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c h a p t e r12: SOCIAL APPLICATIONS■While the benefits of sharing content through social applications like Twitter
and YouTube are largely self-evident, there are additional applications for content-shar-
ing social sites. If your business objectives include establishing a position as a thought
leader, or if you are looking for collaborative input around early ideas that are appro-
priate for sharing publicly, consider using applications like Scribd, Google Docs, and
Slideshare. If you’ve hosted a webinar, or developed a research paper around a topic of
general interest, consider publishing it on these sites.
Slideshare and Scribd are particularly useful for small businesses, consultants,
and anyone else regardless of the organization size or vertical specialty interested in
thought leadership. Combined with a corporate blog, for example, Slideshare can be
used as a sharable publishing point for past presentations as well as presentations cre-
ated specifically for Slideshare to explain the use of a software service or impact a leg-
islative debate. Figure 12.4 shows the use of Scribd in sharing the owner’s manual for
a Sony Ericsson mobile phone, along with a Slideshare-based presentation on health-
care, authored by Dan Roam and C. Anthony Jones, M.D. This presentation won
Slideshare’s World’s Best Presentation of 2009 contest: It has been viewed more than
200,000 times, and it has been embedded in more than 600 other online locations.Figure 12.4 Scribd and Slideshare: Document Sharing