LinkedIn's SlideShare boosts analytics capabilities

IDG News Service - SlideShare, a presentation-sharing site used primarily by professionals, has added a premium feature that lets members closely monitor usage of their presentations.

The detailed analytics data is intended to help presentation owners in their jobs, whether it is by fine-tuning sales efforts, sharpening marketing strategies or revising corporate training materials.

The new feature is called SendTracker and lets people share their presentations with hand-picked recipients via unique links that can be sent via email or through other methods, like social media direct messaging.

Once the recipients access the presentations by clicking on the links, SlideShare tracks and compiles a variety of engagement metrics, such as how much time each person spent looking at each slide and how many times they viewed the presentation.

"This feature can be broadly applicable," said Ross Mayfield, SlideShare's Director of Business Development.

For example, a salesperson can decide based on the analytics data when might be a good time to follow up with a prospect, while marketers could monitor whether employees are using outdated marketing material, he said. Educators and corporate trainers would use the data to tweak learning resources.

SendTracker is available at no extra cost to subscribers of SlideShare paid accounts -- called SlidePro -- which start at $19 per month. However, SlideShare will let users of its free version try out SendTracker with one of their presentations. Members can only share presentations via SendTracker that they have uploaded to their documents library.

SlideShare, which was acquired last year by LinkedIn, boasts about 60 million monthly visitors who upload, share, review, rate and comment on presentations, documents, videos and webinars. Its users include the White House, NASA, the United Nations, IBM, Pfizer and McGraw-Hill.

Juan Carlos Perez covers enterprise communication/collaboration suites, operating systems, browsers and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Juan on Twitter at @JuanCPerezIDG.