I’ve known I needed to be using SlideShare for some time, but haven’t mustered the motivation to complete the labor intensive task of making Powerpoint presentations.
If you’ve never heard of SlideShare, it’s like YouTube for Powerpoints.
It’s automatically connected with LinkedIn, so you can publish your presentation to your LinkedIn profile.
And you can multiply the powerful book marketing madness by getting your Powerpoint turned into a video, and then distributing to lots of video sites.
Why do all this?
Lots of links from powerful sites are good for your own website.
But you also have more chances for readers to find you.
The chances of them stumbling on your little blog or website are more than a million to one (unless they are searching for your name or the name of your book – but if they are, you don’t need to market to them. They already know you).
The problem is, it can be a lot of effort, and the strategy won’t work nearly as well if your Powerpoint isn’t well designed.
Of course the book cover should be well designed too, so before you spend $100 on book marketing, consider spending that money on a better cover instead – it might make more sense.
#1: Getting a Powerpoint made
I pitched my idea to 5 providers on Fiverr.com.
Only one came through. I’m not going to tell you her name, because I plan on using her again and again and don’t want her to get too busy.
I offered $50 for her to go through my book and turn it into a Powerpoint, by pulling out key passages, getting the basic structure, etc.
For a fiction book, I would have told her to basically copy from my author website – which I don’t actually have, but would include:
- Sales copy/pitch
- Tagline or Teaser
- Beautiful cover art/expressive photography
- An excerpt – the first 1500 words or so (enough for them to really sink into)
- Reviews and blurbs
- An “About the Author” section with bio and author photo
- A “Buy now on Amazon” link
All that could be turned into a nice Powerpoint of about 25 slides (ideal length).
You need someone very capable, who can match the style/design of your cover or author website.
It’ll be easier if you send them the info – but like I said, my probably was I didn’t want to do the work of preparing everything. You could probably pay $25 or so if you prepared everything before hand.
It’ll also be easier if you pick out your own Powerpoint theme, a professional one costs around $35 on GraphicRiver.
So for $25/$50, you can get a Powerpoint made – or just do it yourself, but keep in mind that Good Design is really important, and it’s one of those things you’re probably not qualified to recognize (if you do it yourself, you’ll make what YOU like, and YOU will love it. But this is for OTHER PEOPLE).
#2: Uploading to SlideShare
Create an account. There’s a big orange “Upload” button on the top right – can’t miss it.
Upload your Powerpoint. Name is something with lots of quality keywords.
Because mine is non-fiction, I already chose an optimized subtitle filled with keywords. If you have a novel, use the specific genre/setting keywords. For example, “an historical adventure romance set in medieval Paris.” (This should obviously go on the Amazon subtitle as well!)
Here’s my presentation on SlideShare (I’m using SlideShare’s built in “WordPress Shortcode” to embed it here).
I shared it on Linked in as well, and then Twitter, because it was really easy. (In fact, sharing on Twitter means people can view the interactive slideshow right in their Twitter feed!)
#3: Make Image Quotes
Image quotes = text placed over images. They are amazing for marketing, on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest, because they are very easy to get liked and shared. If you get your SlideShare designed well, you should have about a dozen high quality graphics. I just used “Snagit Editor” to take screen shots of the Powerpoint slides. This is what they look like.
I can share those, with or without a link to the book or sales page. (I should probably also put a tiny line that reads “How to Stop Time by Derek Murphy – www.creativindie.com.” Just in case it gets shared so much nobody knows where it came from.
#4: Turn it into a video
There are several providers on Fiverr.com who will turn your Powerpoint into a video. Basically they use Camtasia or a screen recording software and just click through the slides. I paid $25 to get some music added. Voiceovers usually cost more; if you have quite a long excerpt you could hire someone to make a video first, and then hire someone else to read over the video (or read your own).
Keep in mind you’d usually pay at least $250 for a book trailer and most of those are really bad. You can get this done for under $100 and it’ll be just as effective.
#5: submit to video sites
I hired Meloni from Moldova on Fiverr(who has lots of other interesting gigs) to submit the video to multiple sites (except YouTube, I did that one myself through my account.) The others won’t get much traffic, but they are good for backlinks – meaning, the same video goes up on a dozen sites and each one has a link back to your website in the video description, or profile. All those links boost your websites reputation a little. Make sure your description has good “context” around it – for example use the same keyword-rich subtitle.
Google will see that those words have something to do with your link – so next time anybody searches for “historical adventure romances set in medieval Paris” Google will find all those descriptions and your site might show up higher than anybody else’s.
WARNING: The downside of all that, however, is that those sites may show up before your website does.
Since your site probably has very little traffic, the YouTube video may show up higher than your site every time someone searches for you or your book. Same with the Powerpoint on Slideshare – because those are both really big sites with loads of traffic.
And if you submit the same video to dozens of sites there’s a chance all those sites will show up before your website, so when people try to find you, they can’t. However, Google doesn’t really work like that, and will screen out most other video sites (especially since Google owns YouTube). They’re good about not repeating the same traffic.
Does it sound like a lot of work? Yes – but remember, for about $100 you’re getting everything taken care of by other people!
And that’s $100 well spent, because now you’ll have “evergreen” content than stays up and keeps working for you indefinitely, as opposed to Twitter blasts or advertising, where you pay once but after that everything stops and sales dry up.
I’m a philosophy dropout with a PhD in Literature. I covet a cabin full of cats, where I can write fantasy novels to pay for my cake addiction. Sometimes I live in castles.
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