Keep it clear, interesting, engaging and concise
I kid you not. I’ve always been a believer that marketing is maximized through a combination of offline and online strategies. In fact I did write an article about it a few months ago. These days though when people need to stay indoors, the closest that you can get for a counterpart of an offline event is a webinar or live (or recorded) video. Just the same, combining it with an online strategy can be a powerful thing.
Enter webinar or livestream platform – Zoom, StreamYard or Webinar Jam – Slideshare and social media. I have been invited to a few webinars over the year or so. Two of the most recent ones are organized by GetCraft and LinkedIn Local Philippines (thanks to Jomarc Baquiran) to talk about how to build a meaningful brand amidst a pandemic.
Based on those few invites, I’ve identified four important marketing tools that has helped me (and can also help you) promote my personal brand, generate leads, gain clients, partnerships and collaborations:
Social Media. To cut the story short, webinars are usually promoted at least days before the actual event on social media; done live on social media, and also talked about after, on social media. Promotion alone helps build brand awareness.
Webinar or livestream platform. The popular webinar platforms used nowadays are Zoom, Gotowebinar, WebinarJam. For livestream, there’s StreamYard. Or you can also just use Facebook Live or Youtube. Choosing the right webinar or livestream platform is one thing, and coming up with the right content is another. If you’ll be asked to share insights at a webinar, choosing a platform wouldn’t be your problem. You’ll just need to focus on your content.
Let me share two important things that you can gain when you deliver your content through a webinar or live stream video: trust and credibility. A well thought out and crafted content that helps solve the problem at hand can tremendously gain you trust to your webinar viewers. Three important things come into play that help you achieve this:
- Relevance of content. Does your content answer your target audience’s major pain point? Is your content a solution that is relevant to the present situation? These are just some of the questions you have to wrap your head around with when crafting your presentation’s content.
- Design of presentation. Choosing the right color scheme, typography and applying not much text on each slide. You can check out slide presentations on Slideshare under the Editor Picks category to get ideas on eye-catching color scheme and typography.
- Delivery. Now comes the exciting part: how you deliver your content. Keep it clear, interesting, engaging and concise. You can back it up with some form of storytelling but keep it brief, to keep your presentation interesting. Also, while there may be a Q&A portion at the end of your presentation, it helps if you ask your audience a few questions in the middle of your presentation, to keep it engaging.
Now, I am no expert when it comes to webinars. Like I said I have only been invited to speak at a few recently. But based on what I have observed, the above-mentioned will greatly help in drawing your audience’s attention to you and eventually gain trust on your authority and content.
Another important detail that you need to include is a call to action element. Your name, email address, website and/or social media URL will do. I add mine both on the cover slide (beginning) and end slide (last). This step will help drive more traffic to your website and more following to your social media.
More importantly, I suggest you just keep it real and simple. I cannot stress enough how important this is. All I can say is this is what earned me to get more profile views on my LinkedIn, a few connection requests (Imagine almost 50 additional connection requests just for a 20-minute talk I gave), plus a few messages inquiring about my services as well as requests for collaboration.
Slideshare has been around since 2006, and was acquired by LinkedIn in 2012. The website was originally meant to be used for businesses to share slides among employees more easily, but it also has expanded to become a host of many slides that are uploaded merely to entertain. Although the website is primarily a slide hosting service, it also supports documents, PDFs, videos and webinars. SlideShare also provides users the ability to rate, comment on, and share the uploaded content (Wikipedia).
Considered “The Quiet Giant of Content Marketing,” Slideshare is considered by marketers as a powerful platform, especially to those who are more skilled in crafting visually appealing content than writing out articles.
What makes it more interesting is that once you’ve shared your slide presentation via a webinar, you can repurpose it by sharing it on Slideshare. This adds as an important digital footprint to your personal brand, as Slideshare is an authority site and ranks up high in Google. Once uploaded in Slideshare, you can easily share it as a post on your LinkedIn account for your network to see.
Online Magazine. Last but not least,if you want an even more powerful strategy, have your Slideshare content published on platforms that allow you to contribute with such content. Marketing in Asia has recently launched this to help marketers and business owners who believe in the power of visuals but are not so much into writing get more leverage. That just helps further establish one’s brand and thought leadership.
