Every day it seems there’s a new tool or a new piece of technology that’s being touted as the ‘next great thing.’ Is Slideshare really worth a look for lawyers?

A couple of months ago, I did a post on content marketing on the Legal Ease blog which made the point that there is an increased demand for content in part because of the huge SEO (search engine optimization) boost it brings. That means there will be lots of people out there selling content, and much of it will be of poor quality and may not bring the desired results. (This is especially dangerous for lawyers who have specific ethical rules that must be followed – but that’s a topic for another day.) And you’ve got to keep it interesting, with different kinds of content that engages audiences in different ways. This is where Slideshare might help.

Although I’ve had an account for some time, I’ve only started actively using SlideShare recently. Here are some of the reasons I think SlideShare might be worth looking at:

• Creating presentations forces you to convey information succinctly and more visually – both of which should improve comprehension and retention for your audience
• Slideshare makes it easy for you to upload your presentations
• If you already give presentations to demonstrate your expertise, SlideShare provides an extended audience for those presentations over and above those who were in the room (or on the webinar) for your presentation
• Presentations can be a good way to educate clients and potential clients not only about what you do, but about the legal process
• Slideshare is already optimized for search engines, so your presentations get greater visibility than if you just post them on your own site
• Slideshare makes it easy to share or embed your presentations into a blog post, website, etc.
• Slideshare has tracking capabilities (called Send Tracker) so that you can send a presentation by email and then see how it is viewed
• Slideshare sends you analytics information by email so that you can see the performance of each presentation you upload – how many views, comments, tweets, likes, and downloads each presentation receives
• You can easily update your presentations, which will automatically update embedded versions, too
• Slideshare is not limited to presentations alone – you can upload and share PDFs and video, too
• You can save or share presentations by others – another great content and educational resource!

To demonstrate, here’s a presentation I’ve embedded from Slideshare that might inspire you to create new (and better) presentations of your own:

If you want to see my fledgling Slideshare page, you can find it here.