Over the past 3 years i've been (in order) a user, fan, advisor, and investor in SlideShare. I was first introduced to the product via a TechCrunch blog post, and i've been hooked ever since.
Since October 2006 i've posted more than 60 presentations on SlideShare, had over 300,000 views and over 10,000 file downloads, embedded my presentations in numerous blog posts, and used the product for hundreds of talks and presentations at speaking events & conferences. it's one of the single most useful web services for business i've come across, and because of that i sought out the founders several years back, offered to help them as an advisor, and subsequently became an angel investor in 2007. In addition, Rashmi & Jon are close friends & some of my favorite people to hang out with :)
However, up until now SlideShare wasn't a service i could use to make money with directly. While the website has grown from ~5M to over 20M users in the past year, and generates an incredible amount of traffic & visibility for my talks and presentations, i hadn't really thought about how i could use it to help my business other than via word of mouth.
This morning, that all changed.
SlideShare just released SlideShare for Business, & launched new services called AdShare & LeadShare for driving traffic & leads.
I am not exaggerating when i say these products have the potential to change business marketing as we know it, and are possibly the most notable advertising innovation since Google launched Adwords and AdSense. They make social media marketing measurable & performance-based.
Let me say that again.
SlideShare has just released the most significant business-focused advertising and marketing technology innovation since Google launched keyword-based text advertising in 2001.
Up until now, there hasn't been a performance-driven way for people to drive on-demand traffic & leads using social media marketing for business purposes. Now SlideShare makes it easy to use business presentations and related social media content to drive traffic (with AdShare), and collect customer leads (with LeadShare) using targeted, measurable, pay-for-performance methods.
Making social media marketing measurable & performance-based is no small thing. This marks a dramatic shift in how to use professional presentation content to drive meaningful, predictable customer acquisition for their business. Anyone can now upload their business presentations, generate targeted traffic, and start collecting qualified leads for their business. That's nothing short of groundbreaking.
I encourage you to check out SlideShare for Business and give it a test drive.