The social publishing site Scribd can serve two purposes for your blog. As a placeholder for your content and outpost for your blog. I started using Scribd because I was looking for something that can serve as a placeholder for data-rich real estate statistics for the consumption of then my first blog, Urban Trekker. At the time, Typepad didn’t have the tool that you can use to insert a document inside your blog. And if I use links, the blog outlived the links. Links generated by multiple listings only good for 30 days. After that it becomes a broken link.
So I learn to use Scribd. Think of Scribd as the long tail for blogging.
It’s easy to use. However, if you are not familiar with it, here’s how you can get started. Even if you don’t have an account set up yet, you now can upload, open your account on the fly and set up the account simultaneously.
According to the information on CrunchBase, “Scribd is the largest social and reading website. The company claims have more than 50 million readers every month and houses more than 10 million documents, including best-selling books, research reports, recipes, presentations, and more. More than 1.4 million searches happen on Scribd.com every day.”
Can’t ignore the big community over there.
What’s interesting about members of the community there is: they are “active” readers. They are not so much into making comments. They are more interested in reading.
You can see here from the homepage how the 67 documents I’ve uploaded read by 51,000+ readers and 1,200+ documents downloaded (below). People can also read documents on the go via their e-readers. So you capture audience that would normally “not” reading your blog. Online and offline.
Here’s what your dashboard look like:
Scribd is like your library where you can pick up books, drop off some books to give away and meet with other members – all at the convenience of your place. That’s basically how it works.
– You can add other people’s document to your collection (and share it with others).
– You can upload your documents and documents in the Creative Commons to your account.
– You can subscribe to other members’ collection and they can do the same.
Tink3rs 