Cisco Social Media Playbook Best Practice Sharing

Cisco Social Media Playbook: Best Practice Sharing

June, 2010Prepared by: Amy PaquetteCisco Social Media Marketing Twitter: @[email protected]

http://twitter.com/amypaq

mailto:[email protected]


Introduction 3

Cisco Social Media Strategy 5

Why Get Involved in Social Media? 6

Message Gets Out Faster 6

Affects on Branding and Reputation 7

Increasing the Impact of Direct Marketing 7

Gather Business Intelligence through Social Listening 8

Move from Campaigns to Meaningful Relationships 9

Activate Brand Advocates/Influencers 10

Policy and Guidelines 11

Social Media Landscape 14

Social Networking Tools 16

Social Media Successes 20

Crisis Management 23

Cisco Social Media Certification Program 24

Expectations of Cisco Managers 24


With the growth of social media—such as blogs, video and audio podcasts, online communities and the resurgence of message boards—the communications landscape has changed. Video is now considered the killer application and included in many aspects of corporate communication.

Even average consumers are self-publishing their views, experiences and beliefs about companies and no group is more in tune with this than the ‘millenials.’ Presently, these 15-31 year olds interact using video, audio and mobile applications both in a social and professional context.

To capture these consumers’ attention, companies like Cisco must shift from using just text and images to deliver messages to video and mobile platforms. As such, companies are beginning to effectively engage in one-to-one conversations by blogging and video blogging about issues and events and participating in channels where these customers take part.

Cisco has been active in the social space since the spring of 2005. We first debuted our homegrown corporate blogs, and have subsequently introduced additional blogging communities, discussion forums, wikis, Facebook and Twitter communities, and more.

What we learned from our initial foray into the social media world is that these tools provide an opportunity for us to listen online, gather feedback, and learn from customer experiences. We quickly realized that social media had more value than simply broadcasting brand messages or providing thought leadership. Social media gave Cisco a means to have open and honest conversations with a broader, global base of customers, potential customers, partners, and employees.

Cisco Social Media Playbook

4All contents are Copyright © 1992–2010 Cisco Systems, Inc. All rights reserved.

As a way to encourage the appropriate use of social media tools and technologies, we developed Cisco’s Social Media Policy, Guidelines and FAQs to reinforce the company’s philosophy to empower employees to connect directly with its stakeholders using social media. The document reflects the company’s culture of transparency, authenticity and openness and seeks to educate Cisco employees on how to effectively navigate through the increasing number of social networking sites and social media tools, communicate with a diverse, global audience and interact in this ever-changing, social environment.

Included in the Social Media Policy, Guidelines, FAQs is the following:

•• Social•Media•Policy: Rules we ask all our employees to follow when engaging with online audiences

•• Guidelines: Helpful, practical advice aimed at setting expectations on how to behave online

•• FAQs: ‘Frequently Asked Questions’ to help employees understand various scenarios that they may encounter when engaging online

In addition, we have developed this Social Media Playbook: Best Practice Sharing to provide an even deeper look at how we approach social media for our business.

These guides—Social Media Policy, Guidelines and FAQs and the Social Media Playbook: Best Practice Sharing—allow us a means to share some of our best practices and recommendations from our firsthand experience at Cisco. We hope that you will find the information useful in forming your business’s social media plan.


http://www.slideshare.net/CiscoSystems/cisco-social-media-guidelines-june-2010


Cisco Social Media StrategySocial media encompasses a wide variety of platforms. Instead of participating in all these different channels and tools, it’s importance to prioritize and develop a social media strategy that suits your company.

Cisco recognized early on that the first key in developing a solid social media strategy is to LISTEN to what customers are saying about the Cisco brand, products, competitors and the industry. By monitoring conversations, tracking brand mentions and identifying brand advocates, we found that we could effectively gauge the time and resources needed to invest in our social media campaigns.

To ensure that there’s clear alignment between business objectives and social media, Cisco PLANs for engagement by mapping out the team’s objectives, goals, strategies and tactics. By working through this exercise, Cisco teams are able to identify members who are particularly suited for certain roles and responsibilities and who are able to fulfill functional work streams.

After identifying the best people within Cisco to represent the brand, the third step we established was to ENGAGE in meaningful conversations with customers. This can be as easy as sharing interesting, useful information and related experiences in personable way.

Finally, after a set period of time participating in online conversations, it’s crucial to MEASURE the business impact social media has had and compare results against the plans decided upon in earlier stages. This way you can see how effective your social media tactics were in helping to achieve business objectives and goals.

At this point, it’s important to learn from the insights you’ve gained, refine strategy and start all over again.


MEASUREAssess conversation impact and

monitor sentiment

ENGAGEDevelop consumer/influencer

engagement plan and content strategy

PLANMap out Objectives, Goals, Strategies

and Tactics

LISTENMonitor conversations, track brand mentions and identify influencers

Protecting Your ComputerUse anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Keep them automatically updated and do not ignore warnings.


Why Get Involved in Social Media?

As social media gains in popularity, all types of organizations—from consumer to high tech to service—will begin to invest in social media tools to help them better understand, respond to, and attract the attention of their customers.

In fact, data suggests that those business that are actually creating content (publishing a blog, publishing a web page, uploading video and music) have increased from 43% in 2009 to 49% in 2010. Additionally, those posting comments (posting ratings and reviews of products and services, commenting on someone else’s blog, and contributing to online forums) have risen from 58% in 2009 to 65% in 2010. Those who are spectators (who are only reading blogs, listening to podcasts, and reading customer ratings) have risen from 91% in 2009 to 96% in 2010.

Consumers are also demonstrating more interest in social media. In another Forrester study, research showed tech buyers were twice as likely to visit forums when considering an IT purchase. In addition, 84 percent of business buyers say word of mouth is the number one influencer of all purchase decisions.

Bottom line: Companies are involved in social media because the tools enable more meaningful customer-to-business relationships and help increase customer loyalty, sales, brand and reputation. Benefits also include shorter innovation cycles, direct customer engagement, speed of feedback, an ability to learn from customers and demonstrate responsiveness, brand building, low cost of investment, credibility of the crowd, broad reach—just to name a few!

Message Gets Out Faster Social media by nature is faster in most cases than traditional means of communications and marketing. The medium allows for much more immediate, direct engagement with customers and more timely feedback from target audiences. Today, a company may post copy on their corporate blog and see a comment within ten minutes and tweets about the news a couple of minutes after that. The capacity to be nimble and develop relationships and credibility quickly is a tremendous opportunity for most businesses.

Looking back to 2006, 70% of Cisco’s communications was ‘traditional PR vehicles.’ It was common practice for us to distribute a press release via the wire services, pitch a story to a friendly reporter, and wait for that reporter or another influencer to formulate the pitch into a news story. Many times this process took weeks!

We also leveraged our corporate news site, News@Cisco, to post static online features and expensive-to-produce videos averaging $25,000 per video.

Fast forward—Cisco now consistently leverages its corporate blog, The Platform, its Twitter feed, Twitter.com/ciscosystems, and its Facebook page, Facebook.com/Cisco, to communicate about the company’s breaking news, as well as market and industry news. It may only be minutes or hours before an engagement on The Platform blog occurs or a discussion has begn in the blogosphere.


“Companies deeply engaged in social media grew revenues by 18% over last year…companies that were least engaged dropped 6% on average.”

Charlene Li, Founder, Altimeter Group (former lead Social Media Analyst at Forrester), Author of Groundswell

July 2009 Report “ENGAGEMENTdb”

Information SharingDon’t share any personal information over the Internet that you do not want the world to know.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/index.html

http://blogs.cisco.com/news


Affects on Branding and ReputationSocial media and specifically blogs can be valuable for increasing company awareness and public perception. The viral nature of blogging and other forms of social media, with its inherent ability to reach many people quickly, affects brand and awareness faster than most other forms of communication.

As such, a company’s ability to respond in a timely manner can be a critical factor in brand favorability. For example, if a company is able to respond to an issue quickly, customers are likely to see that organization as caring and more service-oriented. This benefits an organization at a brand level as well as a reputation level. Conversely, if a company is slow to respond or doesn’t respond, customers may feel less favorably toward the brand.

Ultimately, obtaining real-time feedback and understanding what customers like and don’t like, are essential to companies who want to evolve and improve their brand and reputation. Instant feedback, whether it is direct to the company via a blog post on their company blog or a comment elsewhere in the blogosphere about the issue, is engagement, and can be used to affect change in public perception.

Increasing the Impact of Direct Marketing Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a key element of today’s direct marketing and lead generation strategies. Social media and SEO serve as an effective web marketing activity that connects a company’s content with potential customers at any given point of interest.

Whether it’s Google, Yahoo! or Bing, all search engines use a complex software algorithm to determine the most credible and trustworthy URL for every given query. This formula includes best practices such as using relevant and high-demand keywords, adding them strategically to copy, receiving links from quality pages, and linking on the keyword itself.


Q1 FY06

0%

50%

100% News Releases

Features

212% increase in traffic to News@Cisco/New Media 81% lower spend on multimedia in two years

Cisco’s Shift in Communications Content

Product VideoPodcastsBlogs

Video Blogs

Q1 FY07 Q1 FY08 Q1 FY09


To make sure that content is effectively classified and indexed by search engines, companies can try the following tips in all content copy:

1. Use keywords and phrases in the beginning of copy

2. Use brand or product-focused keywords

3. Link to a URL from text rather than inputting the actual link

Examples of this could include optimizing the beginning of a Tweet for keywords, including keywords in hashtags, or setting up your company’s Twitter profile to incorporate phrases that are most relevant to your particular industry.

So while SEO pertains specifically to optimizing website content, the best practices of search can help to expand potential audiences by increasing findability in all channels. The point is to enable both users and search engine robots to find the most relevant content when they’re looking for it.

Gather Business Intelligence through Social ListeningSocial listening affords organizations the opportunity to gain valuable insights into the online conversation landscape. Using data gathered from online discussions on blogs, forums, social networking sites and more, social listening allows brands to harvest, understand and capitalize on feedback from the customer.

To make the most of social listening, it’s important to take a 360-degree approach. This first step is to aggregate relevant data by establishing topics and keywords that are useful to your company. Once you start amassing the data, you can to start to see trends and develop insights about customers and what they’re saying about your company, industry and competitors. As you begin to verify customer priorities and compare customer reactions to campaigns and products, you begin to become more attuned to the customer pulse and develop early warnings to product or service reactions. These early warning signs give companies the ability to change business actions by simply adjusting messaging techniques and enhancing customer service through online support.

Social listening may be helpful for a variety of reasons including the following:

1. Early•Warning•Radar—provides organizations with the ability to learn about customer dissatisfaction or poor performance early on giving companies an opportunity to answer questions or escalate matters appropriately.

2. Increased•Web•Visibility—enables companies to refine SEO by learning keywords customers use online to talk about the brand.

3. Competitive•Insights—gives companies a comprehensive look at industry and competitor conversations.

4. Goodwill—heightens brand favorability by identifying opportunities for engagement—either for customer service or participation in relevant conversations.

5. Thought•Leadership—showcases a company’s knowledge by consistently proving itself as a source of relevant, useful information through online engagement.

6. Humanizes•Brand—creates opportunities for companies to engage with customers at their point of need.

7. Customer•Service—increases touch points between organizations and past, current and prospective customers.

At the core, social listening reveals systems of information that allow companies the opportunity to prioritize customers based on behavioral trends, engage with customers that matter most to improving brand favorability.


Business Action

Customer Pulse

Insights

Data


Move from Campaigns to Meaningful RelationshipsCisco’s early social media work focused more on push marketing—highlighting campaigns and promoting news releases with little engagement. Cisco implemented social media campaigns for new product launches, which resulted in inconsistent strategy between groups across the Cisco enterprise.

One of the key learnings from this experience was to move towards driving business value through integrated social campaigns and strong engagement channels. Now Cisco is focusing more on enduring assets and ongoing engagement as opposed to measuring activity and transactional engagement.

The figure below illustrates Cisco’s goal during our present state of social media maturity where social media tools and engagement provide a growing base for Cisco teams to build sustained relationships with customers. Instead of merely joining the conversation during campaign times, employees are encouraged to maintain meaningful conversations and build long-lasting relationships with desired audiences. In this way, brand awareness is not so transactional, with many ups and downs, but rather growing at a steadier pace for a longer duration.

Campaigns versus Relationships


YesterdayCyclical campaigns and press announcements yielded transactional relationships.

TodayValue-add products/services, supported by campaigns and consistent social interaction, yield sustained relationships.

Campaign

Campaign

Platform/Service

Social Media Base

News Release

Interest

Year

Interest

Year


Activate Brand Advocates/Influencers In social groups some people are inevitably more likely to participate than others. In many cases these brand advocates are brand defenders--people who not only have an affinity for a brand but also are willing to stand up for it and spend countless hours answering questions on behalf of it. Programs designed to identify, thank and reward these individuals are often called influencer programs.

There are many different types of influencer programs, but specifically ones that work the best tend to help organizations better understand and listen to customers by giving advocates direct access to products. The conversations and feedback these types of programs spark will function as a tool and serve as a third-party voice that can help companies validate ideas and investments. Many times companies will implement these programs to provide advocates with the tools to converse with each other openly, candidly and passionately about the topics that matter most to them—and to your company.

A few of the more well-known influencer programs are highlighted in the following chart:


Influencer Engagement Case Studies

Company Program Objectives Criteria Impact

SAP SAP Mentors Product Feedback and Brand Awareness

Engaged on SAP communities

Product Expert

Lower development costs, leveraging community code for service releases

Broad followings on Twitter and Facebook

Intuit Turbo Tax Inner Circle

Product Feedback, Increased Sales, and Customer Support

TurboTax User

Willing to participate

Faster time to market on new products

Increased revenue from feature built by Inner Circle

Lower support call volumes

Chevy VOLT Brand Awareness Leading technology blogger or Social Media super-user

Willing to participate in an interview

Create a repository of useable content featuring recognizable people within the technology industry

Increased publicity and attention due to influencer content production

Fiskars Fiskateers Brand Awareness and Increased Sales

Selected by Lead Fiskateers

Increase in online conversations about Fiskars

Increased sales (2x) for stores visited by a Lead Fiskateer

Compiled by Ant’s Eye View

http://www.slideshare.net/finnern/sap-mentor-initiative-introduction

http://intuitic.satmetrix.com/intuitCTG_community/_index.jspa

http://intuitic.satmetrix.com/intuitCTG_community/_index.jspa

http://www.socialmediaexplorer.com/2010/03/17/targeting-influencers-a-case-study-with-chevy-volt/

http://www.fiskateers.com/


Policy and GuidelinesAt Cisco, we encourage employees to become active in social media. We strive to provide an environment where we have a clear policy and guidelines in place that employees can refer to for direction. We also ensure that Cisco employees are trained and comfortable engaging in online conversations and participating in the online space.

Following our initial entrance, we moved methodically to develop the proper infrastructure to train and educate our employees, and to deliver social media as a communications and marketing discipline. We continue to evolve best practices on an ongoing basis and encourage our employees to take risks, engage, have fun and most importantly, align measured results to business objectives and goals. This mentality has sustained us and will continue to allow Cisco to improve our brand and overall reputation.

Our Social Media Policy, Guidelines and FAQs as well as this Social Media Playbook: Best Practice Sharing is our way of disseminating information to our employees and to our customers.

Social Media Governance: Your Personal Social Media Compass Has Not Changed

PolicyFor Cisco, our policy provides a clear and purposeful social media approach for all Cisco employees to follow when participating in the social Web. We recognize the importance of participating in these online conversations and want to provide a clear and purposeful social media policy for all Cisco employees to follow to help protect both the employees and Cisco.

A snapshot of Cisco’s official policy is outlined below. This policy includes the rules we ask our employees and contractors to follow when engaging online. For more information on our policy, see our Social Media Policy, Guidelines and FAQs.


Be respectful

Be mindful

You are responsible

Be yourself

Be honest

Add value

Abide by the rules




1. Identify•yourself•as•a•Cisco•employee•when participating on social networking sites while discussing Cisco’s business and related industry topics. Please provide a disclaimer if using a non-Cisco sponsored tool. It is never acceptable to use aliases or otherwise misrepresent or hide your affiliation . It is best practice to state your relationship with the Company from the outset.

2. Keep•applicable•policies•in•mind.•When engaging online to communicate anything related to Cisco business, you must read, understand and abide by this Policy and any related corporate policies.

3. Do•not•commit•Cisco to any action unless you have authority to do so.

4. Protect•reputation. Avoid any statement or comment that might harm Cisco’s reputation. You represent Cisco and the Cisco brand. As an employee and possibly a shareholder, your actions both on and offline can affect perceptions about the Company and shareholder return.

5. Do•not•post•confidential•or•copyrighted•information (music, videos, text, photographs, etc.) belonging to either Cisco or third parties without written permission. Please refer to Cisco’s Proprietary Information and Inventions Agreement, and Cisco’s Data Classification Handbook for more information.

6. Do•not•make•statements•about•Cisco’s•financial•performance. Refer any questions to our investor relations representative.

7. Maintain•confidentiality•of•internal•only•information. Do not share any information that is marked for internal use only.

8. Do•not•post•anything•that•is•defamatory,•offensive,•harassing,•or•in•violation•of•any•applicable•law•or•any•Cisco•policy.

9. Do•not•engage•with•the•news•media•(e.g.,•Wall•Street•Journal,•InformationWeek)•to•discuss•Cisco•strategy•and/or•business•without•PR•consultation•and•approval.•If a member of the news media or a similar outlet contacts you, consult your PR Representative before responding.

GuidelinesBelow outlines Cisco’s social media guidelines—recommendations and best practices to guide our employees when participating in the social Web. These guidelines are aimed to provide helpful, practical advice and help to set expectations on how to behave online. In some cases, they help employees comply with the policy above.

For more information on our guidelines, see our Social Media Policy, Guidelines and FAQs.


Buyers Behaviors:

• Tech buyers twice as likely to visit forums when considering an IT purchas

• 84% of business buyers say word of mouth is #1 influencer of purchase decisions

• 67% of shoppers spend more online after recommendations from online community of friends

Source: Forrester Technographics 2009/Internet Retailer, September 2009

Administrator ControlWho has control of your computer? Take control by making yourself the administrator. Set a unique password so that you, and you alone, can change the computer settings.

http://investor.cisco.com/contacts.cfm

http://tools.cisco.com/newsroom/contactSearch/jsp/prSearch.jsp


1. Do•not•engage•in•inflammatory•or•inappropriate•discussions•about•competitors.••Always be professional. Avoid speaking negatively about competitors. Instead, highlight Cisco’s strengths. Do not cite or reference clients, partners or suppliers without their approval. When you do make a reference, where possible link back to the source.

2. Be•responsible.•You are personally responsible for the content you provide and how you behave on the social Web. We do encourage you to participate in the online social media space, but urge you to do so properly, exercising solid judgment.

3. Be•aware•of•laws covering defamation, insider trading, financial disclosures, endorsements and testimonials, antitrust, competition, privacy, and the protection of intellectual property.

4. Be•authentic,•factual•and•respectful at all times. Use your real identity. Provide informed, well-supported opinions and cite sources, if applicable. Though social media sites are a more casual form of communication, be sure to remain professional and use a positive tone of voice. Be respectful of your colleagues, the Company and our competitors.

5. Avoid•engaging•in•on-line•disputes with your audience. Don’t use slurs, personal insults or obscenity, and always respect privacy concerns. Avoid language that may be considered objectionable or inflammatory. Show that you have listened and be responsive. If you disagree, respond in professional and respectful manner.

6. Be•honest.•Always tell the truth. Correct any mistakes you make as quickly as possible. Don’t alter older posts without indicating that you have done so.

7. Add•value.•Express an interesting point of view and worthwhile information and perspective. When speaking about Cisco, offer your subject matter expertise and contact your PR Representative if unsure whether a topic is appropriate.

8. Build•relationships.•Focus on engagement with the audience and building trust to develop relationships rather than using your specific social networking site solely as a marketing tool to sell Cisco products or to promote yourself.

9. Be•mindful•of•the•indefinite•life•of•Internet•postings.•You should assume that all Internet postings, including those posted in a private forum, can be made public and searchable for a long time. Private discussions may inadvertently or intentionally get posted externally.

10. Know•that•it’s•almost•impossible•to•completely•remove•information•from•the•social•Web•even if you “remove/delete” it from the original source. There is no way of knowing where it may have been reposted. Also, if you edited your original post, there is no way to ensure that the last post is what people will see.

11. Review•privacy•settings of the social networking site you are using. Choose social sites and appropriate settings depending on content you are posting. Understand that when your content is posted on a public social network, all posts and comments may be traceable. Any information that you post should be considered at risk for public disclosure, regardless of your privacy settings since your postings can be reposted elsewhere and may be viewed by people other than your intended audience.

12. Be•aware•of•global•implications.• Your posts can have global significance. The way that you answer an online question might be appropriate in some parts of the world, but inaccurate, inappropriate (or even illegal) in others. Keep that “world view” in mind when you are participating in online conversations. If you have a question about global relevance, please contact the appropriate PR Representative for guidance.


PasswordsUse strong passwords that incorporate symbols, numbers and letters—never a word from a dictionary of any language. Do not share your passwords with others and change them often (every 90–120 days or when they are exposed).




Social Media Landscape There are many public social networking tools that we use as a company, as well as personally. Learn how you can use these tools to further leverage your company name to collaborate while protecting important information.

For a more complete list of social networking sites, click here.

Getting Started: Protect Your Privacy While OnlineThe Internet is empowering people today in ways that were unthinkable only a few short years ago. Web 2.0 technologies such as Facebook and Twitter, instant access to information and intelligent services, and the explosion of connected mobile devices are helping people communicate in dynamic new ways, be more productive and perform everyday tasks like shopping and banking more conveniently.

But for all the benefits of this new networked world, the downside is exposure to a variety of online risks—from computer viruses and other malware to misuse or theft of your personal information.

There are many safeguards you should be aware of as you engage in social media. We encourage you to create user accounts under your true name. Using a pseudonym may diminish the credibility of your contributions online. Even anonymous comments and updates can be traced back to you or your company using IP addresses and other tracking technology. So, it is best to just be transparent!

We have also learned that you should only post personal information that you want the public to view on the social Web and avoid posting information that would make you vulnerable to identity theft or may compromise your safety.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites


Social engineering is a common threat on social networking sites. Be sure to review the privacy policies of the social networking sites that you choose to use. Be aware that it is almost impossible to remove posts since they may be re-posted on other sites without your knowledge, and may be viewed beyond your intended audience.

Lastly, prior to engaging in the blogging process, we recommend that you review your company’s social media policy if it is available. This will help you understand what the company expects of you as well as provide you with a resource in getting started.

Here are some additional tips to help you stay safe online:

Internet•Access: Inventory all the devices that you use to access the Internet. That means not just computers and laptops, but also gaming consoles, smart phones and friends’ devices. Establish appropriate rules and boundaries for each environment.

Privacy•Controls: Familiarize yourself with the privacy controls for each device and set the appropriate protections. For example, set up your Instant Messenger application so that only you can see and interact with them. Similarly, in Facebook and MySpace, set the privacy controls to ensure that you can’t be tagged in photos.

Administrator•Control: Who has control of your computer? Take control by making yourself the administrator. Set a unique password so that you, and you alone, can change the computer settings.

Information•Sharing: Don’t share any personal information over the Internet that you do not want the world to know.

E-mail: To avoid phishing scams, don’t reply or click on links within e-mails asking for personal or financial information. If a retailer or vendor asks you to e-mail your credit or debit card details, absolutely do not do it.

Passwords: Use strong passwords that incorporate symbols, numbers and letters—never a word from a dictionary of any language. Do not share your passwords with others and change them often (every 90–120 days or when they are exposed).

Protecting•Your•Computer: Use anti-virus and anti-spyware software. Keep them automatically updated and do not ignore warnings.

These are just a few basics for online safety. You can also turn to technology products which can block preset sites and report Internet activities to network administrators.

For Cisco’s online data privacy statement, see www.cisco.com/web/siteassets/legal/privacy.html.

For additional information, see OnGuardOnline.gov, a site that includes practical tips from the federal government and the technology industry on how to guard against Internet fraud, securing your computer, and protecting your personal information.


Blogging at CiscoWhy…

• Create conversations with customers, partners, employees and the public

• Platform to discuss the role of the network

• Thought leadershipHow…

• Extensive use of video increases engagement

• Integrated blogs with communications campaigns

http://www.cisco.com/web/siteassets/legal/privacy.html

http://www.cisco.com/web/siteassets/legal/privacy.html

http://www.onguardonline.gov/


Social Networking ToolsAs communication becomes easier and more immediate, the number of methods for communication via tools, technologies and interfaces grows exponentially. People are connecting and collaborating internally and externally using exciting new technologies that combine voice, video and text for a robust and intriguing experience. This section covers a sampling of these social and collaborative tools, with information about the technology and a little about how Cisco uses them.

It is not expected that you engage in all social networking media. You need to assess which ones are right for you, your organization and your initiative. We also recommend you roll out ones you can manage and maintain over time, given that social media strategies are ongoing and require relationship building. Use social media strategically to build better awareness, to engage, and to tell your story.

For a more complete list of social networking sites, click here.

Blogs and CommunitiesBlogs.cisco.com

Wikipedia says: A blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.

Facts:

• There are 112 million blogs, with 120,000 new ones appearing each day.

• Blogs are the heart of our social media efforts.

• Cisco leverages our own corporate blogs to share more detailed information, stories, showcasing awards and product reviews and more. We then link to blog posts from Twitter and Facebook to give the content greater visibility.

Blogs enable us to expand our reach beyond traditional influencers to educate customers and the industry on technology and market trends. Posting comments to blogs can help Cisco build stronger relationships with leading bloggers and their communities (i.e., our customers). Blogs can up-level a discussion, highlight Cisco’s elevated commitment to a particular topic and position spokespeople as thought leaders. Cisco corporate blogs are defined as employees blogging about Cisco and our industry. Examples include employees in a business unit blogging about their product or as subject matter experts as participants for a corporate event.

When blogging, be ready to engage and provide the appropriate response. For each of our corporate blogs, we have small teams of people who moderate and participate in the community. We have set clear and measurable goals such as average time to reply, appropriate answers to questions and number of posts to contribute per week. We have learned that a successful community is not a campaign that begins and ends. We focus on an ongoing basis and are committed to remaining involved for the long term. As the team members change, we have processes in place to make it easy to integrate new people to the team and keep the experience relevant.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

http://blogs.cisco.com


Facebook Facebook.com/Cisco

Wikipedia says: Facebook is a social networking website that is operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. Users can join networks organized by city, workplace, school, and region. People can also add friends and send them messages, and update their personal profiles to notify friends about themselves.

Facts:

• More than 250 million active users

• More than 120 million users log on to Facebook at least once each day

• More than two-thirds of Facebook users are outside of college

• The fastest growing demographic is those 35 years old and older

• About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States.

Cisco uses Facebook to connect fans to our products and brand. When we do a media campaign we use our main Cisco Facebook presence to increase its audience base. If we created different Facebook pages for each campaign it would dilute the overall effectiveness and splinter the effects.

TwitterTwitter.com/ciscosystems

Wikipedia says: Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers. Users can send and receive Tweets via the Twitter website, Short Message Service (SMS) on one’s mobile device or external applications.

Facts:

• 72.5% of the 44 million Twitter users joined during the first five months of 2009

• 93.6% of users have less than 100 followers, while 92.4% follow less than 100 people

• More than 50% of all updates are published using tools, mobile and Web-based, other than Twitter.com. TweetDeck is the most popular non-Twitter.com tool with 19.7% market share.

• There are more women on Twitter (53%) than men (47%)

• Twitter age demographic (% of total) Ages: 25–34 - 20%, 35–49 - 42%, 55+ - 17%

Businesses can use Twitter to quickly share information with interested prospective customers, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company.

As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company, or anyone else, that you’ve had


http://www.facebook.com/Cisco

http://www.facebook.com/

http://twitter.com/ciscosystems

http://www.twitter.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text-based_(computing)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_(computing)


a great, or disappointing, experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offers.

At Cisco we understand that Twitter provides a means of communication between our employees and their peers, clients, customers and potential customers. We have learned in the broader landscape how Twitter is effective in crisis, able to reach many people in a short amount of time. It is also effective for information gathering, polling and for vetting information.

YouTubeYoutube.com/cscopr

Wikipedia says: YouTube is a video sharing website on which users can upload and share videos.

Facts:

• YouTube served 75 billion video streams to 375 million unique visitors in 2009

• Every minute, ten hours of video is uploaded to YouTube.

• User base is broad in age range, 18-55, evenly divided between males and females, and spanning all geographies.

• Fifty-one percent of users go to YouTube weekly or more often

Cisco leverages YouTube to host videos we develop for many purposes, such as tradeshows, commercials, how-to’s, interviews, blogs and more. This provides greater visibility of assets which we have previously created.

Flickrwww.flickr.com/photos/cisco_pics/

Wikipedia says: Launched in 2004, Flickr is a popular online community platform used to host images and videos. This service is widely used by bloggers to host images and videos that they embed in their blog sites.

Cisco has had great success in adding Flickr to our amplification toolbox. We first began using photos years ago as part of our online press kits for traditional media to access and include in online newsrooms, print news and feature stories. Those photos had minimal pickup—mostly in the single digits. Since we began using Flickr as a single point for media and bloggers to access our product launch and events photos, we’ve seen thousands of accessed photos versus the previous nominal amount.


http://www.youtube.com/cscopr

http://www.youtube.com/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/cisco_pics/

http://www.flickr.com/


LinkedIn www.linkedin.com/companies/cisco-systems

Wikipedia says: LinkedIn is a professional, business oriented social networking site that was founded in 2002. The site is primarily used to help professionals connect with one another to help exchange, knowledge, ideas and opportunities with a broader network of professionals.

When you join LinkedIn, you can create a profile that summarizes your professional expertise and accomplishments. You then form connections by inviting trusted contacts to join your network. Your

network encompasses your connections, your connections’ connections, and the people they know, linking you to a vast number of qualified professionals and experts. Through your network you can: manage the information that’s publicly available about you as professional; find and be introduced to potential clients, service providers, and subject experts who come recommended; create and collaborate on projects, gather data, share files and solve problems.

At Cisco, our employees use LinkedIn to build credibility and a professional network, to enhance web presence and position leaders as subject matter experts.

Wikis

Wikipedia•says: A wiki is a website that allows for the easy creation of posting and editing information. It also allows you to reference links to various other websites. Wiki’s are used as a collaborative tool as it allows for users to add, delete or change content so long as you are “logged” into the host site. Examples: Wikipedia, Ciscopedia.

At Cisco, rather than relying on HTML code, team members use rich text or a simplified wiki-markup language to add, remove and change the wiki content.

The relative ease of operation and the collaborative authoring features of wikis make them ideal for team and project communication and collaboration.

Wiki Central, a Cisco IT-supported wiki, was launched in 2008, as part of a larger plan to build out fast, scalable, and stable wiki environments that address varying business requirements. The recent introduction of the Spaces feature allows a team to assign permissions, unique page names, and navigation within a group of pages.


Communications Launch Activity Results

CEO TelePresence News Briefing

Telepresence audience: Press and analysts from 8 locations: London, Munich, Paris, New York, Boxborough, San Francisco, San Jose, Toronto Live web broadcast available to public

Cisco and partners: Accenture, BMC, EMC, Intel, Microsoft, VMware

Record high traffic for Cisco blogs. 500+ comments in blogosphere about Cisco 3,100 Tweets; 455K Twitter Impressions 21 Published Analyst Reports 100% Sell Side Analysts Issued Reports

3.96 Billion Media Impact

http://www.linkedin.com/companies/cisco-systems

http://www.linkedin.com/

http://www.wikipedia.org/


Social Media Successes For many initiatives at Cisco, we focus on identifying measureable goals and metrics. Social media is no different. Management typically looks for reports focused on growth and liveliness. Community managers and conversation moderators focus on reports where problems exist as well as where the positive sentiment is.

Measurable goals can include total number of members, average level of engagement and site visits. We always recommend that you include a well-defined set of business objectives as part of this exercise and then tie your metrics to specific outcomes you can identify within your organization. Sales is only one metric. It is hard to put a value on engagement and building customer loyalty. But the return on not engaging in social media is no longer acceptable. Lastly, do not feel like you have to undertake everything all at once. It is important to take on what you can do well, what you can resource, what you can respond to after specific results are gathered.

Below are some sample initiatives that we developed, both internal targeted at building community with Cisco employees and external focused on engaging Cisco customers.


Transforming Global Launches

Leveraging Web 2.0

2005 Today

Transactions Interactions, Engagement

• Market Conditioning

• TelePresence Briefings

• Real-time Global Impact

• Customer Interactions

• Community Building

• 50-75% Cost Savings

• Thought leadership

• Launch Execution

• Press Conferences

• U.S. then Global

• Customer Reach

• PR/AR briefings

• Wide-range Budget Req

• Spokespeople

Internet Access

Inventory all the devices that you use to access the Internet. That means not just computers and laptops, but also gaming consoles, smart phones and friends’ devices. Establish appropriate rules and boundaries for each environment.


Results: • $22-$28 million in production test

savings in fiscal year 2009

• Demonstrating approximately 25% productivity gain on outside services spend for context engineering resources at Cisco partner sites

• $7.5 million savings on capital expenditures by leveraging best practices for test methodologies via our test development engineering discussion forum

Solution: We instituted the Test Excellence Initiative, which migrated the entire community to a discussion forum with 400+ active users. These forums enabled information sharing across the test community, and more rapid innovation via shared content. Experts were more easily identified based on their participation answering questions.

Challenge: Cisco needed to increase the business impact of the Test Engineering community within our global supply chain manufacturing. Expertise was highly segmented and focused on one product only per group. Email aliases were highly inefficient, and there was no easy way to identify and share common expertise across product lines.

Internal: Using Social Media to Speed up Innovation

Results: • An expert locator tags specialists

to make product experts more accessible, allowing them to interact with twice as many customers.

• Every use saves 2+ hours of time, increases quality and timeliness of customer responses

• These tools allow Cisco to save the cost of one full-time employee for every five specialists using SOAR. For a 100-person team of specialists that can now do the work of 120, that savings equates to more than $5 million per year.

• Travel expenses for Cisco product specialists are down by as much as 60 percent in teams using SOAR tools, and specialists report saving 17 hours a week on average, and boosting their productivity by 22%.

Solution:To address these issues, Cisco leaders piloted the Specialist Optimization and Results (SOAR) initiative. SOAR provides a framework for locating the right information or person right away, no matter where they are located. It encompasses several new resources, including creating an online workspace with virtual expert and learning communities for each product. The learning space includes searchable discussion forums, so that employees can ask questions of the community and search through past discussion threads. The portal also includes downloadable marketing collateral, product specifications, training materials, and other product resources. If employees cannot find the answer through self-help resources, the virtual communities include access to specialists associated with each product. Employees can view real-time presence information for all experts participating in the community and click on any expert to instantly launch an IM session, voice call, or web conference.

Challenge:The success of account managers may depend directly on their ability to respond quickly to a customer question. But with the relevant product experts dispersed across a region or around the world, finding the right answer quickly can be a challenge. In the past, if employees needed to answer a question for a competitive bid, they had three options: search the content on the Cisco internal and external website, query the immediate specialists they knew personally, and ultimately, send out an email to a virtual mailing list asking for help. Unfortunately, this process was not very efficient. Often, the necessary expertise was available, but the employees just didn’t know whom to ask.

Internal: Using Social Media to Scale Sales Resources and Expertise




Results: Considered one of Cisco’s top five most successful launches in company history:

• One-seventh the cost of the previous major routing launch with 90 times the reach

• No travel; saved carbon emissions equal to 188 tons of coal or 42,000 gallons of gas

• Virtual event attracted global participation with 9,000+ attendees in 128 countries

• Online coverage included 245 articles, 1000+ blog posts and received 40 million+ impressions

Solution: The Service Provider marketing team’s strategy was to deliver an online-only launch that would build over time, increase Cisco’s share of voice and show the fun side of Cisco. The team leveraged Web 2.0 technologies, social networking sites and video to create a virtual, viral and visual campaign that created buzz and built a community passionate about Cisco products.

Challenge: Cisco launched the first in a new series of edge routers in nearly a decade—the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Router. The goal was to deliver a cost-effective and high-impact launch that would communicate the benefits of this new innovative product series and drive sales in the Service Provider and Enterprise market.

External: Using Social Media to Deliver a Cost-Effective and High-Impact Product Launch

Results: Cisco myPlanNet won BtoB Magazine’s “Best Integrated Social Media Campaign from a Tech Company” award and “People’s Choice” award in 2010:

• 55,857 Facebook fans as of May 24, 2010

• 36,787 (accounted for) game downloads from Cisco.com link* as of May 24, 2010

(*Several game repostings on third party download sites. Hard to quantify additional downloads but we estimate it in the tens of thousands per information found on one such site)

• 126,364 landing page hits as of May 24, 2010

• Extensive online coverage, including articles by San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, BroadbandBreakfast.com, Network World, PC World, ComputerWorld, and many more, blogs, discussion forums

• Strong international reach with players approx. 130 countries and blogs, discussion forum posts, articles and circulating in languages other than English

• Players from over 2,500 institutions

Solution: Created a real-time strategy game that lets players experience life as a CEO of a Service Provider while telling the story of Cisco’s impacts on the evolution of the Internet. Players can choose to start this simulation game as a wireline, cable or mobile operator. The goal is to manage their business, transform their community, and guide their citizens from the dial-up era, through the broadband and mobile Internet eras into the medianet era. During this migration process, CEOs will discover new technologies and services—all based on Cisco products and solutions—and learn about the services and applications end customers can enjoy through user testimonials integrated into the game.

Challenge: Find a way to attract and engage with young professionals of tomorrow and help them learn about the evolution of networking while highlighting Cisco’s impacts on this evolution. Make Cisco attractive to up and coming networking professionals as the preferred choice of vendor and a place to work.

Bring to market this “product” with minimal marketing dollars and human resources.

External: For Service Providers and End Users: Cisco’s Broad Product Portfolio and Its Effects on the Evolution of the Internet


Crisis Management Cisco has a well-established crisis management process coordinated by the group responsible for the protection and preservation of the company’s people, property, information, and assets—Safety, Security and Business Resiliency. This process brings together cross functional teams of representatives from Human Resources, Workplace Resources, Information Technology and other functions—all focused on assessing and responding to events at a local, regional, or global level.

As a core function of the crisis management process, the Crisis Communication team is focused on providing consistent and timely information to key stakeholders and audiences in the event of a crisis affecting Cisco’s employees, business, customers/partners, community or shareholders. This team has representatives in each theater to ensure consistent global messaging that protects and enhances Cisco’s reputation. By consistently monitoring the volume, sentiment and perceived reach of social media mentions, this team is better prepared to identify and manage potential issues.

The speed and reach of social media has also created a new challenge for companies—the management of online “crises.” Although there may be no tangible risk to people or property, such an event could lead to irreparable reputation damage for a company in both the social and traditional media worlds.


Helping the company to listen and prepare for a crisis.

Social media can play a significant role in a company’s crisis management process by:

Identifying topics of stakeholder interest and points of engagement.

Allowing company participation in relevant online conversations.

Providing real-time information on stakeholder perceptions during a crisis.

Allowing the company to respond quickly to a diverse set of stakeholders.


Cisco Social Media Certification Program Accredited Certification Program: Five Role-Based Training Levels

Social media is an opportunity and a challenge. At Cisco, we are committed to training and educating our employees to appropriately navigate the social Web. Our goal is to teach our employees how to engage successfully with their customers online, and ultimately develop stronger, closer relationships with our customers.

We have developed a training program that is required in some instances and elective in other instances. The Social Media Certification program is designed to help those employees who want to acquire new skills, round out social media knowledge and increase marketing effectiveness.

Our program offers a well-balanced presentation of social media best practices, the “how tos” of executing social media programs, and teaches you how to evaluate the effectiveness of your programs. Whether you are a novice or a social media expert, this customizable program has something for everyone. Sample classes include: Social Media Overview, Social Media Policy and Governance, Intro to Internal Collaboration Tools, Intro to Twitter, Intro to Facebook, Intro to Blogging, SEO for Blogs and more.

Expectations of Cisco Managers Given the ubiquitous nature of social media, Cisco managers have heightened responsibilities in connection with the policies contained in Cisco’s Social Media Policy, Guidelines and FAQs. When Cisco managers blog, they should consider whether their views might be interpreted as an opinion of the company based on their role at Cisco. Accordingly, in addition to complying with Cisco Code of Business Conduct, when social networking, Cisco managers should use care in avoiding discussion of Cisco policy, team activities or performance, personal information, or employee information in this public forum.

For managers and their subordinates who are interested in “friending” each other on social networking sites, both should be mindful of avoiding any interactions/communications that may create a conflict of interest or that may compromise Cisco’s ability to enforce its policies, especially its policies against nepotism, harassment and discrimination. We recommend that managers and subordinates are referred to Cisco Connections—An Employee Resource Handbook for more information.


Increase the understanding of social media across Cisco

Our goals for the training program are quite simple.

Accelerate adoption of social media in marketing, communications and sales

Mitigate risks through education

Share best practicesAdopt and use Cisco’s internal social media tools

http://wwwin.cisco.com/FinAdm/grc/ethics/cobc/

http://wwwin-dev.cisco.com/HR/employee/cisco_connections/index.shtml

http://wwwin-dev.cisco.com/HR/employee/cisco_connections/index.shtml

This document is available for external use; however, some of the links included are for internal use only and can only be accessed through the Cisco Employee Connection (CEC).

Cisco Social Media Playbook Best Practice Sharing

Technology

Transcript of Cisco Social Media Playbook Best Practice Sharing