The Transcript

How to Drive More Traffic from SlideShare

Voiceover: Rainmaker.FM is brought to you by Digital Commerce Institute. Do you want to build the business of your dreams without squandering time and money, stumbling around to find the right path, or making unnecessary mistakes?

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Voiceover: This is The Missing Link, with your host, the insufferable, but never boring, Sean Jackson.

Sean Jackson: Welcome to the Missing Link everyone. I’m your host, Sean Jackson, and I’m joined, as always, by the artistic Mica Gadhia. Mica, how are you?

Mica Gadhia: I’m excellent, and I am an artist. How are you, Sean?

Sean Jackson: I’m very good even though it is very early for this recording, by the way.

Mica Gadhia: It is?

Sean Jackson: And the reason is because Mica booked us a guest who’s all the way in Singapore.

Mica Gadhia: I’m so excited.

Sean Jackson: If I sound a little off today, it’s because I haven’t drunk my 10 cups of coffee yet, but I’m getting there. Yes, we said ‘artist’ because today’s episode is going to be about SlideShare.

Now, SlideShare has been around for a long time. It got acquired by LinkedIn. Now it’s part of the LinkedIn ecosystem. It has, in the past, been proven to be a huge driver of traffic for people who do slides right. They’ve made some changes recently, as well as the fact that there’s more competition out there. Mica, who’s the person in Singapore you got for us to talk about this?

Mica Gadhia: Oh, I’m so excited. His name is Eugene Cheng, and he’s this very young, energetic, hugely intelligent, and very, very talented presentation designer.

Sean Jackson: I love it — and the fact that he got three million views, that his first time on SlideShare he got to the very front page. I was like, “This guy’s got a story that we have to share with everyone.” I think you’re going to be blown away, like we are, with the advice and information that he has to share.

Sean Jackson: So, Mica, as everyone knows as everyone knows the content of the show is driven by our super-secret LinkedIn group. I keep on repeating it because there’s way, way too much information in there for you to ignore. While we’re at the break, I want you to do exactly what Mica’s about to tell you.

Mica Gadhia: All right, so here’s what you’re going to do during the break. You’re going to pull out your mobile device. You’re going to text 41411, enter the keyword ‘mylink,’ take out that space, mylink, and text us. You’ll get set up right away. If you’re outside of the continental United States, you’re going to send us a quick email at MissingLink@Rainmaker.FM.

Sean Jackson: It’s that simple, folks 41411, text message with the keyword ‘mylink,’ all one word, or MissingLink@Rainmaker.FM will get you into that super-secret group. When we come back from the break, we’re going to have Eugene Cheng, who is going to deep dive with us on the secrets of making powerful SlideShare presentations as well as how to get them viewed. Stay tuned.

Voiceover: The Missing Link is brought to you by the Rainmaker Platform, the complete website solution for content marketers and online entrepreneurs. Find out more and take a free 14-day test drive at Rainmaker.FM/Platform.

Sean Jackson: All right, we’re back from the break, everyone. Mica, introduce our very special guest all the way from Singapore.

Mica Gadhia: I know. I’m so excited. I’ve been looking at all of his stuff. Eugene Cheng is with us from HighSpark, and he makes amazing presentations on SlideShare and has reached over three million views.

Sean Jackson: Hey, Eugene, thank you for being on the show.

Eugene Cheng: Hey. I’m glad to be here. Thanks for the very humbling introduction.

Sean Jackson: Of course, of course. Well, for all of our listeners, this is Eugene’s first time on a podcast interview, so we’re going to take it easy with him for a little bit. All right, Eugene, let’s go ahead. For some background, first off, what really struck me is that you are very young. At least compared to Mica and I, you are very young. You got into this at a early age.

Give our audience just a little bit of background on how you got involved with it, how old you were, what you’re kind of doing now with it in a very short way.

How Eugene Got Started on SlideShare

Eugene Cheng: I started on SlideShare when I was 19. I wanted to repurpose one of my school presentations, and I kind of went overboard. I took a month to make the SlideShare, which was the presentation Jedi Deck. The decks I do, it was How to be a Presentation Jedi, and I worked on it for a month. I got on the front page.

After that, I just went on it full on, and months later, I started an agency, which at the time was called SlideComet, which is now called HighSpark, where we help corporate leaders tell their stories better through, well, obviously, telling better stories and along with preparing presentations as well.

Sean Jackson: Got you. You were 19. You took this Jedi mind trick, basically, and you get on the front page of SlideShare.net, get a ton of views. That is just amazing as your first experience, so you figured, “Hey, I got this down. I can make a living doing it.”

Eugene Cheng: Yeah. I think that’s exactly how it went. From that very first deck that I put up and when I got all that views from the front-page feature, I suddenly got a lot of emails. For a 19 year old that’s still in school, it’s kind of overwhelming. I got contacted by people all the way from the UK, and people started asking me, “Do you do freelance?” and all that kind of stuff.

Sooner than not, I got a request. I got a phone call actually from this guy from a large Japanese ad agency, and he said, “Hi, is this Eugene?” I’m like, “Yeah.” He said, “Can you come in tomorrow?” I said, “Who are you? How’d you get my number?” and all that. So, that s how it was from SlideShare, and many, many, many of those came after that. To date, SlideShare still drives me and my company leads. It’s fantastic. It really is.

Mica Gadhia: That is so awesome.

Sean Jackson: It really is. By the way, getting that much traffic for your first time at any age, okay, forget 19. If you’re 49 like I am, holy cow. It also shows that the worldwide reach of the SlideShare universe and the fact that presentations matter.

I want to start deep diving into this with you. I really want to understand the mechanics of creating a very powerful SlideShare presentation from the very beginning. Obviously, you trained a lot of people. You do a lot of it.

Let’s start off, say that I want to use SlideShare similar to the way that you’re using it as a lead generator for my particular business — because we’re marketers after all, and that’s what we want to do. Start us with the very, very basics. What should we be concentrating on first when we’re thinking about using SlideShare to draw more traffic to our business?

How to Come Up with Your SlideShare Idea

Eugene Cheng: We need to understand where SlideShare’s role is in your marketing funnel or in your marketing ecosystem in first place. Many see it as more of a, “Oh, you know, I can put my stuff up there” — they don’t think about where it’s going to lead, which is the very core of where everything is going to fall into place. You have to decide on what the SlideShare is going to lead into, what your goals are, what your objectives are. It could either be engagement, or it could be conversion.

In this case, let’s say if you want to shoot for conversion, which means maybe you want to collect someone’s details, you want to make a sale, or something like that. Most of the time, SlideShare is a medium. It’s more of a content-marketing-related medium where you’re putting content up.

You want to get authority and expert status, as opposed to making a sale from the get go. But I’ve seen people sell books on it, although I don’t always recommend it unless you had the chance to build a following from the beginning. What I recommend is, decide on what you want.

Let’s say, in this case, you want to get some opt-ins for your mailing list or something like that. The simplest thing that you could do — let’s say you’ve made your SlideShares, and you’ve been doing it for awhile — is to include a call to action at the end, which goes without saying. The content should be very related, one, to what you do, the kind of industry you’re in, and the expert topic that you want to be an expert on, as well as related to the lead magnet you have at the back.

Some people also see SlideShare as more of a simple solution where you can just put stuff up there, and it just works. You just get leads, and you just get business. It used to be that way for awhile, especially when I started many years back, but now it’s evolved into something else.

Not to say that it’s not as good — rather, they’ve sort of diluted the views simply because the front-page traffic used to get hundreds and thousands of views if you got on the front page. Now it’s more of like 3,000 onwards. They are putting the onus on the user to do the promotion on their own.

Sean Jackson: Okay. Let me go ahead and back up on for that second. You’re making the logical overall case. I want to start back at the very, very beginning. First off, it’s 8:00 in the morning my time. It’s 10 pm your time, buddy. I’m slow this morning, so work with me on this.

Let’s go ahead and run through the very beginning steps. I agree with what you’re saying. Think about the strategy up front, and absolutely get that where does this place in your marketing mix — really put some thought before you just throw up on the page.

Let’s go ahead and start first. Talk to me about the initial steps after I’ve come up with the strategy. Am I working on a story? Am I thinking about visuals? Am I using PowerPoint? Am I using Keynote? Again, I’m really old, Eugene, so you’ve got to work with me in a very slow fashion. So work with me on the beginning.

Why You Want to Start with a Story and an Outline

Eugene Cheng: Okay. You’re right — you start off with a story. You start with an outline. If you don’t have any idea what to put up. you can reuse something that you already have, or you can do what we did. We re-purpose content from somebody else, but obviously with permission.

One of our more famous SlideShare’s, which is the really bad PowerPoint one, it’s based off Seth Godin’s ebook, which we asked beforehand whether we can repurpose, and that’s been a great hit. Simply because 1) the content is good because it’s from someone like Seth Godin, 2) it’s been re-purposed into a visual format where it just becomes a new piece of content that people are very keen to consume, and the third thing is that it’s relevant to what we are selling, which is presentation services.

If you can come up with something that 1) has the potential to bring influencers into the mix, 2) is going to be very relevant to your brand and what you’re selling, and of course, 3) can get you up and running fast, then you’ve got a good formula. Coming up with the story is the very first step. Second thing is obviously to think about the design, which I think some people might struggle with, so I have more focus tips on that later if we cover that.

Sean Jackson: No, bring them now.

How to Choose Your Font and Color Schemes — and the Importance of Images

Eugene Cheng: Well, for design, the process that I do is slightly different from what other people do. I get on PowerPoint/Keynote, but I’m more familiar with Keynote. Both mediums are kind of the same. If you’re not really a designer type of person, I recommend you use a platform like Canva, which really simplifies the whole process of creating color schemes, choosing the right typography, et cetera.

I will start with the design, focusing on picking one color. One color that ties in with your brand or the content that you’re putting out, so just one color, and one neutral color — which can be white or black. It’s as simple as that. Then you got your color scheme.

You pick one typeface or font, depending on what you call it. One typeface or font that has a family, which means that is has different weights. I’ll give you an example, like Helvetica Neue Bold or Light, or Arial and Arial Bold, but I don’t recommend using Arial. There are a lot of free sites that give you a lot of free fonts, and it’s been said many, many, many times.

My personal recommendation for people who are getting started on a SlideShare is not to focus on making it really pretty. It’s more focusing on getting it up fast and getting it up with a certain quality within a short period of time. The easiest way is to just do colors that contrast with each other, big fonts that have a family, and even images-wise, every slide should have one visual to represent what you’re saying.

Sean Jackson: Got you. And that’s important right there. One visual to represent what you’re saying. I do think that, again, you’re telling a story. The visuals are there to enhance the story, which is the message that you have on the slide, et cetera. So many times people just run up five bullet points, one right after another, thinking, “Hey, I need more room...