Are you using Slideshare as a company social platform?

Everybody has PowerPoint slides right?  The “PowerPoint Meeting” is almost a standing corporate joke.  Well, have you thought about putting those slide to work for you on the social web?

Try Slideshare, a very simple tool to leverage your internal content externally.

It’s exceedingly easy to upload a presentation in a matter of minutes and apply keywords to help people find you.  For maximum exposure sync your LinkedIn and Facebook accounts with Slideshare.  .

For those who are environmentally-minded, Slideshare makes it easy to distribute and share without feeling guilty over how many trees you just killed at the copier.  And if the content is confidential, then create a group on LinkedIn or Facebook and limit your exposure to just your exclusive audience. There are also password security features within Slideshare.

Although many are familiar with the uploading of presentations or documents in such formats as PowerPoint, Word, and PDF, embedding videos and audio can create a complete shareable webinar.  There are some excellent reasons to embed video in your presentations:

• Great for demonstrating a particular technique when words fall short.
• Compare different styles or ideas such as comparing Oprah’s interviewing style to Ellen DeGeneres’s or comparing a Ford television ad to a BMW one.  Get the picture?
• Incorporate interviews or clips of videos related to your topic downloaded from YouTube.
• Draw attention and captivate to maintain momentum in a presentation.

Slideshare is designed to PUSH your presentation or documents out to the world,  whereas posting them on your website, viewers have to be driven to your site. Slideshare also has social features like “favorite-ing” and commenting. You also have the option to allow viewer to download or embed your presentation.

In one recent case study, an analyst report received 85 percent of its downloads from the Slideshare posting, an indication of a growing acceptance of the site as a corporate communications channel.

Slideshare is getting noticed in larger companies, too, even those with regulatory constraints that might otherwise shy away from social media.  Using this platform organizations are able to share information, such as annual reports and press annoucements.  Pfizer recently launched its own Slideshare channel.

With the growing popularity of this site, it’s likely that these presentations will feature more and more in search engine results too.  So put those slides to work folks!  Give Slideshare a try.