Reduce, reuse, recycle Turn desktop files into selling tools with Scribd

Posted by tom klein July 24, 2007

Even though the web grows like a weed, it still pales in comparison to how many files we all have right on our hard drives. It seems that everything created with MS Office is trapped.

Scribd can help you liberate your desktop based files and publish them on the web in all sorts of formats. You can take a simple MS Office document (Word, PowerPoint or Excel) and 1) Convert it to a PDF, HTML, JPEG, or even audio/MP3 format 2) Publish it online with its own public URL that will be indexed by Google and other search engines 3) See who is viewing each of your documents, including the search terms used to find it, or, finally, 4) Embed a long document in your blog or web site. This site is even broader in scope than Slideshare (featured in Start from one).

Why is this a good thing? Well, you can use all of your old files to add rich content to your site. Or, you can publish your files to Scribd as part of marketing to your target audience. It helps you take an old asset and polish it up to sell for you. Who knew that your old documents had such potential on the web! Now you do.

This system supports numerous file types, including anything you can put in a Word (.doc), PDF (.pdf), text (.txt), PowerPoint (.ppt), Excel (.xls), Postscript (.ps), or LIT (.lit) file. Just in case you were wondering, LIT files are used by the Microsoft Reader to read electronic books.

Have some white papers that you suspect might not have been read. You can load them into this system to convert them to MP3’s, then send them to your customers or clients so they can listen to them at their leisure, either at their office or just whenever they’re using their iPod. Remember the lessons of the Long Tail, when you put great content in many forms, you’re going to reach the biggest audience.

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