Cisco Likes Facebook's Like Button

Cisco has gone live with Facebook’s Like button throughout its Data Center product pages and select Small Business product pages. Cisco continues the trend of staying ahead of the curve in utilizing social media technology to better communicate with its customers and partners. The Like button will give Cisco customers and partners an intuitive and elegant way to share content they find valuable.

Cisco has developed a strategy on how to integrate social media into Cisco.com, leveraging Jeremiah Owyang’s framework, which outlines the evolution of social corporate websites. Today Cisco is proud to announce the rollout of Facebook Like buttons on over 180 product pages on Cisco.com. You will notice them when browsing Cisco’s Data Center or small business product areas.

Why Facebook? Cisco has over 685K fans on Facebook across it’s various Facebook pages and it has seen referral traffic from Facebook increase over 50% in the last year. So Cisco’s customers are on Facebook and they are using Facebook to share information – why not make it easier for them to do that? In fact on other Cisco sites where this feature is deployed – Cisco Blogs, News@Cisco and the Cisco Umi site – Facebook quickly became the third biggest traffic referral behind Google and Cisco.com. Similarly other companies are seeing huge traffic gains, The Washington Post has seen its Facebook referral traffic climb 290%, ABC News saw an increase of over 250 percent in Facebook referrals and Levi’s, who was an early adopter of this feature saw more than 4,000 likes on it’s website in the first week!

For now this is still just a pilot program at Cisco but if things go well as Cisco suspects, you can expect to see Facebook Like buttons appearing on product pages throughout the site and who knows where next!

I would like to take this opportunity to recognize and thank the Marketing IT team, the Web and User Experience Team, as well as the Data Center and Small Business website strategists, for working with Social Media Marketing to make this happen!

So what do you think…do you “like” it?

Cisco, Comcast & Virgin America Share How Facebook And Twitter Are Changing Business Models

While at SMASH Summit, Evelyn Rusli from TechCrunch did a interview with, Frank Eliason from Comcast and Bowen Payson, Virgin America about how Facebook And Twitter Are Changing Business Models, Shaping Brand Identity. Check it out:

The Backstory of the B2B Magazine Integrated Social Media Award Winner

Cisco was awarded the Integrated Social Media Marketing Award by B2B Magazine for the creative development and marketing of the Cisco myPlanNet game. Cisco is now in the running for the people’s choice award so please vote for us.

Case Study: Birth of and Key Takeaways from the Development of Cisco MyPlanNet

View more presentations from Petra Neiger.

I am fortunate enough to work with the mastermind behind this great work – Petra Neiger and was able to interview her for some behind-the-scenes info on what was involved to pull this off. Here’s the transcript:


First tell us a little bit about what myPlanNet is and what you were trying to do?

Cisco myPlanNet is a simulation “edugame” that puts the player in the shoes of a service provider president. You can experience life as a wireline carrier, cable or mobile operator, and pick a level of difficulty and the Internet era you want to start in. From there, your challenge is to manage your business, transform your community, and guide residential and business customers into the medianet era. As you go through the game, you will need to make decisions every step of the way and every decision you make will impact your balance sheet, operations, and customer satisfaction.

What was the objective you were trying to solve that led you to creating the MyPlanNet game?

The key words here are engaging, educational and fun. The idea was to connect with our customers and network aficionados in an interactive and fun way, and allow them to experience the effects that Cisco's broad portfolio has on people’s lives. This game helps people explore how the different pieces fit together and the role Cisco has played in the evolution of the Internet over the past 25 years.

I’ve taken a look at the game and played it, the engineering behind it looks pretty complex. What was the process to develop it?

It took us 13 months to develop. We were a small team who did this project on top of our day jobs. On a high level, the process included project scoping, game architecture design, content design and creation, graphics and UE design and creation, testing, legal clearances, database creation and integration, testing, web page development, testing, marketing asset development…and did I mention testing? We tested the game many times and at every juncture to make sure all the pieces work well together and I can’t emphasize how important testing is. The other thing I want to stress is the importance of project scoping. Do spend the time to make sure you have all the details and information outlined and how one thing will lead into another. The more planning you do upfront, the easier it will be to go through the project and it will also help you stay focused. Not to mention, it will help monitor how you’re doing on budget.

If you’re interested in the detailed steps of game development, please see the embedded slides embedded above or check out the presentation here.

Focusing on the social media aspects, what did you do to promote the game and what worked or didn’t work?

When we first introduced this game in October 2009, we coupled social media with traditional media, such as banners, emails, Cisco newsletters and trade show demos. Our social media efforts were additive. After about 6 or so weeks, we pulled back on traditional media and social media moved into the driver seat. From day one, social media marketing has been used to increase awareness, and drive game downloads and interaction. Our social media strategy follows a continuous learning model based on these pillars: listen, share, engage, integrate, measure/analyze, improve.

We used a variety of different tools:

1. The landing page contains web 2.0 components such as the bookmark and share widget and live feeds from the JIVE support page.
2. We are using JIVE for online game support.
3. We shared news, tidbits, assets, etc via blogs, tweets, Facebook cross links, ads, Facebook fan page, social bookmarking, video syndication, RSS and discussion forums
4. We have promoted myPlanNet either as a standalone item or as part of a bigger initiative, such as Cisco Learning Network/Network Academy, the US broadband stimulus program, Consumer Electronics (CES) trade show, or Cisco’s 25th anniversary.
5. We are engaging with users via feedback solicitation, offering discussion forums for people to interact with other players as well Cisco technology experts, and are actively updating our fan page with socially competitive mini-games and other information.
6. In addition to the Cisco accounts, our small team also used our own personal accounts and personal relationships to help get the word out.

What worked well, top of my head…:
1. The campaign was fully integrated between traditional and social media as well within social media. This means that we had “one voice” in all of our communication channels and our messages were consistent. We had a clear call to action and made our content available in a variety of different ways. This helped increase our chances of getting noticed.
2. Our efforts caught the press’ attention and generated several articles and blog posts. Not only did these articles help raise awareness of the game, but we were also able to leverage these third-party postings (e.g., retweet, social bookmark, etc) to further promote Cisco myPlanNet.
3. Our Facebook ad drove a lot of people to our Facebook fan page.
4. The reaction to the “socially competitive mini games” on Facebook has been very positive.
Where we were challenged:
1. The team that developed this game was small. The team who were responsible for promoting this game was much smaller. Resources were definitely a challenge. It’s not just about getting the message out but it’s also about monitoring the responses or posts that come in, and then addressing them as needed on an on-going basis.
2. The question of JIVE platform vs. Facebook fan page. We monitored both of them for the first few weeks to see how people were using each and what type of audiences went where. What we found was that JIVE was more suited for online technical help. Even today, people tend to read more on this page than post. On the other hand, our Facebook fans use the “Like” and “Comment” functions quite generously but do so on more casual, light-hearted topics. We also faced some platform challenges in the beginning but we worked around them.

If you’d like, take a look at some public slides from our detailed go-to-market communication plan.

What were the results of this campaign?

As of 04/13, we had over 115,000 hits to the game landing page, about 33,000 downloads, about 130 countries and over 2,500 institutions participating, and now have over 48,000 Facebook fans. While these numbers look good, it is also important to note the additional exposure Cisco myPlanNet has received in the form of blog and press mentions by the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Broadband Census, Network World, and Computer World to name a few. Tom Grant, Ph.D., a Senior Analyst at Forrester did a podcast on Cisco myPlanNet with Stephen Liu, Chief Architect and me.

What lessons did you learn from this experience? Is there anything you would do different?

I would categorize my answers in 2 buckets: development-related and marketing-related learnings. My presentation on the “Birth and Key Takeaways from the Development of Cisco myPlanNet” highlights some things we’d like to do differently next time.
From a social media marketing perspective, I think these were the key takeaways:

1. Experiment, listen and choose your action: don’t be afraid to experiment with a post, mini game, etc., watch people’s reaction and address as or if needed.
2. Balance between engineered and organic content: have some seed content ready to go but at the same time, let the conversation naturally unfold. Monitor what people say but give them the freedom to comment. If your engineered topic doesn’t catch on, don’t force it.
3. Don’t take things personally: there will be people who may not like what you do and that’s ok. Don’t get on the defensive.
4. Social media doesn’t go away: once you’re in social media, you are in social media. So make sure that people on your team continue to monitor and stay engaged with your fans, discussion forum participants, etc. I think many organizations don’t quite realize how much time and effort it really takes to nurture your social media engagements. It’s more than writing a blog or sending a tweet. Often times, we are required to move from one thing to the next very quickly and get too busy to keep the “old” things moving along as we start working on the “new” ones. If social media is specific to a campaign and is not intended for on-going use, plan for an exit strategy at the beginning of your program.
5. Align your marketing objectives to the requirements, limitations and opportunities presented by the tool you’re looking to market: wow, this is a mouthful. But basically, what it means is that everything needs to be connected and make sense. In our case, we would have loved to do a big contest with lots of prizes et al. But, we had certain requirements and limitations that prevented us from being able to do so. It certainly would have helped with word-of-mouth advertising much sooner and faster but it was not a possibility. So we tried other avenues to achieve the same goals.
6. Be patient: social media doesn’t happen overnight. You need to put the time and effort into it to get results.

If you are interested in seeing some more ideas about how to use social media in support of your overall marketing campaign, feel free to visit my presentation “Framework: Social Media As Part of Your Overall Communication Strategy”.

If you think this case study is as awesome as I do, please cast your vote so Cisco can win the people’s choice award!

The Evolution of a Social Media Marketing in a Product Launch

Here's a presentation that Melissa Mines, Marketing Manager at Cisco and I did with BrighTalk showing how we evolved our social media marketing tactics from the Cisco ASR 1000 launch to the the Cisco ASR 9000 launch.

Cisco Ends the Search for the Perfect Valentine's Day Gift

This is a great B2B example of a viral video. This video was posted to YouTube, blogged about and Twittered about and in 5 days has over 8,400 views!

Cisco's Newest Social Media App

Cisco is breaking social media ground yet again with it's new VNI PC Pulse application. I happen to work with one of the masterminds (Thomas Barnett) behind this application so I was able to talk him into an interview to give other social media enthusiasts a back stage view of what went it's creation.

Can you give me a brief description of the new Cisco VNI PC Pulse application?

>> Thomas: Cisco has created a free application to show users how much network bandwidth they consume and the types of applications they use. This application shows users the amount and types of traffic that flow to and from their computer and provides aggregated network usage proof points of all global users of this application for comparison purposes.

This is a great idea, how did you come up with it? What is the benefit to the end user?

>> Thomas: As part of our Visual Networking Index (VNI) initiative, we are interested in activities that can help provide qualitative views of network-based consumer video usage patterns and trends. Cisco has sponsored and will continue to explore consumer preferences and perspectives through surveys/questionnaires (see Cisco VNI Pulse political survey and Initial Cisco VNI Pulse consumer survey). A natural extension of our direct engagement with consumers was to offer a free utility application to develop a deeper understanding of consumer video behaviors and attitudes on a global scale. End users can gain a better understanding of their personal PC use and compare their bandwidth consumption with the aggregate average of others worldwide. They can compare their personal historical bandwidth usage stats (i.e., personal high, personal average, personal low) against WW stats (world high, world average, world low). The application measures LAN and Wi-Fi connections.

What have you learned since the application has been available?

>> Thomas: Data retrieved through the Cisco VNI Pulse application showed that on January 20, 2009 (the day of the U.S. inaugural festivities)individual users downloaded more than twice the amount of data they do during a normal day, at 322 MB vs. a typical average of 159 MB. Doug Webster, a marketing executive with Cisco, speculates that many people had the inaugural festivities streaming in the background while they did other things
Are there any social elements of the application? Thomas' Response: At this point, the ability to compare personal bandwidth usage against world stats is the primary social feature. Users could also compare their usage directly with family, friends and colleagues that choose to use the application. Cisco plans to develop a interactive web page in later in 2009 that will provide additional social networking elements.

What is the main objective of the application and how are you measuring your success?

>> Thomas: By using the Cisco VNI PC Pulse application, consumers will gain a better understanding of their online preferences and needs. The aggregate data will help Cisco build a better understanding of what we all demand from our networks. Data from this application will be shared publicly on a quarterly basis. We will measure our success the number of global users we are able to attract and the quality of new and insightful findings that we are able to share with the telecommunications industry and others interested in IP networking consumer trends.

What future apps can we expect from Cisco?

>> Thomas: We have developed a new mobile application that is currently available for iPhone users and will soon be available for Blackberry users as well. The Cisco Global Internet Speed Test (GIST) for iPhone application is publicly available via the Apple iPhone App Store in iTunes (http://www.apple.com/iphone/appstore/).

To learn more about the app check out Doug's post 'Are you a Super User?' or of course go directly to the download site and check it out for yourself.

To Blog or Not to Blog?

With only 54 of the Fortune 500 companies blogging, this is a question still being pondered by many. Cisco, HP and Intel are in that blogging minority and Reem Abeidoh of Problogger interviewed me, Tac Anderson of HP and Michael Brito of Intel to come up with A Guide to Corporate Blogging.

Ryan McLean commented on the post stating, "I don't think I will ever be in a fortune 500 company. But if I ever am then this post will come in handy." I agree with Reem's response that despite the company size "ultimately the process is very similar." And although I represented the Cisco blog in this interview I have helped build blogging strategies for many small companies and have followed the same process successfully. So whether you're coming from a big or small company this guide is a must read!

Tac, Michael and myself are also contributors to the Conversations Matter blog.

CORRECTION: Reem is not a Problogger staff member, she is a Social Media Strategist for Outrider.

Cisco Social Media Case Study - Free Webcast

In addition to all of the conferences I'm speaking at (as noted in my previous post) I just finished a live webcast that is now available on demand here. Enjoy and feel free to submit questions here on my blog and I will respond to you. I am also welcome to feedback and suggestions for improvement. Thanks!

Social Media Marketing Summit - Recap

I presented the Cisco ASR Case Study example at today's Social Media Marketing Summit. I was a little rusty since I've been on LOA for 2 months now (for those who may not know I had a baby girl on 8.8.08). I stumbled on a few words then to top it off the computer prompted me to restart now or later for an update and of course I accidentally pressed now. The crowd responded with a "oooh noooo" and it still took me a minute to realized what I had done. I tried to keep my cool and keep on going and according to this post from Trisha Lyn it sounded like I didn't do that bad (I swear I didn't pay her).

Uunfortunately didn't catch much of the other sessions with the exception of of a presentation, by Tara Hunt. Her presentation, "Increasing the Social Capital of your Brand" was largely based off her book "The Whuffie Factor" which she is expecting to be released in April. Her delivery was awesome and although the presentation was high level it sounds like it'll be a good read to reinforce the basics.

As for my presentation, if you missed this conference you'll have two more opportunities to catch me. I'll be speaking at the Social Media Strategies Conference and the SIPA Mid-Year Marketing Conference.

If anyone who has seen my slides or better yet who has seen me present has comments or suggestions for improvement, please let me know!

UPDATE: If you're going to the WebGuild Social Media Strategies Conference use this discount code to save $150 "community56"

Marketing 2.0 with Visual Networking

Visual Networking is yet another web 2.0 marketing tool I’ve added to my virtual briefcase. Visual Networking is a mash-up of digital video and social networking capabilities. The video aspect offers an interactive and engaging way to tell my story while the social networking capabilities allow the viewers to collaborate, comment and share ideas on what they've seen. Here are a few B2B examples I'm aware of, all of which involve creating a persona to demonstrate a point:

Cisco's Disconnected Life Webisode Series - Don and Rhoda Delay's network and communication problems have led them to marriage counseling as they illustrate the 'disconnected life' that I know I couldn't bare. Where's the social networking? Well thanks to YouTube it's in the ability to comment on each of the videos (and keep delivery costs low).



Blue Coat's Bob Kent Stories - Bob Kent represents the bad employee in every company who misuses the Internet at everyone else's expense. The exaggerated stories are ones that anyone in an office environment can relate to. Looking for a way to collaborate? Participate in the monthly contest by submitting your story and you may just get a Nintendo Wii out of it!

Tibco's Greg the Architect - Greg represents the hero that every techy wants to be and no challenge is too small. There's no social networking aspect that I can see so maybe this is just straight video but it's still pretty creative and adding the social component would be easy to do.

Any other examples you think should be added to this list? Feel free to share.

Executing Social Media with Jeanette Gibson

Thanks to Chris Heuer for recording and posting this presentation on Cisco's Social Media efforts that Jeanette Gibson presented last week at John Gerstner's workshop:



Also thanks to Michael Brito for bringing this to my attention!

Cisco Marketing Has Got Game

Some call it social media excellence some just say we've gone crazy...whatever you call it, it seems to be working.

As an extension to the social media efforts that we're leveraged for Cisco's ASR launch, Cisco announced a tournament around the EDGE QUEST game where they are offering $10,000 cash plus a Cisco ASR 1002 router to the sole winner. Not a bad deal for playing a game but the competition is stiff with a top score currently at 204,540.

I haven't exactly kept it a secret that I'm one of the marketers behind this campaign so of course I think it's cool but here are a few specific reasons why I think it’s working for us:

1. We're reaching our target audience in a new, fun, and engaging way. Last year online gaming attracted 28 percent of the total worldwide online population -- almost 217 million people -- and according to CIMS, 24% of those were IT professionals! Us marketers are always trying to fish in a big pond but it helps when they’re all swimming in the same place.
2. Low cost, high ROI. This program was an extension of an existing program. The EDGE QUEST game was created at launch so the cost of the tournament includes just the "carrot" of $10K plus the router. We also invested a small amount in changing the game a bit for the "money round" of the tournament but no budget went into promotion we focused solely on social media outlets. In return we've had an influx in PR and Blog pick-ups and a substatial increase in traffic to the game and product page. All of this activity of course is being measured and considered as part of the ROI of the campaign.
3. It was just a blast to work on. Hey there's nothing wrong with that - it's fun for the people engaging with Cisco in a new way and it was fun to be part of the marketing team to develop and creatively promote the game and tournament leveraging social media tactics which included a social media release, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Digg and Flickr.

This particular campaign won't work for everyone but creating a social marketing campaign can get your customers engaged and extend your message far beyond traditional marketing.

Leveraging Social Media and Web 2.0 in a Product Launch

Part of the reason I've been a lazy blogger lately is that I have been consumed with launching "the most powerful compact router every created" - the Cisco ASR 1000 Series Routers. It's been a fun launch and we pulled out all of the web 2.0 stops creating a Virual. Viral. Visual. launch. Here's a laundry list of how we leveraged Web 2.0:

• Pre-Launch Uber User Site - We leveraged light hearted videos on this site and posted them on YouTube to maximize visibility.
• Facebook Group - This was part of the pre-launch so I was able write about this one in an earlier post and even shared our process and tips here.
• Interactive 3-D Game - I would like to give kudos to the vendor - Somnio - who helped us create this very cool online game. "EDGE QUEST" offers our audience a fun and engaging way to learn about the product and interact with the Cisco brand - a no-brainer given the playing statistics of online games.
• Social Media Web Widget - Again kudos to Somnio here for the development of Cisco's first web widget that 'lets our content free' by allowing users to embed it on their site (as shown below).



• Social Media Release (SMR) - It's been nearly a year since I stumbled across and wrote about SMRs. What make them different from a traditional release? It's the approach and the fact that a SMR leverages and highlights all of the social aspects of the announcement.
• Second Life Presence - We were able to leverage Second Life pre-launch by hosting a countdown party and post launch by walking through a product demo.
  Other Stuff - We also leveraged sites like Digg, del.icio.us, Technorati, Reddit and StumbleUpon - we also have a focused blogger outreach program and a pretty cool looking launch page.

Want to know more about this launch? I'll be presenting on March 26 with Wilson Craig, PR Manager at Cisco for the Silcon Valley American Marketing Association to share processes, best practices and results.

The Inside Scoop to Creating a Facebook Group

Richie Fitz commented in my earlier post Cisco got Facebooked asking about the set-up process and tips - here's what I can offer:

• Set-up was easy. What we did was we set the group to 'private' initially so we could get it ready before the initial public launch (kinda like working in a staging environment). Everything but the title can be edited so make sure you choose your title carefully because it's final!
• Grassroots start. Because we decided against using one of Facebook's sponsored groups, marketing and promotion was up to us. We started by having the core group of administrators invite their 'friends' to join - then the viral nature of Facebook kicked in as people joined and their networks were notified. We also referenced the Facebook group to people who register for the March 4th event on the uber user site.
• Have a plan. We have a plan to update the group every week for at least the next 3-months. In week one we introduced Cupid along with a number of discussion topics, week two we introduced a new character, the Stork - complete with pictures and videos and we have more planned in the coming weeks (stay tuned).
• Be social and be open. If you're going to create a group on a social media site you have to be willing to open Pandora's box and allow users to participate. We created a top 20 "Internet Addicts" list that encourages users to generate ideas and get recognized if their idea is selected. Also be ready to respond back to users when appropriate - don't be a deaf ear.

Join the group to see for yourself!

Cisco got Facebooked!

I'm excited to announce that I was part of a team that launched a new Facebook group for Cisco Systems: Cisco Support Group for Internet Addicts. It's a fun group playing off the recent Über User campaign to promote - well - that's sort of a secret until March 4th so for now it's to promote the big event that announce how "life on the network will be better for everyone."

I know there are other marketers who occasionally read this blog - I'd be interested in any feedback (or suggestions) good or bad on the campaign and the set-up of the Facebook group. Also I hope that you'll join the group and participate in some of the discussions.

Lastly, in the light of the Valentine's Day (even though I'm a day late), I'd like to introduce Cupid, the Infatuation Specialist - enjoy!

Vote for Cool Software

That's what Intel wants you to do with the launch of their new website called CoolSW. They are using collective intelligence to help sift through the millions of software companies to find the best one. They've created a social ranking system that allows them to find what's "Cool." I have to admit the software that currently has the most votes in the 'digital home' category is pretty cool. It's a web service that allows people to draw floor plans online, or upload images of floor plans which are converted automatically into 3D Google Earth. Would they have found this company and the many others listed with the 90K+ employees they have? Maybe eventually but they've decided to take the shorter route and rely on anyone who wants to participate in helping them identify and rate cool technology.

This isn't a new concept, people have always gathered together to share information but the internet and the advancements of Web 2.0 allow us to share this information more freely. And those who have taken advantage of this have illustrated the powerful result:

• Google became the number one search engine by using 'PageRank' which uses the search behavior of millions of people to improve relevancy.
• Wikipedia has become the world's largest and arguably the most accurate encyclopedia.
• Innocentive opens up tough R&D problems for anyone to solve - since 2005, 58 of these tough problems have been solved by over 120,000 solvers.
• Cisco's Connected Life Contest resulted in over 600 technology ideas in 3-months that will be used to drive product strategy.

It has been proven that collective intelligence works and those who have jumped on the bandwagon have the competitive advantage. How have you seen 'the power of many' used successfully?

Cisco Connected Life Contest Benefits from the Social Web

This is me exhaling. The Connected Life Contest I wrote about in an earlier post is in it's final days and we've already exceeded our project goal by 250%. The social media tactics we used showed a steady flow of entries almost immediately. Next time I'd like to spend more time building an online personality for the character of the campaign and being more active in the social web.

Overall it's been a successful campaign and I am most proud of the blogger reactions to Cisco's first ever Social Media Release:

PR Squared
"The Cisco release is great – it’s straightforward, easy to understand, contains lotsa links to additional content (including a video featuring the band members from KISS!), a YouTube community site link, an RSS feed, a Digg This link, etc. "

Agency Next PR
This ought to tell you a couple of things about the new media era in which some of us now live. Cisco Systems — you know, that company that is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet — is having a contest to gather the best new connectivity ideas out there from ordinary, imaginative people in the big wide world.

Shel Holtz' Blog
The Cisco release hits most of the right notes with news highlights and facts, tags and keywords, links, quotes, multimedia, contact information, an RSS feed for all company news, a trackback URL and a link to the traditional version of the release. (Evidently, it wasn’t too time-consuming to produce both.) A purpose-build del.icio.us page would have been a nice addition, but overall, a very nice bit of work from Cisco Systems.

The Podcaster
What Cisco have done is allow the online community as well as the media to have access to a large array of additional information through the links. (I am not a journalist but I have Google Alerts and other tools helping me monitor the development of social media and online community marketing so I became aware of this).

Looks like Cisco is taking the red pill too and will be digging into the rabbit hole deeper with an announcement coming next week. I can't wait!

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!

A Social Networking Experiment: Cisco’s Connected Life Contest

Merry Christmas
Ever hear that you should be careful what you ask for because you just might get it? Well, Christmas came early for me this year. I was challenged with applying some of this crazy Marketing 2.0/social networking/new paradigm stuff I’m always talking about to help boost the exposure of a program to promote Cisco’s Connected Life Contest.

The idea behind Cisco’s Connected Life Contest is to generate innovative ideas for a connected life (for example: using your cell phone to pay for your Starbuck's coffee). Cisco is awarding a grand prize of $10,000 for the best idea and ten runner-up prizes of $1,000.

Your Mission, should you choose to accept it . . .
Most of the focus around Marketing 2.0 in my current role is about strengthening ties with current customers. This is a different animal. For this project, I won’t be using Marketing 2.0 techniques to improve the quality of customer conversations but rather to dramatically increase the quantity of conversations we’re having. Whereas most of my marketing focus is on building brand, reinforcing message, and enabling better communication – this is straight up promotion.

What took this from being just another cool marketing project to being a real life Apprentice-style jam session is the lofty objectives, short timelines, and limited resources. We’re working with a very limited budget, a very small (yet obsessively dedicated) team, and 51 days to reach a record setting goal (internal bragging rights only), measured in contest entries.


Ray Hopewood, meet Joe ConnectedLife
We’re relying heavily on social networking to create and sustain buzz for Joe, the central character to the Connected Life Contest. An important early task was to build our online presence for the campaign. “Joe ConnectedLife,” has a profile on Facebook and MySpace, communities on YouTube, Ning and LiveVideo, profiles on 40+ other video sharing sites, and you can tag the Connected Life Contest page with digg or del.icio.us.

Shameless Plug & Cry for Help
In addition to all of the social networking I’m doing to build Joe ConnectedLife’s online presence I’m hoping to inspire my audience to take action. Submit your idea (did I mention there’s a $10,000 Grand Prize!), write about it in your blog, befriend Joe ConnectedLife share the landing page through digg, del.icio.us, or whatever other social bookmarking tool you use – or send me your ideas on what else we can be doing to spread the word.

B2B Marketing 2.0 – Conversation Enablers

Someone at work asked me how to 'leverage the power of Web 2.0' and what I have done to take advantage of some of the new technologies. I responded by saying that Web 2.0 technologies are useful for creating conversations with my customers, not just for pushing content (why pushing content isn’t good enough anymore is a post of it’s own). Then I was asked what training wheels I would suggest for someone looking to get started. I came up with this list of things I started with and would love suggestions from expert readers on others:

Blogging: Corporate blogs are becoming more common with companies like Cisco, HP, NetApp and Boeing which already active participants in the blogosphere. The common platforms for business or corporate blogs are WordPress, Movable Type and Leverage Software which goes beyond blogging to create communities.

Wiki's: Corporate wiki’s are collaborative websites which rely on a community of users to generate content and build pages. Wiki’s can be used in so many ways here are some example that come to mind –improve internal communications and expand the reach of your internal knowledgebase, use it to build a community within your customer base to create user generated documentation, use it with partners to co-create proposals. Some examples of external corporate wiki’s sites are: Linux Questions, IBM and Adobe. Three popular corporate Wiki platforms that come to mind are Confluence, SocialText and TWiki.

Social Networking: There are many social networking sites and although most of the one’s I’ve come across are personal in nature they do touch on certain business topics and can be exploited to reach a community that shows interest in topics related to your business. This site lists a few of the more popular social networking sites.

Second Life: Second Life is a ‘3-D virtual world’ – it offers a platform that can be used to host online events and collaborate with a broad audience in addition to just starting a hallway conversation with other avatars online. Notable companies on Second Life are Cisco, Reuters, Sun Microsystems and IBM.

LinkedIn: An online community of business professionals – this site can be exploited to build an expert within your company on a specific topic by taking advantage of the ‘Answers’ area of the site. It can be a good place to find potential clients and partners – and of course it’s more obvious use is finding potential job candidates.

I have limited this list to ‘conversation enablers’ – I'll be working on a follow up post around widgets and which ones are most likely to have “business value” which I think is even more interesting.