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Some SlideShare presentations are better than others. Some have gorgeous designs. Some have insanely actionable takeaways. Some just give down-to-earth advice. But the best SlideShare presentations represent all three.

And if you’re looking to get started making your own SlideShare, why not learn from the best of the best?To help you kick your own SlideShare presentations up a notch, here are 20 awesome SlideShares to check out.

When you’re clicking through the presentations below, notice how they weave the story through SlideShare format, design their slides, and make their presentations interactive with SlideShare-exclusive features. These are all crucial elements to making an awesome SlideShare — if you can apply them to your own presentations, you’ll be featured on the SlideShare homepage in no time. Bonus: You may just learn a thing or two about marketing while you’re at it. 😉

20 of the Best SlideShares for Marketers

1) The Undeniable Authority of the Social Customer, Desk

The internet has completely changed how customers and companies interact. Check out the SlideShare below from Desk to get a better picture of how customers act with much more information and communication at their fingertips. As far as the presentation itself goes, we love the color palette and how Desk visualized its stats — these two elements help make Desk’s message much more accessible than just a SlideShare of Excel graph after Excel graph.

2) 10 Things Your Customers Wish You Knew About Them, Help Scout

In the same vein of customer behavior, Help Scout had this awesome presentation of the main things your customers wish you knew. While the content of the presentation is extremely valuable, we admire the way Help Scout used typography in its design. Although there is much more text than we normally recommend for a SlideShare presentation, the way Help Scout uses fonts makes it easy for you to flip though the slides quickly, or stay and dive deeper into any individual slide.

3) Digital Strategy 101, Bud Caddell

Even though this SlideShare is almost 100 slides long, its content is pure gold. Caddell answers some of the biggest FAQs about digital strategy in a very accessible, almost tangible, way. The reason his slides are so straightforward is because of the way he’s laid them out. He’s really adept at making “animated” slides explain his story — something we all should learn how to do.

4) Rethinking the Mobile Web, Bryan Rieger

Often when marketers think about the “mobile web,” we think of iPhone vs. Android. According to this presentation by Bryan Rieger, that’s only a small fraction of the mobile web story. This is another example of awesomely displayed data — instead of being a jumble of stats, the presentation actually weaves them throughout the story in a meaningful way.

5) 10 Ways to Win the Internets, Upworthy

In case anyone isn’t familiar with them, Upworthy is a BuzzFeed-esque website that revolves around circulating viral videos … so it’s kind of perfect that it has a SlideShare about how to go viral. Besides having great advice about going viral, Upworthy does a great job of making its presentation interactive using clickable links.

6) Crap, the Content Marketing Deluge, Velocity Partners

Back in January, Doug Kessler from Velocity Partners shared this SlideShare with us — the response was so awesome, we had to share it again. The reason we love it so much is because the message — and delivery of that message — is pretty much flawless. Definitely take a second to flip through the presentation, as you’ll learn a great lesson while also soaking up a great piece of SlideShare content.

7) The Brand Gap, Marty Neumeier

If you’re interested in brand strategy and design, this presentation is for you. Although it’s kind of meta, I included this presentation because it has an awesome — yet very simple — design. Notice how the slides are only black and white — so Marty Neumeir only has typography, symbols, and spacing at his disposal.

8) What Would Steve Do? 10 Lessons from the World’s Most Captivating Presenters, HubSpot

Not to toot our own horn, but this presentation has been one of our most successful SlideShares, so we wanted to share it with you. I personally love how actionable tips are provided in a visual way. For example, in slides 47 through 49, the author explains the difference between “showing” and “telling” by putting the word “circle” next to a picture of a circle. Although showing, not telling, is a key storytelling technique in writing, it’s especially effective in presentations.

9) You Suck at PowerPoint!, Jesse Desjardins

Okay, maybe you don’t suck at PowerPoint, but this presentation has some awesome takeaways — and design aesthetics. I love how Jesse Desjardins uses neon versions of primary colors plus black and white photos to make his presentation pop.

10) 7 Tips for Getting Featured on SlideShare, SlideShare

If you are a SlideShare fanatic like we are, you’ve probably wondered how SlideShare chooses the “Featured Presentations” on its homepage every day. Well wonder no more — just click through this SlideShare! The presentation itself is also really awesome because of its extremely concise copy. In just 17 slides, you get all the information you need to know!

11) 10 Powerful Body Language Tips for Your Next Presentation, Soap Presentations

This presentation is inspirational from a design perspective — we especially love the color scheme. Using complementary colors (colors opposite each other on the color wheel) can be overwhelming at times, but because Soap Presentations uses them with lots of white space in the background, the colors draw your attention to the content of the slides.

12) How to Become a Better Speaker, The Presentation Designer

This presentation is awesome because of how it uses stock photos in a non-cheesy way. There are some truly terrible stock photos out there, so it can be easy to go wrong with them. But, this presentation’s stock photos integrate seamlessly with the design of the slides, and they add to the overall message instead of taking away from it.

13) Displaying Data, Bipul Deb Nath

In this post, we’ve already admired some presentations for their exceptional display of data — now this post will explain how to do it in your own presentations. I also love how this presentation is very concise and minimal, as it helps communicate a fairly advanced topic in an easy-to-understand way.

14) Design Your Career 2013, Slides That Rock

Although this presentation also uses black and white photos, it’s a bit more minimal than the last. The whole black and white color scheme really makes the salmon accent color pop — and the SlideShare creatively combines these elements for different slide layouts. Definitely bookmark this presentation as an example of a great SlideShare design.

15) Why Managing Sucks and How to Fix It, Achievers

Even though this presentation was originally a webinar, it doesn’t feel like one. Using bold colors, fonts, and photos, this presentation leaves viewers with actionable and accessible tips to improving their managing skills — a pretty lofty topic for a 36-slide presentation.

16) How to Build SEO Into Content Strategy, Jonathon Colman

Although the design of this SlideShare isn’t out-of-this-world awesome, I had to include it in this list because of the content inside the presentation. In 109 slides, Jonathon Colman breaks down a ton of myths that many people have about search engine optimization professionals without tiring out viewers.

17) 25 Mind Blowing Email Marketing Stats, Salesforce

This SlideShare design isn’t mind blowing — in fact, it’s just one slide design over and over — but the substance of the presentation is pretty awesome. I included this presentation in this roundup because I thought it was a great example of curated content in a SlideShare. If you decide to take this route, however, you might want to switch up the slide layout a bit more. 😉

18) The Seven Deadly Social Media Sins, XPLAIN

Besides having some great takeaways for any inbound marketer, I love how the presentation successfully uses Creative Commons images in almost every slide. It’s pretty inspirational — even if you don’t have a huge budget for stock photos, you can have an engaging presentation.

19) Can’t Buy Me Love, Rand Fishkin

Originally created for a SearchLove conference, this presentation by Rand Fishkin translates perfectly to SlideShare because he balances concise text with vibrant visuals. I also love how he unobtrusively includes clickable resource links so you can learn more about what he’s presenting if you want.

20) The Best Digital Campaigns of 2012, Gregory Pouy

Last but not least, this presentation includes all the components of an awesome SlideShare. The design is sleek, the information is easily digestible, and the slides include interactive components — including an embedded YouTube video. Bonus: It has some great marketing campaign examples to learn from at the same time.