Receiving more than 60 million visits and 120 million page views per month, SlideShare is stealthily claiming its rightful place as the quiet giant of content marketing.

The figures are all the more impressive given that SlideShare isn’t a consumer site setting out to challenge the likes of Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn. SlideShare is strictly for business; in fact the most commonly used tags on the site are ‘business’, ‘market’, ‘trends’, ‘research’, ‘social media’ and ‘statistics’.

If yours is a B2B business still struggling to find the value in accruing Facebook ‘likes’, or perhaps not getting the reach you expected from your corporate blog, it might be time to consider SlideShare as part of a broader content marketing strategy.

What is SlideShare?

In short, SlideShare is the largest professional content sharing community. If you can think of a topic, from conflict management  to anaesthesia for neurosurgery , then you can most likely find a presentation about it on SlideShare.

Who visits SlideShare?

The SlideShare community is comprised largely of professional business owners. According to a report on The Content Strategist, SlideShare has five times more traffic from business owners than other sites like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and, perhaps more surprisingly, professional networking network LinkedIn.

The SlideShare community arrives at the site either directly, via organic search or social networks. Therefore, whenever you create a presentation, be sure to share it on Facebook, Twitter and Google+ and use appropriate tags.

Why use SlideShare for content marketing?

Any business with information, webinars or reports to share can create SlideShare presentations and invite comments from a targeted audience of people with a particular interest in its field. SlideShare is also a fantastic resource for marketers, serving as a research tool for finding credible sources on a vast array of topics. Many conference organisers also use SlideShare, so it’s useful for boning up on topics explored at events you may have missed.

What type of presentation works best?

While every individual has their own preferences for consuming content, the general rule of thumb is to keep presentations short, visual and on-point. On SlideShare, this comes down largely to the number of slides used.

Around half (45%) of presentations contain 10 to 30 slides, while one third (33%) of presentation makers opt to use less than 10 slides. Visuals are an important factor for engaging your SldieShare audience. The average presentation contains 19 photos, which makes up a good chunk of the average presentation. But don’t limit yourself to photos. SlideShare supports embedded PDFs and videos among other documents, so start exploring and get creative with document formats. Infographics also work really well on SlideShare, so don’t save them for your business blog audience alone.

We like this example from InSites Consulting for its slick design, funky graphics and clear conversational tone. Next Judging by the healthy number of comments and social shares, the SlideShare audience was similarly impressed and engaged.

Why SlideShare rocks for SEO

Earlier this year, SlideShare was completely rewritten in HTML5. It mightn’t sound like exciting news, but the implication is that Google can search within your slides, supplying an extra SEO boost. It’s also now incredibly mobile friendly, so presentations look great on Android devices and iPhones – vital for reaching your professional audience on the move.

Bonus SlideShare tip

We’ve touched on the importance of visuals, but a silent presentation still runs the risk of being dull. Use Slidecast to spice up your presentation with audio and in so doing, increase the variety of your content with interviews, webinars, lectures and narration.

Over to you

Have you experimented with SlideShare yet as part of your content marketing strategy? Share your stories and experiences in the comments below.