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

According to Mashable, today is Social Media Day. Whether or not you think that social media should have its own day (#smday), a group of us, Silicon Valley practitioners thought we’d have some fun today anyway…social media style. We created 2 videos to celebrate the lessons we have learned over the years and remind ourselves of the effects social media has had on our lives….so far. I say “so far” because there’s more to come. If you’re new to social media, we hope you’ll walk away with some good conversation starters. If you’ve been doing this for a while, we hope to put a smile on your face – maybe because you recognize your own advice or maybe because you have a similar story.

Watch this video for some great social tips from Read More »

Tags: Alex Plant, Ariba, best practices, CA Technologies, Cisco, EMC, engagement, Gurmeet Dhaliwal, Jeanette Gibson, Justin Fogarty, Listening, Natalie Ajluni, Natascha Thomson, netapp, paypal, Perrine Crampton, SAP, social media, strategy, tips

I went to the #social4good event last night at Stanford which featured guest speakers actor, Kevin Bacon and author of the book “The Dragonfly Effect”, Jennifer Aaker. I am always curious to learn about how other people and industries use social media so I was looking forward to hearing interesting tidbits on what else….social media for social good. Kevin Bacon took the stage (no pun intended!) to share his thoughts on the concept of six degrees of separation and how it triggered the birth of www.sixdegrees.org. Did you know he first thought the notion of six degrees Read More »

Tags: jennifer aaker, kevin bacon, Social Good, social media, social media lessons, Stanford, strategy

We heard from SVP Keith Goodwin at Partner Summit that while we are helping partners move to the cloud, we are also still focusing on our core technologies, namely routing and switching. And it’s no secret that the switching market is evolving.

Have you been wondering what the real story is behind switching market share? What industry trends are shaping the next wave of networking innovation? And what is Cisco’s switching strategy?

All of these were top-of-mind questions addressed in a recent investor relations webcast—led by John McCool, SVP and GM, Data Center, Switching and Services—to discuss Cisco’s Ethernet switching business and the competitive landscape.

McCool gave investors a brief presentation, which was followed by a Q&A session. You can listen to the entire broadcast here: Tech Talk: Ethernet Switching, From the Enterprise to the Data Center.

Looking for specific information within the broadcast? Here are some time stamps that indicate where John addresses port transitions, market share trends, and more.

Read More »

Tags: data center, Enterprise, fabric, investor, john mccool, market transitions, routing, services, strategy, switching, webcast