Thursday, August 9, 2007

Cisco Meets Crayon

Greg Verdino of Crayon was a guest speaker at Cisco meeting today talking about "Web 2.0". Unfortunately I came late and had to leave early but I think I was there for most of the good stuff. He came in with a lot of good examples. Here are the highlights of lessons learned:

1. The technology is irrelevant, it's about the people.

2. People are already talking about you. In fact they always have but now you can join in and change the tone of the conversation (assuming you do it right).

3. It's not always the best decision to start a new conversation/community - sometime it's better to find an existing community and join that one - especially if it's a community where you wouldn't be an authoritative figure.

4. When trying to kick start user reviews the answer is NOT paying someone. However it is okay to seed your reviews. What's the difference? With seeding you are reaching out to your best customers and encouraging them to post a comment - but not buying their opinion. Breaking this rule can ruin any future online credibility.

5. The "3 pillars of Conversational Marketing:" (1) Community - this is about connecting people with people.(2) Dialogue - this about creating two way conversations. (3) Partnership - I had to leave when he was going into this one but basically it's about reaching out to your communality for input and ideas and including them in the process.

The quote of the day , "it feels web 2.0ish" - this came from a Cisco team member who was inspired by the presentation and came up with an idea on how we can execute on these concepts. At the end of the day Greg accomplish his objective. Everyone had a good understanding of what it meant to be 'web 2.0' and they were engaged and inspired to come up with new ideas. Thanks Greg!

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