As social media is really beginning to be openly adopted as a viable tool for business here within Cisco, we are seeing a jump in conversations and collaboration among our peers and colleagues on best practices and techniques.  Only in  the last few months a group of us at Cisco have come together to form social media round table discussions to keep conversations open and ideas flowing.

As a new hire as Cisco, it is encouraging to see a myriad of different folks around the company being transparent and open to new and different ideas, even if they are unconventional.  That’s not to say that everyone agrees on everything, but there is that push to always be thinking outside of the box.

When great ideas are shared, everyone is more than willing to walk those that are interested through the process.

It is more discussions and round tables like these that will continue to push the envelope.  My only hope is that we see more of these in plenty of different technology areas within the company.

1. Continuing growth of twitter usage

2. Continuing growth of LinkedIn

3. Transpiring those to actual meet-ups (conferences, socials, etc)

4. Mobile business cards ( quick and easy exchange of contact information)

I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts talking about business and the economy and it seems most of them are all about reacting.  A certain amount may be necessary in some instances, but in my opinion now is the time to put full efforts into social media.  It is this grass roots type of movement, that if you can get it going, can really help a business by utilizing word of mouth.  A recent post of Jermiah Owyang’s shows all of the recent layoffs in the social media industry.  This scares me to think that businesses are quickly going to extreme measures.  What do you guys think?  Am I totally off?

I’ve been checking out a new tool called Yammer, which is a twitter-like api that is used from communicating with other employees within your company.  So far it looks like a meet and greet with no real productivity.  Anyone can start their own Yammer network and discuss current projects or happenings within the group.

I see some potential here in reaching out to other areas within Cisco.  I posted a recent update; ” I’m over here in San Jose in Cisco on Cisco.”  and received a few replies regarding the purpose of my group.

I’m in the process of writing a case study for Cisco IT on social media tools LinkedIn Answers and Twitter.  The challenges have been how to effectively utilize these tools in order to show ROI.

When first joining twitter, we got a lot of negative feedback about the structure of our posts from the community, which were very similar to that of an rss feed.  Working in a large corporation, there is still quite a bit of ambiguity in what can and cannot be said on the internet in many of my colleagues minds.  I guess that is to be expected in a large company such as Cisco, but I am very happy to see an increase in converasation around the topic.

Our twitter account has slowly evolved from a Cisco IT news feed to a real person with thoughts and opinions in the IT industry as well as some Cisco recommended resources.

LinkedIn answers has been a great tool as well that has been an enabler of conversations and relationship building.  I was quite surprised with the amount of positive feedback that I have been getting in response to some of my posts relating to Cisco IT.

In the end we are measuring amount of relationships, engagements, and traffic back to Cisco IT and we are still learning what strategies and tools can work best for a group that is a Cisco resource for best practices and case studies.

Chris Brogan just wrote a blog post on twitter marketing agency Cherp.  The company advertises that they can can a twitter account and turn it into a sweet melody by creating a twitter marketing strategy.

With Twitter’s open api, it is only a matter of time until we see different forms of this micro-blogging platform used in all kinds of unimaginable forms.

On the site they say twitter “..not only provides brands the ability to deliver relevant, SEO friendly messaging, but to connect and listen to consumer.”  There is also the option for platform integration.  My skeptisim comes in with the quesiton of whether or not a service such Cherp can not only broadcast and listen but have meaningful, transparent conversations.  It will be very interesting to see how twiter continues to play a role in business models.

Forums, or discussion boards are one of the oldest types of communication and collaboration on the internet.  This does not mean that it is an aging and irrelevant form of social meadia though.  I was talking to a friend of mine, Brian Ellefritz, about the history and effectiveness of forums, and it is interesting to see that they are still widely popular on sites that have a large community and following.  Forums allow anyone to join in on conversation or start discussions.  In my opinion there is something about forums that is addictive.  The ability to tap the minds of multiple people on a subject is exhilerating and gratifying when solutions are presented and problems are solved.  The main question is whether or not a particular site can be a feeding ground for community forums.  The answer for this has always been a bit vague in my mind as a website owner of a couple of sites.  Number one, I think the site has to already be getting large amount of visitors, and secondly, the site has to niche enough for people to feel that they can go into a discussion and know that there will be others who are knowledgable on a particular subject.

Since working on a social media plan for my group here at Cisco, I’ve been exploring all the options for searching and aggregating key words into a single place.  Tools such as google alerts, technorati, alltop, and the old fasioned rss feeds are all great tools and I use them frequently, but I love yahoo pipes.  For those of you who don’t know what yahoo pipes is, it is a web app that aggregates information from accross the web into one place.  For example I have created a pipe that searches accross Q&A type forums such as yahoo answers and linkedIn answers for specific key words.  It then brings in all questions and dicussions according to my filters.  There is really so much you can do with this excellent app, and I’m only really at the tip of the ice berg.  One thing I love about pipes is the potential for customization.  There is a bit of a learning curve and at first glance, it may look very intimidating and I think this is the reason why it hasn’t really taken off.  I found it best to look at other people’s saved pipes and make changes best fit for your purposes.