Killer slideshare presentations

1. HubSpot’s 10 Steps (and Templates!) For
Creating Killer SlideShares
By Guest Author on August 16, 2013
This article was originallyposted on HubSpot:
Please raise your hand if you’ve ever felt personally
victimized by PowerPoint.
When you open it up, you’re hit with stark black Calibri font
on a white background, killing any creative inkling you may
have felt. It’s daunting enough to creating a 10-slide deck
to report your monthly marketing metrics – never mind
putting together a PowerPoint to be seen by the 60 million
monthly unique visitors on SlideShare.

2. … But you know how hot visual content is, and you want to jump on board to
reap the sweet sweet engagement, traffic, and leads that follow. So what to do?
Well, there’s good news:
Creating a SlideShare presentation in PowerPoint doesn’t have to be that
daunting. With the right template and tools at your disposal, you could easily
create an engaging, visual presentation — all without fancy design programs,
huge budgets, or hiring contractors.
To help you make a SlideShare of your own, we’ve created The Essential
PowerPoint Template for Creating Killer SlideShare Presentations. We’ll walk
you through the most crucial elements of SlideShare Presentations, and give
you 10 free slide templates you can use in your next SlideShare presentation.
So it’ll look great, and be a breeze to put together.
Download the free PowerPoint template, and we’ll walk through how to use it
with these 10 steps to creating a killer SlideShare. When we’re done you’ll
know exactly how to create a sexy SlideShare that gets features
on SlideShare’s Top Presentations of the Day in no time.
Read the 10 Steps to Creating a Killer SlideShare.

3. Related Posts
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Bruce Kasanoff: My Two-Month Crash Course on
SlideShare
SlideShare Stars Share What Makes Decks Dazzle
5 Powerful Ways to Close a Presentation
Behind the Slides: 5 Tricks That Made ‘Dear NSA’ a Hit
How to Get Featured on SlideShare
5 Ways Media Companies Can Maximize SlideShare
How to Milk SlideShare for Moo’ Homepage Love
4 SlideShare Tips Inspired By Steve Jobs
Want To Be Memorable? It Starts With Your Content
SOURCE http://blog.slideshare.net/2013/08/16/hubspots-10-steps-
and-templates-for-creating-killer-slideshares/

4. The Essential
PowerPoint
Template for
KILLER
SLIDESHARE
PRESENTATIONS A publication of

5. Designing a PowerPoint from scratch isn’t ideal for most marketers.
Though some of us may have some flair for design, it’s pretty daunting to look at the
default introduction title slide, knowing you have a ways to go before you have an
engaging, interactive presentation to upload to SlideShare.
To make sure you’re set up for SlideShare success, follow the steps in this template.
We’ll help you figure out the slide design elements, then combine them in different
layouts, and then take care of some SlideShare-specific technical skills. Bonus: We
even sprinkled in some extra resources in case you want to make your presentation
extra spiffy.
INTRO

6. Want to skip ahead? Here’s what we’re going to cover.
DESIGN
5 … Fonts
6 … Colors
7 … Visual Content
8 … Stock Photos
9 … Vector Icons
10 … PowerPoint Objects
11 … Screenshots
LAYOUTS
13 … Cover
14 … Section Header
15 … Numbered List
16 … Checklist
17 … Bulleted List
18 … Quote
19 … Statistic
20 … Calls-to-Action
22 … Author Profile
SLIDESHARE
TECH TIPS
24 … “Animated” Slides
29 … Clickable Links
30 … Export as PDF

7. DESIGN
We’re going to walk you through best practices for creating engaging visual
content in a presentation. Then, you can use these design elements as
building blocks for the rest of your SlideShare presentation.
The essential visual elements that’ll
make your slides look gorgeous.

8. FONTS
Pick two different fonts to use throughout your presentation: One for
your headers, and one for your body text. Your header font should be
bold and eye-catching, and your body text font should be simple and
easy to read. (See how we’ve done it in this presentation?)
1
2 When trying to emphasize small text, use bold text, not italics. Bold
text is much easier to read when it’s small.
Want to spruce up your
presentation with custom fonts?
Here are 28 free fonts
you can download.

9. COLORS
Colors set the tone for your presentation and
help your readers digest information. Without
diving too deep into theory, one of the best
color combinations is the triadic color scheme
(shown on the right), which is three colors
located 120° from each other on the color wheel.
At the very least, you should have one or two
neutral colors and one stand-out color. Learn more about
the different types of color combinations in this helpful post
by KissMetrics.
1
2 The key is to make sure there is a big difference between the colors you pick to
help grab your viewers’ attention and direct their attention to where the important
information is.

10. VISUAL CONTENT
There are lots of ways to incorporate visual content into your
presentations without hiring a designer. Here are four ways can give
your presentations some visual pop:
• Stock Photos
• Vector Icons
• Screenshots
• PowerPoint Objects
In the next few slides, we’ll break down each type of visual
content as well as resources you can use to find and create
them.

11. Stock Photos
Having engaging photos is crucial to your
SlideShare’s success -- but you need to make
sure you have exclusive rights to using them.
While you can always use Creative Commons
visuals, non-cheesy stock photos look much
more professional and can be used whenever
and wherever you like.
VISUAL CONTENT
Tip: To receive 75 free stock
photos you can use in your
presentations, head here:
http://bitly.com/75StockSocial

12. Vector Icons
Notice that icon to the right? It’s called a vector icon: it’s
basically an icon that can be stretched to any size without
looking pixelated. Pretty cool, huh?
They are extremely useful for conveying abstract concepts –
think of things like email and social media that you can’t just
snap a picture of (or you can … but it’s not that eye-catching).
There are a few ways you can find or create vector icons:
•Find free or paid vector images online, such as here.
•Use special character fonts like Webdings, Wingdings, and
Symbols.
VISUAL CONTENT

13. PowerPoint Objects
Another way to create icons and objects is by using PowerPoint’s
shapes. Though there aren’t a ton of options available, they can
be a great way to hack together engaging icons and objects.
To spruce up your PowerPoint objects, select the object you
want to beautify, then in the menu, click “Format,” then “Shape”
in the drop down menu. A whole slew of options will appear
so you can customize your object:
•Fill Background: Under “Fill,” select a color in the drop down next to “Color.”
•Transparency: In that same tab, drag the “Transparency” slider to make it more transparent.
•Rotate: Under “3-D Rotation,” you can rotate an object on the X, Y, or Z axis.
•Glow: Under “Glow and Soft Edges,” you can select the color, size, and transparency of a halo around
your object.
•Shadow: Under “Shadow” you can choose the color, size, distance from object, transparency, and angle
of the shadow.
VISUAL CONTENT
This speech bubble is an example of a
PowerPoint shape. If you want to learn
more ways to create visual content,
check out our visual content crash
course here:
http://bit.ly/VisualContentCrashCourse

14. Screenshots
And of course, if you want to include any
images of software or websites, you’ll want to
incorporate them into your presentations.
You’ll take a screenshot outside of PowerPoint
(on a PC, push the “Print Screen” button; on a
Mac push “Command” + “Shift” + 3).
Once you have an image of your screen, you
can use PowerPoint to crop, edit, and
annotate the screenshot. For example, we
used an arrow found in the PowerPoint
Objects to highlight a blog post headline in the
example on the right.
VISUAL CONTENT

15. LAYOUTS
The next step to creating a presentation of your very own is to mix and
match the previous design elements in different slide layouts. Here are 10
to get you started, but keep in mind that you should substitute your own
design flair when you use them.
10 different slide layouts you can
use in your own presentation.

16. INSERT TITLE.
Insert Subtitle: Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.

17. HEADER TITLE
SUBTITLE

18. Nulla lacus eros.
NUMBERED LIST TITLE
1
2
3
4
Facilisis vitae condimentum ut.
Aliquam accumsan neque.
Praesent elementum tortor non diam mollis.

19. CHECKLIST TITLE
Nulla lacus eros.
Facilisis vitae condimentum ut.
Aliquam accumsan neque.
Praesent elementum tortor non diam mollis.

20. • Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet.
• Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore.
• Et dolore magna aliqua..
• Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud
exercitation.
• Ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex.
• Ea commodo consequat nostrud exercitation.
BULLETED LIST TITLE

21. “Duis eu velit
facilisis, ornare dui
eget, gravida
neque.” AUTHOR NAME
Author Title

22. 55% of people in lacinia sit amet ligula sit amet vestibulum.
Source: Company Name

23. Insert CTA Header
CTA Copy: Nullam laoreet,
turpis nec fermentum
pellentesque.
http://bit.ly/YourCustomURL

24. ATTEND EVENT NAME.
BOSTON, MA | AUGUST 19-22, 2013
Click here to learn more:
WWW.INBOUND.COM

25. BY AUTHOR.
@Twitter_Handle

26. SLIDESHARE
TECH TIPS
Being successful on SlideShare isn’t as simple as uploading an existing PowerPoint
presentation – no matter how beautifully you’ve designed it. Here are three really
important tips to consider before you upload your presentation.
A few extra pointers to help you spruce up
your presentations for SlideShare.

27. “ANIMATED” SLIDES
SlideShare does not support PowerPoint animation, so all of those smooth
entrances you planned for your text boxes and objects go out the window
once you upload your presentation.
… But you can still fake animation by creating a series of slides with a new
object appearing on each new slide.
Click through the next few slides to see how this might work.

28. “ANIMATED” SLIDES
Ooooh! Here’s a
new object that just
“appeared” on
the right!
SlideShare does not support PowerPoint animation, so all of those smooth
entrances you planned for your text boxes and objects go out the window
once you upload your presentation.
… But you can still fake animation by creating a series of slides with a new
object appearing on each new slide.
Click through the next few slides to see how this might work.

29. “ANIMATED” SLIDES
Ooooh! Here’s a
new object that just
“appeared” on
the right!
… And another, on
the left!
SlideShare does not support PowerPoint animation, so all of those smooth
entrances you planned for your text boxes and objects go out the window
once you upload your presentation.
… But you can still fake animation by creating a series of slides with a new
object appearing on each new slide.
Click through the next few slides to see how this might work.

30. “ANIMATED” SLIDES
Ooooh! Here’s a
new object that just
“appeared” on
the right!
… And another, on
the left!
TIME-SAVING TIP
Work backwards. Create the final slide with all the elements in place. Then,
duplicate it however many times you want the animations to appear. Next, delete
extra objects from earlier slides of the animation. This way, you’re not trying to
position all the elements again and again as you progress through the animation.
SlideShare does not support PowerPoint animation, so all of those smooth
entrances you planned for your text boxes and objects go out the window
once you upload your presentation.
… But you can still fake animation by creating a series of slides with a new
object appearing on each new slide.
Click through the next few slides to see how this might work.

31. CLICKABLE LINKS
If done right, you can include links in your
presentation that SlideShare users can click on
directly in the slide – perfect for showcasing
any calls-to-action or external resources.
If done wrong, you’ll have something in
SlideShare that looks like a link, but you can’t
actually click on it, which could severely
decrease your click-through rates.
The process for making clickable links in
SlideShare is different for Mac and PC, but you
can get a step-by-step guide for both platforms
in this HubSpot blog post.

32. EXPORT TO ADOBE PDF
If you are making a clickable aspect, you will
already have done this step, so you can skip to
the next slide.
If you don’t have links in your presentation,
you’ll need to make sure you export your
PowerPoint to PDF (ideally in Adobe Acrobat).
This way, make sure the quality and designs
are preserved once uploading to SlideShare.
To save your file as a PDF:
•Mac: Select File > Save As, then choose “PDF”
as format.
•PC: Select File > Save As Adobe PDF.

33. The PDF of your slides is ready
to be uploaded to SlideShare.
Go on, do it!
Once it’s uploaded, add a title
and description, and promote
it on your social media
channels to get exposure.
Then, sit back, relax, and
watch the traffic and leads
pour in!
… AND
YOU’RE
DONE!

34. So you have a great presentation and you
want it to drive more business …
can help with that.

35. What is ?
All-in-one inbound marketing
software.
Get a Demo
Video
Overview

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