On May 8^th and 9^th, come to Cisco Headquarters to learn advanced social practices, mingle with old friends and make new ones at the 2012 Advanced Social Media Strategies for PR, Marketing and Corporate Communications Summit. Hang out with us and other attendees in the real and virtual worlds as we explore topics like how to:

• Adapt to the social business model: the key to real culture change
• Hone in on the “social” aspect of social media
• Build a collaborative case for social media to persuade your C-suite
• Use carrots—not sticks—to get buy-in for a social media marketing strategy
• Take risks, measure results and meet marketing goals using social media
• Track the ROI of social media Read More »

Tags: advanced, best practices, Cisco, communication, events, marketing, PR, Ragan Communications, social media, strategy, tips

Consider your enterprise communication strategy. Now consider the role of video in that strategy. Is video critical, best effort, nice to have, or outside the scope of your communication strategy?

Business video comes in different flavors, shapes and sizes and there is no one answer for everybody.  Your video requirements will vary depending on the size of your company, what you want to do with video, and how you want to do it.  Let’s examine different types of business video and how the latest trends are impacting the future strategies of business video as it relates to communications across mobile and social platforms.

Read More »

Tags: business video, collaboration, communication, growth, innovation, mobile, productivity, social, strategy, TelePresence, trends, video, visual, vni

We sat down with Jeanette Gibson (@JeanetteG), Sr. Director, Global Social and Digital Media at Cisco to talk about a brand’s journey through the digital world. In our video interview, she shared with us the 5 stages of transformation to reach Digital Nirvana. Credit goes to Ant’s Eye View for the development of this framework. Check it out and if you like the video, please share this blog. Read More »

Tags: adoption, best practices, digital journey, evolution, how to, integrated social media, strategy

As a follow-up to my last blog post, here is the Reader’s Digest version of how to create social media engagement.

Each step is a word:

Listen • Integrate • Share • Talk • Enable Talk • Nurture • Evaluate • Refine

If you have paid close attention, you’ve probably discovered that the first letter of each word put together spell the word LISTENER. Makes it easy to remember, right? It all starts and ends with listening!

LISTEN

If you don’t do anything else, just listen. If you’re new to social media, listen first, engage next. If you’ve been doing social for a while, keep listening. Always! Not just during your launch period or around your event. Listening can help you get an outside perspective on your company. It can help you gain real-time unfiltered feedback, uncover issues, pain points and new opportunities. It can also be used to gain an edge on your competition, and can even help you avoid or minimize a crisis situation. Hint: Read More »

Tags: best practices, customer, engagement, engaging, facebook, how to, KPIs, Listening, measurement, measuring, metrics, partner, slideshare, social media, strategy, twitter, youtube

Thank you all for the warm welcome. I am very excited to join the community and look forward to interacting with everyone!

As Chet mentioned, I will be involved in expanding the social media platform for the Cisco industry team.

I am fascinated by the new relationships that exist between businesses and customers as a result of social media. In the old paradigm, traffic was mostly one way: customers were inundated with sales and marketing information but rarely given the opportunity to provide insightful feedback. Not anymore. Via social media, the customer really is king. Customers rightly now expect a relationship that is collaborative, on-demand, automated, and in real-time. A customer can become a renowned expert and evangelist for a company – or embarrass a company by publicly criticizing its customer service.

Smart companies will embrace and promote this new relationship. It’s the best customer focus group on the planet, and it’s free! However, social media isn’t the goal but rather the journey. A smart company will also have a proper social media strategy, not just a social media presence. This is where I hope to make my biggest contribution. The Manufacturing Industry team has embarked on this social media journey to engage with you, our audience.  We need to be leading the conversation, listening properly and reaching the right people.  I hope that you will join me in this exciting process as active members and contributors as I help guide that journey. Thanks again for the warm welcome, and stay tuned!

Tags: andrew lach, bad customer service, Borderless Networks, Cisco, customer life cycle, focus group, Industry, lach, Manufacturing, social media, Social Media Strategy, strategy