A first concept for my thesis, if SlideShare could serve as a B2B online marketing tool within the DACH region and how to measure its performance.

1. SLIDESHARE AS (B2B) ONLINE MARKETING TOOL
A PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF THE PLATFORM’S CAPABILITIES AND
POTENTIAL FOR SEO ACTIVITIES OF COMPANIES IN THE DACH REGION

2. Problem Statement
■ Presentations & slide decks are omnipresent in companies (internal + external)
– >120million people worldwide are using Powerpoint to create
business/educational presentations (2010)
– Require time and workforce
– Often only used once, or in best case:
■ Upload to Webpage (Download & Press Section) or integration to an company-
owned blog (if available)
■ Idea to reuse content for further marketing purpose – ONLINE!
– (Only if content is sharable with public)

3. Introduction
■ Where do we go if we search for information?
■ Search Engines (Google) & to some extent social media
– Web search (USA, 2018)
■ >90% via Google
■ Yahoo/Bing/Amazon/Facebook each about 1%
– A company page is only looked up if the company is already known, and even then
SE’s and social media might be looked up first
■ Goal
– Good Search Engine Rankings are the key
■ Focus: Off-page SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

4. Slideshare
■ Founded in 2006 – Bought by LinkedIn in 2012 – (LinkedIn belongs to Microsoft since 2016)
■ Facts (Source: Slideshare)
– 80 million users worldwide
– 18 million pieces of shared content
– Available in 5 languages and referring sub-domains (EN, DE, ES, PT, FR)
■ Analytics (Source: SimilarWeb)
– Rank 422 (globally, according to traffic)
– >80% of traffic from organic search
– Avrg. 150 million monthly visits (2nd half of 2018)
■ .de-Domain – Avrg. 700k monthly visits (.pt – 10m, .es – 50m, .fr– 2m)
■ Analytics (Source: Moz)
– Domain Authority: 94  .de-Domain: 94
– Page Authority: 85  .de-Domain: 66

5. Research Question
■ How to make use of the social media platform Slideshare in order to
increase brand awareness?
Supporting Research Questions:
■ How to increase SERP’s with the use of Slideshare?
■ How to generate Leads with the use of Slideshare?

6. Research Goal
■ Find out the optimal usage of Slideshare for companies to increase its digital level
of awareness
– Make use of SlideShare's good DA
■ Position your content on a high authority domain
■ Automatically helps for a “higher” rank of content in Google via SlideShare
■ Optimize presentations for SlideShare to increase individual PA
– Include CTA’s in Slideshare content in order to drive traffic to own webpage
■ Increase traffic on-site (on other social media channels)
– Increase Google ranking of webpage itself
■ Create Leads

7. Focus on B2B
■ Platform has a high focus on industry-specific
information/insights
■ Slideshare has 5x more traffic from business
owners than other websites
(Source: ColumnFiveMedia)

8. Method
■ Analyze existing top-performing content through different variables
– Top performer are defined by the variables:
■ Views, Likes, Interactions
■ (Google Ranking according to content-specific keywords)
– Content is analyzed by the variables:
■ Visual appearance, Use of media (Image, Video), Length, Type of Content
(Presentation, Infographic, Video), Posting Time, Included CTA’s, content
category…
■ (Usage of content-specific keywords)

9. Value of research
■ Connects the “complicated” topic SEO with a free-to-access and easy to handle
social media tool
■ This method can be easily integrated in company’s marketing structures without
the need of explicit SEO specialists
■ Valuable for young companies with low DA/PA
– Content gets boosted through SlideShare
■ Content on SlideShare could get ranked higher than own on-page content

10. Limitations/Pitfalls
■ Degree of familiarity in the DACH region
– Out of the 100 biggest companies below 10 had existing accounts
– 1 of it was active (shared content within the last 12 months)
■ SAP
■ Usage in general
– Many big international companies have accounts, but no new content since 2-3
years
– Slideshare-owned blog inactive since 3 years (before weekly entries)
– User engagement not very active
■ Commentary section filled with ad’s and “fake” comments
■ Research so far shows tendencies for usage limitations to specific industries
– (Online Marketing) Consulting, Software, Electronics, Digital-related Research,…