We’ve all been on the receiving end of a live presentation using PowerPoint slides. I bet you’ve even seen some really boring ones (death by PowerPoint,  anyone?) But did you know there are tons of creative ways you can use slideshows in your small business for marketing and as the basis for digital products? And if you don’t have PowerPoint, Google Slides have many of the same features for free. Just log into Google, go to Google Drive and create a slideshow. Easy.

Here are twenty tips for using PowerPoint slides for marketing

1. Upload a presentation to Slideshare – here’s a post explaining more about this. From there you can share share your presentation on Twitter, Facebook or anywhere else you can think of and embed them in your blog or pages of your website.
2.  Your presentation slides should have plenty of ‘white space’. The less clutter, the better your message shows up. Keep the number of bullet points low, probably no more that three or four.
3. If your presentation is being shared without a narration (e.g. using Slideshare) you’ll need to make sure it makes sense using the slides alone. If it’s difficult to get your message across using just the slides, you could use the presentation to make a video with narration instead.
4. If you’re uploading your presentation to a third party platform such as Slideshare or YouTube (you’ll need to convert it to a video first for YouTube), make sure you optimize it by adding keywords and a detailed description. This increases the chances of it being found in a search.
5. Liven up your slide show presentation with graphics and photographs. It can be really effective to add the photo as a background image, too.
   
6. Use your own branding – such as your colours and fonts – to create a slideshow with a look that’s consistent with the rest of your material. You can create master slides to use as a branded template to make this faster for next time.
   
7. You can add relevant links to your presentation. That way you can link to supporting articles and keep the presentation tightly focused.
8. Don’t forget to add links to your Twitter page, Facebook page, YouTube channel or any other social media platform you use to your presentation.
9. Be logical. There must to be a beginning, middle, and an end to your slide show presentation.
10. Add a call to action at the end of your slide show. What would you like your readers or viewers to do next?  Make sure you tell them!
11. Try structuring your PowerPoint as a story to help hold your audience’s attention and make it more memorable.
12. How-to and tutorial training slide shows can be used to educate your audience. This can be particularly effective if you answer the questions you’re asked most often.
13. If you’ve delivered a live presentation, you could upload the presentation to Slideshare so that your audience members can review the presentation after the event.
14. Create a promotional PowerPoint presentation detailing what you can do for your clients. Include links to your product pages. Or create a portfolio using a PowerPoint presentation.
15. Post a question and answer slide show on your customer service page.
16. Don’t get carried away with animations and transitions in your slide show as it can be distracting. Use them sparingly and keep them simple.
17. The must-have slides for every presentation: Title slide, Content Introduction, About you, Section slides, Recap, Call to action slide.
18. Turn your slide show into a PDF file to use as a free giveaway for your list. Or bundle your slide show PDF and webinar audio/recording  to sell or give to those who couldn’t attend the live presentation.
19. Print out single slides from your slide show – or save them as images – to include in your offline marketing materials such as brochures and print newsletters. To save a PowerPoint slide as an image, click on the slide you want as an image, go to File > Save as, then choose .jpg or .png as the file type. PowerPoint will ask you if you want just this slide or all your slides converted to images so choose which you’d like.
20. Don’t forget to repurpose! Turn your blog posts into slideshows (here’s how to do that) and you can turn your PowerPoint slideshows into documents. To speed this porcess up, export your PowerPoint presentation to Word by choosing File> Export >Create handouts. You’re given the option to include the slides as images in the document, but the outline option is very useful to convert the presentation to simple text.

If you’ve found this useful, please do share it, thanks!