The raw, edgy nature of social media is part of its charm, and its value. As Cisco’s global threat analyst, I often look at my Twitter feed in the morning before I check mainstream media sites because it provides quick, frequently expert, irreverent analysis on breaking news. In fact, my own concerns about press freedom and objectivity stemming from concentration of mass media ownership arguably strengthens the case for a lively, unregulated social media space. It can serve as a fact checker and whistle blower on traditional news sources. In societies where news outlets may be closely monitored or controlled by the state, social media may provide the only online outlet for uncensored public opinion.

Unfortunately, social media is frequently inaccurate or misleading, with the potential for real-world damage. It isn’t hard to imagine a scenario in which a terrorist coordinates on-the-ground attacks with misleading tweets with the intent to clog roads or phone lines, or send people into the path of danger. Several recent incidents underscore the ease with which social media rumors can compound the impact of real events.

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Tags: cyber-security-month-2012, security, social media, Social Network

Like most social media users, I use sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Blogger, to reach out to family and friends, network with colleagues, and share personal blogs.  These venues make my social conversations both manageable and enjoyable.  However, when I sought to utilize social media as a way to market our department brand, I went from a fast food menu of the big three (Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn) to a dizzying array of social media networks from which to select.  Google+, Chimein, Dribbble, Picasa, Pinterest, Digg, and Instagram are just the tip of the iceberg in a sea of social media networks that number in the hundreds.  Add in the many international social media networks found around the world and what were a few simple choices, became an overwhelming social media menu; and new social media networks continue to pop up faster than I could say, “I’ll have fries with that.”

With so many choices, how would I pick and choose the most effective social media networks that would provide the perfect social media options for my branding plan?  After all, part of the “mystique” is the desire to utilize the next social media network de jour.   An impossible task that would have had me spending more time on investigating every social media option rather than actually using available networks productively, so I backed away from the menu and outlined a social media strategy by asking the following questions:

1. Who was my audience?
2. What was the purpose of using social media?
3. How would I dedicate and manage my time resource and stay involved?
4. Budget – do you have one?

My audience is made up of fast moving and customer driven, professional technical teams who digest information quickly and move on.  Social media is the vehicle that would put the information I need to get into our engineers’ hands at real time speed and with interaction exchange.   I listened to their conversations and identified topics of interest and will present information in an engaging format that will enlist their attention.  Visuals, such as pics and videos, and sound bite titles, such as tweets with links, are most successful for this group.  Additionally, by employing gamification methods as a fun teaching tool, I would build awareness in a group that is often too busy to engage.  Factor in that I had both a finite amount of time I could dedicate to these resources and encourage active participation and no budget, I would have to use free, social media resources and utilize the tools they provide for metrics oversight.

Being able to answer the above questions allowed me to narrow my choices, from the many social media networks available, to purpose-specific and globally popular social media platforms.  With recognized voices such as Pinterest, Twitter, and Facebook, most of my audience was already familiar with these social media networks and would provide an easy learning curve to those who were not.

There are countless social media tools out there and not every tool works best for all business plans.  Define your social media goals and the outcome you want before you begin selecting from the social media menu and if you are still not sure what to do, invest in a social media agency.  They can assist you in defining a social media plan with the outcome you desire.

Resources:

1. Wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites
2. Building a Successful Social Media Program – Cisco Learning Catalog Course

Tags: Cisco, education, facebook, social media, social networking, twitter

As delegates gather for IACP 2012, policing in democratic societies faces the twin challenges of increasing demand and diminishing resources. The period from the mid-1990s has seen the widespread adoption in Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere of neighbourhood or community policing models. Governments and police forces have responded to popular demand for policing to be responsive to local demand to address crime and antisocial behavior, and to do so in a way which reassures the public that issues of public safety are being actively addressed. It has been an agenda which is rooted in an understanding of and responsiveness to the priorities of local communities.

Public sector budgets almost everywhere are under pressure, and so is neighbourhood policing. Prevention and reassurance are at risk of becoming the focus for cuts, whatever the longer term impact on reassurance and public safety.

So if there is to be a successful future for community policing, it needs to be on a sustainable and innovative basis. This is not just a question of technology, but technology can play its part. There are three areas in which this is the case: Read More »

Tags: chief of police, Community Policing, data analytics, data in motion, government, IACP, mobility, police, predictive policing, social media, technology

Yesterday, I shared information on how to get started with social media listening, what to listen for, and the types of information you can gain from listening. Now that you have an idea of what your customers and prospects are saying, what are you going to do with all of that information?

Well, that’s when the good stuff happens! The insights you’ll get from social listening will help you:

• Build your social media marketing strategy – you’ll have more insights about your audience, who exactly is participating in social media, in which social channels the conversations are happening, how frequently and actively are they posting, and what they are talking about.
• Have a dialogue with customers and prospects –  you want to do this carefully, thoughtfully, person-to-person, and with a customer-service mentality, but participating in social media conversations gives you the chance to thank fans, find prospects, help those with problems or questions, discover problem areas you might otherwise have missed, and build better relationships with your community.
• Share what you learn with the rest of your organization – product feedback will be useful to your support and development teams, lead opportunities will get sales excited, your executives will want to hear about emerging trends and what kinds of business problems customers are looking for technology to solve, and marketing can see the traction that offers and marketing campaigns are getting.

As an example, here’s a situation where we were getting feedback via social listening from customers about challenges with firmware downloads. We responded to this disgruntled person (who clearly was appreciative of our efforts), but it also led us to put a temporary fix in place to make the experience easier while we worked on the longer-term solution.

Here at Cisco, we have a central Social Media Listening Center where we are continually tracking mentions of the company, key technology areas and events. It functions as a command center to route questions, issues or even potential leads to various teams across Cisco (many of whom are also doing their own ‘deep-live’ listening work for their specific area of expertise). We also can launch listening centers for special events, including our recent listening center in London for the 2012 Olympics.

We’re also eager to share some of our social listening highlights with you, our partners! Read More »

Tags: Cisco, ciscochannels, customer engagement, partner community, radian6, social media, social media listening, social media monitoring, socialminer, visible

I’m sure you know what your customers want – you talk to them all the time, right? But what do they say about you – or your products, employees, website – when you aren’t involved in the conversation?

Hopefully, what they say when they don’t know you are listening isn’t much different than what they’d say to your face. Well, the truth is, people are talking about you, whether you are listening or not. So if you COULD listen, wouldn’t you want to?

Forget the things you’d rather not hear – “What did she do to her hair? Does he really think that joke is funny?” – when it comes to your business, hearing more can only be a good thing.

Enter social media listening – a fancy phrase for reading relevant things that people post on social sites – and voila, your long-distance hearing just improved! And by hearing better, you can make significant improvements to how your business runs, deciding what to market and sell, focusing your resources, and strengthening your relationships with customers, prospects, and your entire business community.

How do I get started?
You can use sophisticated monitoring applications like Salesforce Radian6, Cymphony/Visible, and Cisco Social Miner, but you can also get started with free tools like Google Alerts, Technorati, TweetDeck or SocialMention. Before you invest in a paid application, it’s a good idea to play around with putting keywords into one of the free tools to get a sense of the type and volume of results you’ll get back.

What do I listen for?  Read More »

Tags: Cisco, ciscochannels, customer engagement, partner community, radian6, social media, social media listening, social media monitoring, socialminer, visible