In my recent post, Deep Six Boilerplate with Content Marketing for Professional Services, I discussed transforming the tired old boilerplate library into a high-performance blog that rates your text by the popularity of your post. One of the suggestions was to incorporate presentation slide decks into your content marketing practices.
Source: freevintageposters.com
This post outlines a content marketing approach to crafting a presentation that is designed to amaze, attract and enchant desired audiences:
Develop a Presentation Plan that Weaves a Story and Enchants Audiences with Magnificent Precision
Every presentation is an opportunity to tell a story. A good presenter needs to envision how they would like that story to unfold. The presenter should work together with your firm’s creative marketing team to sketch out slides and script a compelling message with a clear story. Play around with elements of conflict and humor to deliver a presentation that makes a human connection. Your main goal is to Win the Hearts and Minds of Your Audience.
Create Drama and Surprise to Build Excitement About Your Presentation
Craft a direct email message capturing desired audience's attention about your presentation. To get your readers to pause and look, you must create an email subject and headline that sparks their initial interest. The opening paragraph should entice and also deliver the main point of the presentation. Refrain from revealing too much information, or they will not be compelled to take the next step, which is responding to a call to action that is incorporated in the body message. The call to action leads the reader to a landing page that provides a presentation teaser and further information about when and where to see the full presentation. Encourage the reader to fill out the form to sign-up for the main attraction...your amazing presentation.
Build Excitement with a Guest Blog Post to Heighten Interest
Leverage your existing network with a guest blog post that will help you heighten interest in your upcoming presentation. Leveraging the influence of known industry professionals can help you increase responses to your presentation call to action and landing page and increase the “sharing” of your presentation teaser. Similar to a YouTube video, presentations can be embedded by using SlideShare.
Exquisite Presentations Are a Significant Piece to the Entire Puzzle
A presentation is a visual platform. It is essential to create exquisite visuals that enhance the story. They need to be powerful and poignant to enchant audiences. The story must be engaging, and the visuals must match the quality of the information provided. Some visual elements that captivate audiences include:
- Vibrant colors and large text that make the presentation easy to follow.
- Cover one particular subject in granular detail that is data-rich.
- Provide charts, graphs, images, graphics, and video.
Optimize Presentations to Amaze Audiences Organically
After the presentation, your content marketing plan still needs to be completed. Update SlideShare and embed the complete presentation in a blog post. If you want this presentation to be found organically, don’t forget search engine optimization (SEO). Make sure to add keywords, meta keywords, meta descriptions, and alt text to your blog post to ensure this presentation is found by audiences interested in the subject matter. Please check out my post, Framework for Professional Services SEO: A Keyword Placement Guide, for a more detailed explanation of search engine optimization.
Professional services marketing professionals spend a lot of time designing extraordinary slide decks for their firms. It is time to get a greater return on time invested in these extraordinary presentations by crafting a content marketing plan that builds and nurtures an interest in the story beyond the presentation date. Presentation slide decks should aim to be evergreen.
