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4 B2B Social Media Lessons from Cisco Systems 08/30/2010

Marketing at the enterprise level has a unique set of challenges — lack of agility, decentralized teams, and long approval processes — to name a few. Lucky for us, we had the opportunity to chat with SocialTech presenter, LaSandra Brill of Cisco Systems, about ways they have overcome these challenges in their social media program, and consequently, have driven significant return on investment. As LaSandra revealed during #TechChat (transcript available here), social media made the launch of Cisco's ASR family of routers one of the top five most successful launches in Cisco history, reaching ninety times the audience of previous launch campaigns, at one-sixth of the cost!!! Yep, that deserved 3 exclamation points.

From last week's #TechChat, here are 4 social media lessons for the enterprise from LaSandra Brill of Cisco Systems:

1. Educate Employees on Social Media Marketing Best Practices

How many people have you met that say,"I just don't get Twitter. People don't care what I ate for lunch or that my cat just puked."?

If you're like me, you've met lots of 'em. Marketers, too. But Cisco Systems is turning regular employees into social media enthusiasts by educating them on social media best practices with their in-house optional social media certificate program.

2. Have an Open Social Media Policy

Unlike Apple (and the NFL), Cisco encourages social media participation, and has a clear social media policy. Want to comment on a blog, or Tweet about Cisco? Go for it — as long as you follow these rules.

3. Encourage All Employees to Participate

The one advantage that large corporations have is well, a large workforce. Cisco has 70,000 employees — 70,000 potential social media brand champions. Just imagine the power those 70,000 people would have on Twitter. Pretty awesome, isn't it?

4. Share Knowledge with Other Groups

Cisco has an internal site where they post best practices and planning resources. They meet and share their success stories monthly. So if product team A finds out that XYZ works, they can easily share it with product team B, and vice-versa.

A big thank you to LaSandra for participating in #TechChat, and an even bigger thank you for those of you who shared your insights during last week's seminar Cisco and the Social Web — it got rave reviews! If missed the free seminar and want to learn more about Cisco's high-performance social media program, have a listen to the recording. Learn even more about high-tech B2B social media marketing in San Jose at SocialTech 2010. SocialTech is our new conference about social media for the high-tech industry. Not in San Jose? No worries. We're streaming all content to virtual attendees as well.

And don't forget: #TechChat is every Tuesday at 8 PM ET. Our next guest is Michael Brito, SVP of Social Media at Edelman Digital. Michael has worked for major brands in Silicon Valley (HP, Yahoo! and Intel) and was instrumental in driving social media programs and campaigns emphasizing authenticity and long-term relationship building. Awesome, right? We can't wait to see what lessons he has to share.

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3 Social Media Ideas from #TechChat with Guy Kawasaki 08/23/2010

Whew! We hosted our first #TechChat last Tuesday with our special guest, Guy Kawasaki. More than 500 RSM (really smart marketers) joined us to chat with Guy about social media marketing for the high-tech industry. While the chat moved faster than any chat I’ve ever attended, most of us were able to take away a few key insights about social media marketing.

Here are my favorites:

1. Trial and error leads to strategy.

Because social media is still relatively new territory for most marketers, it makes sense to develop your strategy as you go along. You can’t plan what you don’t know. According to Guy, “I think ’social media planning and strategy’ is an oxymoron. Basically, you try stuff and see what sticks.”

2. It’s all about the numbers.

Let’s be real. Twitter is all about the numbers. The more followers you have, the more opportunities for developing connections you have. According to Guy, “The best way to get good connections is to get more followers. It’s the big law of numbers.” With more than 250,000 followers, Guy has played that game very, very well.

3. No one’s an expert. We’re all experts.

Again, because Twitter is so new, we all have the opportunity to be experts. Unlike other forms of marketing, we’re all still figuring Twitter out along the way. So seize this opportunity to own it like no one else. Guy says, “No one’s an expert at social media. One of the reasons I love it is we all have a fighting chance to use this thing effectively!”

A big THANK YOU to Guy for these insights, and thanks to everyone for attending. If you missed the inaugural #TechChat, don’t fret. WTHashtag has a transcript, the Isatis Marketing Blog compiled the best Tweets from Guy, and Stanford Smith wrote a great blog entitled, “How to Tweet like a ‘Beat Reporter—#TechChat Edition.”

Ready for more? Join us Tuesday, August 24 from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. (Eastern standard time) for the second #TechChat. We’ll be chatting with special guest, LaSandra Brill, social media manager at Cisco Systems, about social media for high-tech, B2B marketing. LaSandra is also presenting the new seminar, “Cisco and the Social Web: Our Adoption and Evolution,” on Thursday, August 26 at noon (Eastern standard time).

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3 Other Social Networks for High-Tech Marketing 08/20/2010

Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn. When B2B marketers decide to dive into social media marketing, they usually start there. However, when marketing a high-tech product or service, the use of video and presentations plays an important role in the buying process, allowing them to explain the benefit of a product with more than just words.

To help you take your high-tech social media marketing to the next level, here are 3 other social networks you should consider using.

1. SlideShare

Do you have a corporate SlideShare account? You should. SlideShare is a great way to demonstrate the benefit of your solution in presentation format. You can imbed the presentations in a blog or article, or provide presentation links to your sales team for use in the sales process. Whether you create new presentations or upload files you have on hand, Slideshare presentations don’t have to be long or wordy. In fact, Cisco System’s most viewed presentation is just one slide long!

2. StumbleUpon

If you’ve ever had a piece of content get hot on StumbleUpon, you know that it can drive significant amounts of traffic for weeks, months, and even years. While you can Stumble (or vote) on your own thought leadership content, it’s best to let your visitors Stumble your content for you. Make sure you have a StumbleUpon button on your content to remind your visitors to Stumble it, and ,of course, create “Stumble-worthy” content. I’ve had the most success (literally thousands of visits a week!) on StumbleUpon with comprehensive, top 10 lists.

3. YouTube

You know video is important in B2B marketing—from product tours to demos to presentations. But are you creating video content specifically for YouTube? Or are you just uploading formal demos to the channel? Instead of simply uploading previously created content to YouTube, get up close and personal with interviews with the executive team, product team, and your customers. The great thing about YouTube is that users actually expect user-generated content, so your videos don’t have to be expensive, big-budget productions. In fact, your prospects may relate better to an informal conversation with the engineering team, rather than a formal corporate video with the CEO.

What other networks should high-tech marketers be using? Let’s talk about it in the comments below.

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