apps to give users a brand new set of utilities to enhance their web experience.
But with the purchase of Slideshare, LinkedIn is finally offering its customers a new experience: access to creating visual content and creative advertising content. And it’s an incredibly simple interface to get used to. If you can make a Powerpoint presentation, you can create an engaging, informative and entertaining ad on Slideshare.
This should matter more to a great deal of small to medium-sized companies. For them, creativity is perhaps the only competitive edge they have in driving advertising and marketing campaigns.
Slideshare can edge out YouTube as a social media channel
Honestly, as much as I love and use YouTube and Vidyard for various projects, the fact is that it takes an enormous amount of time (and an intermediate knowledge of movie making) in order to get a presentation prepared.
So for a small company with limited resources, it’s just not cost-effected to pay for the hours it takes to maintain a YouTube account active while simultaneously paying for effective business blogging as well. Especially knowing that content should be refreshed at least twice a month. It’s more cost effective to manage other social media portals such as Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, et al. with social media software such as Hootsuite to keep updates fresh and content remain relevant.
But with Slideshare, creating a user-friendly experience that’s both visually driven and information heavy, is quite easy.
Create your own social media advertisement
In fact, in a future blog, I plan to describe the detailed process of taking a PPT or even a blog post and turning it into a slide show. What’s even more astonishing is that Slideshare has a growing community of its own. So I highly recommend you visit their site and do a search for content that’s specific to your niche market and check out what’s already there. I have a couple of projects that I put up as tests for my particular industry (inbound marketing) and the results are positive.
So in terms of business, this social media site can solve a lot of problems for a small creative team. And finally, LinkedIn can do more than scroll ads and simply give you “insights.” Companies are given full creative reign over their products and services by building social media content that’s not just about Whitepapers and eBlasts.
Is the future of social media advertising? It certainly shouldn’t be overlooked. Especially if you’re engaging in inbound marketing tactics. Have you tried making a slide show yet? Do you have any questions about it? Can you think of any creative ways to use this new tool and service?
I’d love to hear your opinions.
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