“Meet Our SMEs” is a new blog series designed to acquaint you with some of our behind-the-scenes Cisco SMEs (subject matter experts) who have gone above and beyond to integrate social media into their day job. In addition to introducing you to their background and areas of expertise, we have highlighted some of their social media achievements and best practices. We hope you find these SMEs’ stories interesting and possibly even applicable to enhancing your own social media practice.
Meet Janel: A Cisco DocWiki Expert
A Project Manager noted as a social champion for her remarkable participation on Cisco DocWiki, Janel is an expert within the realm of collaboration and social media for the Knowledge Management & Delivery team. In particular, she aims her focus on empowering customers by delivering relevant content on a timely basis while maintaining meaningful two-way conversations with them on numerous social channels.
Janel’s Leadership on Cisco DocWiki and Other Social Media
As the Cisco conference room became quiet for the start of day 2 of Social Media Week – San Francisco, attendees were typing rapidly. What may otherwise be construed as rude was actually a room full of attentive people eager to post in-the-moment thoughts about the days’ presentations.
Here are 5 things I liked, and 5 things I loved:
“Likes”
1. Rebecca Brown, Director of Social Media at Intel, shared her guidelines for social media: disclose who you are, never disclose confidential information, and use common sense. Now that’s refreshing, and a lot easier to follow than a verbose social media policy.
Michael Brito, left, moderating a panel with Todd Wilms of SAP, Gina Ballenger of Wells Fargo, Rebecca Brown of Intel, and Maria Poveromo of Adobe.
2. Robb Begg, VP of marketing at Radian 6 pointed out that people focus too much time on the extreme situations, causing unwarranted fear and doubt. For every terrible outlier, there are hundreds of thousands of positive interactions and opportunities.
3. During a panel on the future of social business, Mario Sundar from LinkedIn said we can look forward to measurement tools that will be able to calculate return on investment (ROI) for social media.
We have been getting a lot of questions about Social Media Week at Cisco (#SMWCisco) so we thought it would be best to share our answers with you all. If you have any other questions we haven’t covered here, please let us know by commenting on this blog post.
Here we go:
Location: If you are attending in person, please come to building 9 on the Cisco San Jose Campus.
Building 9, 1st floor
260 E. Tasman Drive
San Jose, CA 95134
Check In and Parking: Registration starts at 8am. Use the back entrance Read More »
We want to dedicate today’s blog post to all of our wonderful speakers at the “Social Enterprise” Hub, Day 1. Without further ado, check out the lineup below and make a note of our hash tag for the day (#SMWCisco) as well as the speakers’ Twitter handles. Happy tweeting and we hope to see you on February 14!
Many companies today are jumping on the bandwagon to add custom social media accounts to their list of web properties. The Cisco Support Community team is one such group, but this team has done so particularly well and seen great successes with their endeavors.
In early 2010, they launched and revamped their social initiatives in hopes of staying connected with customers and extending the community beyond Cisco’s immediate reach. Just over a year afterward, the team was recognized as the winner of the 2011 Forrester Groundswell Award in the B2B Supporting Category. What’s more, Cisco estimates that the community-based support on Facebook and Twitter is saving the company more than $400K annually! Not everybody rises to fame with the fruits of their social media labor. I was curious to find out what the team did that led to such positive results, so I chatted with Pratibha Gupta and Mohan Rao, leads of the social media branch of the Support Community team.
If you have been paying attention to the Social Media Week programming, you probably know that on February 14, 2012 Cisco has planned a day of events with some of the leading voices in social media. Cisco’s GETideas.org team is adding to this roster with a mid-day panel, “#SMLuvsSocialGood”.
This panel will focus on how organizations are using social media for their social good efforts. From raising awareness and funds to activation and coordination; social good has found its voice in social media. Panelists will offer a multi-faceted perspective and key-takeaways that will help your next social good effort. If you are interested in leveraging social media for greater social good, this is a panel you won’t want to miss!
Sitting on the panel will be:
Karla Ballard (One Economy, moderator)- Karla Ballard is the Chief of Strategic Development – Media and National Partnerships, managing partnership relationships on behalf of One Economy’s corporate partners like Comcast/NBC, Teach for America, City Year and others. She will bring a unique perspective to the typical corporate viewpoint.
Jason Falls (Social Media Explorer) -- Jason Falls is an author, speaker and CEO, the latter of Social Media Explorer, an education and information products company focused on digital and social media marketing. He will bring a practitioners perspective to the panel.
Mary Anne Petrillo (Cisco)- Mary Anne is a seasoned marketing professional and at the forefront of innovative online education marketing programs within the Cisco Corporate Social Responsibility. Working on such projects as www.ATC21S.org, , and most recently serving as executive producer ofwww.getideas.org, she has a unique angle on leveraging social media for social good within a large enterprise.
Evan Steiner (HUB Ventures) -- Evan Steiner manages a myriad of projects for the Hub Bay Area, a purpose-driven collaborative workspace with over 1,000 members in San Francisco and Berkeley that is connected to 30 other locations through the global Hub network. Evan has a unique community level perspective that is not to be missed.
If you are in the San Francisco/San Jose area, plan to attend the live event – if not, watch it on the Cisco UStream channel. The panels will be watching the #SMWCisco hash tag (as opposed to the general #SMWSF hashtag) so the U-stream audience can interact with the panel along with the live audience.
Did you hear that Facebook filed its S1? I thought so…as did the entire world. There is some very interesting data coming out of the filing, including how many members it has (845 millionmonthly active users; 483 million daily active users), how much revenue it has (Revenue: $3.71 billion; net income: $1 billion), how many likes and comments per day (2.7 billion), how many photos uploaded per day (250 million) and how many friendship connections (100 billion).
So, what the Facebook S1 says to me is that not only are manymanymanymanymany people using social media, some are actually making some money off of it (see also LinkedIn, Zynga, Groupon, etc.)
What this means in my world is that I get to talk to folks about social media and give my perspective on the why’s and wherefore’s of it in a corporate world (or, at least Cisco’s world)…and more specifically in a corporate communications world. Read More »
Cupid has worked his magic and helped us bring together some awesome speakers for our February 14th Social Enterprise Day at Social Media Week. Check out our full agenda and information on how to register. All times are in Pacific Standard Time.
8:00 – 8:55 Networking Breakfast
8:55 – 9:00 Welcome
9:00 – 9:50 Executive Dialogue: Social Media through an Executive Lens Cisco executives, Carlos Dominguez and Sheila Jordan will share their perspectives on social media adoption. Carlos will tell his story on how and why he has become an avid social media user and Sheila will take you behind the firewall. She will highlight how you can prepare your IT organization to help drive adoption of social media and collaboration technologies. This dialogue will focus on understanding how a company can embrace social media at the executive level while protecting its intellectual property.
Dialoguers: Carlos Dominguez (@carlosdominguez), SVP, “The Tech Nowist”, Cisco and Sheila Jordan (@CiscoSheila), SVP, Communication and Collaboration IT, Cisco
Moderator: Karen Snell (@kcsnell), Social Media Communications Manager, Cisco
10:00 – 10:50 Cisco’s Social Media Journey This presentation will give you a sneak peek into Cisco’s social media journey, best practices, innovations and lessons learned over the years. Jeanette will also give you some tips on how to set up and scale your social media center of excellence based on Cisco’s center of excellence model. Presenter: Jeanette Gibson (@JeanetteG), Senior Director, Global Social Media and Digital Marketing, Cisco
11:00 – 11:50 Panel: The Road to Becoming a Social Business This panel will explore the framework for becoming a social business and offer perspectives on social content strategy to create great stories. This session will address questions on how to scale your social efforts across your company and globally, and will leave you with some practical tips and lessons learned.
Moderator: Michael Brito (@britopian), SVP, Social Business Planning, Edelman Digital
Panelists: Read More »
As a Michigan native, I was raised in a state well known for one industry in particular: Automotive. This past week, the automotive industry was placed on spotlight at the 2012 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit, featuring the latest innovations in automotive designs, engines, interior options, and more. This year’s attendance to the 9-day show topped 800,000, with the largest opening day crowd since 2005! Historically, this industry has utilized traditional forms of communication to harness attraction from the public. However, trends are showing how this industry is embracing social media to broaden its outreach.
Collaborating directly with Eric Hoppe, a Social Media Analyst in Michigan who works specifically on automotive campaigns, we explored emerging social media trends at this year’s auto show. Through photos and insights collected live from the Auto Show floor, we exchanged exciting dialogues about how social media is positively impacting the automotive industry.
If you have browsed the Social Media Week agenda, your eyes have probably caught a panel discussion on The Road to Becoming A Social Business. We’re thrilled to have Michael Brito (@britopian), SVP Edelman Digital and author of the book, Smart Business, Social Business moderate this panel with Adobe, SAP, Wells Fargo and Intel. We’re going to cover questions such as: How do you hold people accountable? How do you organize for social? How do you create or find content that make great stories? How do you encourage content innovation and experimentation while protecting your brand? How do you scale? And many more questions along the same lines. In addition to the discussion, our panelists will leave you with some practical tips you can take back with you right away. If you plan to attend this session live or on the Cisco UStream channel, be ready to ask your questions in person or via social media using the #SMWCisco hash tag. (Note: the hash tag for the entire week is #SMWSF but we have set up a hash tag specific to our day at Cisco to help better navigate through the questions related to our event.)
Drum roll please… immediately following the panel, Michael will be signing his book, Smart Business, Social Business. The book walks you through the internal transformation of organizations into a social business and describes the key factors to be considered in this evolution. To learn more, check out our video interview with Michael. (By the way, we had a great time shooting the video interview. Check out a video montage of bloopers below.)
What are you doing on February 14, 2012? Mark your calendar for a date with us! Cisco is hosting a day on The Social Enterprise (Part 1) as part of Social Media Week, a week-long event series dedicated to what else…social media. You can join this event live or via our UStream channel. Registration for the live event is required and hurry because space is limited for this free event. (Advance registration for the UStream channel is not needed). The hash tag for the entire week is #SMWSF but for our day at Cisco, we will be using the #SMWCisco hash tag to monitor and respond to questions related to our event. If you want to chat with us, send your tweet to @CiscoSocial.
As we’re getting ready, we will share with you some behind-the-scenes doodling and words of wisdom from our distinguished speakers. Let’s get started.
In his recent report “A Strategy for Managing Social Media Proliferation”, Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang) urges companies to follow 5 pragmatic steps. As you walk through these steps, you’ll find that executive buy-in and support are critical in wide-scale social media adoption. In his afternoon session, Jeremiah will explore how today’s modern executives are using social media to lead, connect with customers and forge their company through their industry. Secondly, he’ll explore what business teams inside of a company require in order to be successful as they build their programs. Read More »
At Cisco, we often speak at different venues about how we set up and operationalized social media. We always receive so many questions on this topic that we decided to share our process and lessons learned with the larger social community in a more organized and methodical way. We have partnered with Frost and Sullivan to create a guidebook on “Operationalizing a B-to-B Social Media Center of Excellence”. This case study talks about how
our Social Media Marketing Hub emerged
we defined the charter, roles and responsibilities of this hub and
we engage with the various parts of the organization, also known as spokes
Following the guidance of the Frost and Sullivan research team, we broke down the process of creating our social media center of excellence step by step. Check out a page from the case study here: Read More »
I wanted to dedicate this blog post to sharing the best practices from three of Cisco’s social programs which were recently awarded the 2011 Event Marketer Technology Awards. Cisco Live and the Cisco Event Mobile Application were honored for their excellence with events integration and custom app creation, respectively, while the Global Sales Experience (GSX) campaign was noted for delivering content that was both educational and entertaining. In introducing you to the strategies implemented by each of these award-winning hybrid programs, I hope you find them interesting and useful to apply to your own social campaign, event, or mobile app!
In the spirit of the holidays, here’s a fun and social spin on the classic, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’. May you and your loved ones enjoy your holiday season!
Twas the night before my launch and throughout all of the web,
My influencers were ready, much was to be said.
The hash tags were chosen with delicate care,
Knowing that soon they would be #everywhere!
Because we were global, we chose the right time,
We did not want this conversation to flat line.
Scheduling out tweets and Facebook posts,
We were excited to see which channel generated the most!
When up on my listening center, there arose such a clatter,
I ran to my Radian6 dashboard to see what was the matter!
Looking at my listening dashboard I analyzed what it said,
We had a confused customer, oh Frightened Fred. Read More »
We are excited to announce the launch of a new program called Cisco Social Rewards! Through gamification, the program is designed to recognize and reward users for their ongoing participation! What is gamification you ask? Gamification is the integration of game mechanics within a marketing campaign, program or tool designed to increase engagement, loyalty, recognition and fun! Sign up for the program via a social connection by clicking on the Join Today banner in the right column of the page and start earning points, badges and a reputation for your activities across the blog site!
Here are just a few activities that you can perform to earn points on the site:
Meet Janel: A Cisco DocWiki Expert
As a Michigan native, I was raised in a state well known for one industry in particular: Automotive. This past week, the automotive industry was placed on spotlight at the 2012 North American International Auto Show (NAIAS) in Detroit, featuring the latest innovations in automotive designs, engines, interior options, and more. This year’s attendance to the 9-day show 
