The Benefits of Sharing Infographics on Slideshare

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The Benefits of Sharing Infographics on Slideshare

In recognition of the growing popularity of infographics as a way of sharing data, in July 2013, Slideshare introduced an infographic-specific player to the site. It automatically detects an infographic upon upload, includes it in the infographic directory and displays it for best viewing.

Some of the web's biggest brands including LinkedIn, The Huffington Post, and Mashable, are already taking advantage of the new player and, it seems, with good reason...

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Slideshare's Hyperlink Clampdown: A Demo and Workaround Tips

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Slideshare is a fantastic tool for individuals and businesses to share ideas and reach an audience of many millions of people. And while the site enourages the publishing of insightful and helpful content, it looks now to be clamping down on those whose presentations don't quite share its priorities. As such, any links that appear on the first three slides of a Slideshare presentation will not be clickable. 

As you can see in the hastily-created four-slide demonstration above, the hyperlinks I have placed on the first three slides are not clickable, but the one on the final slide is.

In my book, 500 Social Media Marketing Tips , I recommend that Slideshare users include links in the opening slides of their presentations... not necessarily big, bold, and in your face, but at least given a presence in case a viewer takes notice but does not necessarily reach the end of the presentation. Better to have it appear even subtly than not at all! Placing it at the bottom of every slide, unobtrusively, is another alternatively. 

Now that this change has rolled out, I would not change my advice, but do suggest that if you are going to feature hyperlinks at the very beginning of your Slideshare presentations, that the URLs are short and memorable. If your links is long and complicated and  not clickable, the chances of someone taking the time to type it manually into their browser's address bar is slim to none.

Andrew Macarthy is the author of the #1 Amazon Web Marketing Bestseller, 500 Social Media Marketing Tips, available for Kindle and in paperback.

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How to Convert A Blog Post to PDF for Slideshare | Slideshare Conversion Marketing

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One of the coolest functions of Slideshare is that, if you upload a PDF document to your account, it will automatically convert the file into a presentation that can be read, shared, and embedded elsewhere by anyone on the site. A good way to utilise this feature is to convert your blog posts into PDF files and then upload them to Slideshare for extra exposure. The process is really easy and only takes a couple of minutes to complete. Here's how: 

1. Convert your blog into a PDF

To convert your blog post into a PDF, I recommend the tool over at www.printfriendly.com. Once there, paste your blog post's URL into the bar at the top of the site and click "Print Preview." Alternatively - and this is the way I do it - install the PrintFriendly browser extension and simply click it when you're on the page of the blog post that you want to convert. I prefer the latter method as sometimes the former does not pull in the blog's images.

2. Delete unwanted text

Once PrintFriendly has grabbed your blog post, hover over the different paragraphs of text and any images, and they will highlight yellow with a "Click to delete" message. Remove any unnecessary elements that will clog up your eventual Slideshare presentation. In my case, I remove the blog title at the top (reason for this coming up) and blurb about me from the bottom of the post. When you're done, click the "PDF" button.

3. Download your PDF

PrintFriendly will spend a few seconds generating your PDF. When it's done, choose the A4 Page Size option and click the button to download it ready for uploading to Slideshare.

4. Upload your PDF to Slideshare

Sign into Slideshare, click the Upload button and choose the PDF you just created. Slideshare will grab the file and convert it into a presentation for the site. Nice! 

5. Optimize the title, description, category, and tags

Visit your Slideshare uploads and click on the presentation you have just created to edit its settings, which by default won't be great at all. I simply copy and paste the title and tags from my blog post, and lift the "stock" description from my YouTube channel (which includes a call to action to buy my book, links to my social profiles, and a more blurb about the presentation) and paste it all in. Don't forget to choose the correct category, then save the changes.

6. You're done! ... But a tip about image use and thumbnails! 

Here's an example of how your presentations will display in Slideshare search results. As you can see the thumbnail that appears is the image that appeared at the top of my blog post.  If the top of your blog post is just text, then your thumbnail on Slideshare will be as well, which won't make it too visually appealing. I know it won't be possible for everyone, but if you are going to convert blog posts for Slideshare, having an image at the top of your blog post - even if temporarily while you convert to PDF - can make a huge difference.

The final result! 

Here it is, my blog post converted into a Slideshare presentation and embedded using the code provided. Users can click the arrows to view each page, and zoom in to read the text easier with the magnification tools, or by going full screen.

Of course, a text-heavy blog post is never going to replace a presentation built from the ground up and optimised for Slideshare, but as far as convenience and the extra exposure to millions of Slideshare users goes, it is well worth doing. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Andrew Macarthy is the author of the #1 Amazon Web Marketing Bestseller, 500 Social Media Marketing Tips, available for Kindle and in paperback.

Buy 500 Social Media Marketing Tips
Amazon US: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007L50HE6
Amazon UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B007L50HE6

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