Slideshare is a wonderful site. You can find all kind of presentations there. What makes it even better is that the quality of the presentations is, in most cases, pretty high. These are the presentations that people are proud enough for making them so they are willing to share them with others.

Yes in a sense Slideshare is a social network where you can share your slides (pretty?).

But this blog post isn't about Slideshare. This post is, again, for Social Networks and online communities. People talk a lot, people communicate, people are sharing thoughts through social networks. But where are the companies, where is your brand in this social world?

Sometimes a company choose to create it's own social network, like Lenovo or even Plaisio, with myplaisio.gr for the greek market, to support it's customers. Other times a brand chooses to use one of the existing social networks like Coca Cola, Vodafone UK, Obama (yes Obama is also a brand) and others.

Witch approach it's better? Well it depends of what are you trying to accomplish through Social Networks. With your own social network - online community you can offer more to your users but there is also the cost of the infrastructure to consider. If you decide to use one of the existing social networks you have limitations posed by the social network it self but on the other hand the infrastructure is there and so are the users. Depending on your needs sometimes it's necessary to use both options.

What you should trying to achieve in both cases is to shorten the gap between your company and it's customers. Spend 5 minutes of your time to see the following presentation. It will give you a new perspective on social networks. If you are not sure witch solution is better for your company please don't hesitate to contact us.