SlideShare is a platform that can be used to publish and distribute presentations in various formats, videos and other documents such as PDFs and infographics. SlideShare was founded in 2006 by Rashmi Sinha, Jonathan Boutelle and Amit Ranjan and is now one of the top 200 websites worldwide. SlideShare investors include Venrock, David E. Siminoff and Marc Cuban. Since May 2012, SlideShare has belonged to Linkedin. The purchase price was $119 million.
General Information
SlideShare is one of the most popular applications in Web 2.0. As a platform that requires interaction with users, it joins the list of social applications such as YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, but it also has significant differences. Because SlideShare is primarily an e-learning application with which users can further educate themselves in certain subject areas.
SlideShare was originally intended to make it easier for companies to share presentations with their own employees. However, thanks to the possibilities of e-learning, SlideShare quickly became known to a broad public and is now used not only by governments, educational institutions and numerous companies from the private sector, but also by around 60 million users per month, according to their own statements.
Functions
SlideShare is free to use. Registration is only required. Optionally, SlideShare offers paid accounts: Silver, Gold and Platinum, for example. The range of functions is larger here. In the free version, SlideShare also offers users rights management, embedding YouTube videos and connecting to social media platforms . If a soundtrack is laid over a slide share, it is called a slide cast. Basically, the following file formats are supported:
1.) Presentations
– pdf, ppt, pps, pptx, ppsx, pot, potx
– orp
– key, zip
2.) Documents
– pdf, doc, docx, rtf
– odt, ods
– Apple iWork Pages
3.) Video formats
– mp4, m4v, wmv, mpeg, avi, mov, mpg, mkv, ogg , asf, vob, 3gp, rm, rmvb, flv
Importance for SEO
Content posted on SlideShare spreads rapidly across the web, with the content being virally distributed by users insofar as it represents added value. SlideShare offers corresponding hyperlinks that automatically connect a Slideshare to Facebook, Google+, Linkedin, Pinterest, Twitter or a WordPress blog or make it available on these media. This has made the platform interesting for online marketing and search engine optimization.
It’s about branding on the one hand and traffic on the other. Businesses can share their expertise via SlideShare to let their potential customers know they are dealing with a professional brand. White papers, infographics, and presentations can also lead to increased traffic on your own company website. If the content is particularly interesting, it spreads virally and can enormously increase page views on a stored website. However, a slide share should also be marked accordingly. For example, through keywording, a corporate design or embedding on a website to make this content directly available to users.