What started with a pilot with a dedicated channel for the Whitehouse in June 2009 now forms an integral part of SlideShare’s offering for brands. According to CEO Rashmi Sinha from SlideShare: “We have been thinking about channels for a while, and spent almost 6 months building it.”

Today it’s here – alive and kicking. SlideShare branded channels now form an integral part of their offering to advertisers (see slide 18/20). SlideShare co-operated with Federated Media, Universal McCann and Microsoft to build the branded channel dubbed the Microsoft Office Parent Toolbox: “work, play and everything in between” the channel’s tag-line reads. It features presentations and documents centered around home and family usage of Microsoft Office products. The channel can be reached externally with a brand-name friendly URL-structure. Simply add the name to SlideShare’s URL: http://www.slideshare.net/MicrosoftOffice. Please note the use of capitalization in the brand name – this makes it easier for users to recognize branded content from Microsoft Office in SlideShare’s (and Google’s) search results.

However, the branded channel is more than an environment within an external medium for showing off branded content. SlideShare deliberately chose to stay true to its original course. SlideShare branded channels are seamlessly integrated with the community’s core features: allow users to upload and share presentations with one another.

Through integration with a branded channel on a social network, brand owners can benefit from the community as oppossed to building traffic to their own website from scratch.

With the use of branded channels, SlideShare advises its advertisers to also work with channel curators and bloggers. The Parent Toolbox channel is moderated by Asha Dornfest (Parent Hacks), an authority in the parenting space. Dornfest, however, shares blogging responsibilities of the channel with some of the Web’s most talented parenting bloggers: Danny Evans, Ree Drummond and Maggie Mason, among others. They are swapping tips and documents that make family and home life easier and actively engage in conversations with users. Users based in the USA, in turn, are motivated to contribute content as well – everytime they upload, they enroll in a sweepstake in which Microsoft gives out 50 Microsoft Office licenses.

The vibrant community of SlideShare offers brand owners the opportunity to benefit from the virality aspects, as opposed to building traffic from scratch. Aside from integrating blog content on the channel, SlideShare also allows for inclusion of video content on the channel – both real life stories of users and product tips and tricks from Microsoft. For example, see this video of the Cheese Guy that uses Office to keep track of his scientific approach to producing cheese: “I especially like Roquefort [...] which is like smelling old soccer shoes. Cheese is molding bacteria, with controlled delay.” Love it or hate it, this is fun content to watch. What surprised me, however, is that Microsoft decided to host their videos on SlideShare, instead of YouTube and then embedding it within the branded channel on SlideShare. Single-source video really helps in terms of video SEO.

Expect more advertisers to follow Microsoft’s lead: “This offering is open to other advertisers, this is just the first one,” said Rashmi Sinha. SlideShare, however, declined to give specific details on the investment involved, other than that it involved a media buy requirement, comparable to what Google uses for YouTube. “Right now, we are negotiating one at a time,” SlideShare’s CEO said. “We are talking to more advertisers and expect to see more channel announcements in the future.”

Thanks to Beet.TV.

Coldwell Banker combines the features of YouTube with the power of localisation through Google Maps by enabling visitors to find real estate locations throughout the United States. Very smart move. The production quality of the videos shown on the channel varies substantially (compare this one with this one), but the idea is great. The channel already features more than 600 videos and new content is added daily from various locations. Mainly in the USA and a few listings from Italy.

“YouTube doesn’t offer the ability to find out what videos are local, but we geo-targeted the videos and populated them onto the map,” said Mike Fischer, Coldwell’s SVP of marketing. The goal for Coldwell, recognizing the popularity of YouTube, is to generate traffic outside of its own site. “Many go to YouTube first, instead of the normal site. It’s the place to engage people where they look for info,” Fischer said.

That says it all: think outside the site!

Thanks to ClickZ.