LinkedIn Rebrands SlideShare and Expands Vital Resources

It doesn’t seem too long ago that LinkedIn was considered a website that you only visited if you were looking for a new job. Thankfully they have ensured a steady growth thanks to creating the ultimate eco-system that provides an everyday destination for professionals.

They seem to have a knack of getting it right and buying the online education website Lynda.com or entering the world of content with the acquisition of Pulse, for example, are incredibly forward thinking. Meanwhile, Twitter seems to be struggling to evolve or attract more users as LinkedIn’s continuous growth appears to be gathering momentum.

Although it has been over three years since LinkedIn acquired the web-based slide sharing service SlideShare, however it is clear that it will become yet another invaluable tool for professionals to use from the LinkedIn toolbox. The service has just been rebranded and now goes by the insipid name of LinkedIn SlideShare, but make no mistake this is a very powerful move.

Many underestimate the power of SlideShare, which has over 70 million monthly active users with almost 400,000 presentations added each month to their existing pile of 18 million. Its Achilles heel is that 80 percent of its traffic comes via search, but that is something the people at LinkedIn are aiming to address by making it an integral part of their platform.

The introduction of a new feature called “Clipping” gives users the ability to bookmark individual slides. LinkedIn SlideShare gives users the power to cherry pick presentations and save or share relevant information to their unique personal clipboards. Being able to share these clipboards to LinkedIn or any other medium you can think of is quite liberating and will feel completely natural to members of the Pinterest generation.

Presentation statistics will also record which slide has been “Clipped” the most and could help you create the perfect antidote to the “Death by Powerpoint” phenomenon that has plagued creators of presentations for many years.

The secret to success in the crowded global workforce is a good old fashioned work ethic combined with an always learning mentality. If you can also collaborate with others and surround yourselves with like-minded souls on a similar journey, anything is possible.

I think that it is also vital to digest the thoughts and opinions of others that might challenge your own personal belief system. Ultimately this will make you better-rounded individuals who are perhaps not afraid to embrace new ideas that previously might have felt alien.

It is never too late also to create your own personal professional brand to position yourself as a thought leader in your area of expertise. You as a person are unique, and it is your authentic voice that separates you from the crowd, something you should embrace sooner than later.

Everything I have mentioned above is vital to laying your path to success but as I write these words I am experiencing an epiphany of sorts. The tools that make this as easy as possible are all available on LinkedIn and their acquisitions of Pulse, SlideShare and Lynda.com are starting to provide a fantastic array of resources under one roof.

We should not be surprised at how LinkedIn is continuing to grow with such clear focus and starting to breath down the neck of sites such as Twitter. Now that you can seamlessly drift from each of these LinkedIn resources at your disposal the only question that remains is how will you utilize them?

Anurag Harsh [other articles] is a founding exec of Ziff Davis (NASDAQ: JCOM), the world's largest tech & gaming digital corp. He graduated (MBA/MS) from Wharton & MIT, has performed two sold out solo concerts at Carnegie Hall and co-authored the McGraw-Hill bestseller “M-Commerce Security”. Follow him on LinkedIn or Twitter @anuragharsh