Listening is our "North Star" and here at Cisco we are using insightsfromsocial listening to help guide and inform our social media strategy and enable meaningful engagements with our customers.

Thanks to everyone who joined us on October 24th for the launch of our new Social Media Listening Center in the Executive Briefing Center. Here are highlights from that event.

https://youtu.be/xDCdZ2Ix3fk

"This is the future of how customers engage with companies 

going forward, regardless of your industry"

Blair Christie, CMO

Highlights

We had60+ attendeesthat included technology analysts and influencers,500+ views of the Facebook video stream, and750+ online conversationsrelated to this event. Attendees learned about the new listening center and how Cisco listens and engages with customers.

Charlie Treadwell demonstrated the capabilities of the 6 touch-enabled screens. Visit the previous blog post to learn more about the visualizations and the supporting technology.

In-person and virtual attendees were tweeting throughout the event and ciscolistens on tagboard had a great summary of those#CiscoListens tweets. We were able to see tweets materialize in real time on our Social Media Listening Center visualizations. It truly demonstrated the power of active listening.

We had a great discussion with our panelists:

• Jeanette Gibson-Senior Director, Cisco
• Kevin McPartlan-Product Manager, Cisco
• Blair Christie-SVP and CMO, Cisco
• David Alston-CAO, Marketing Cloud (formerly Radian6)
• Syed Hoda-Director of iServices, Cisco

Once the panel session wrapped up, everyone gravitated to the touch screens to interact with the display.

Social Media Listening Center (SMLC) Mobile Tour

The SMLC Mobile Tour also launched on October 24th. This virtual tour provides a self-guided demo of the listening center right from your mobile device.

Through the Mobile Tour you can view details on each of the listening center visualizations, provide tour feedback, or connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Blogs.

Visitors can access the SMLC Mobile Tour by scanning the QR code next to the Listening Center.

CMO Listening Kiosk

At the unveiling, the Listening Team also announced that CMO, Blair Christie, would have her own Social Media Listening Center kiosk in front of her office.  In fact, Jeremiah Owyang tweeted the following:

We are thrilled to share that Blair's kiosk is officially up and running.  It features 2 touch-enabled screens displaying our own SocialMiner visualization as well as Global Conversations, a twitter-based heat map. For its debut, screens were configured to show social mentions from analysts during the Q1 FY13 earnings announcement. Fully customizable, a key benefit is the ability to dynamically configure relevant data for any screen, any time, on any topic.

 Striving for Social Media Excellence

As Blair Christie emphasized, listening to our customers' needs and wants is very important to Cisco. Our customers are having conversations in very different places than they were before, and that's in the social and digital world.

LaSandra Brill shared that our team is taking an ABC and 1-2-3 approach to listening. First, we identify what the "action-based conversations" are (ABCs for short) then prioritize them with a 1-2-3 priority. Cisco is currently mentioned 5-7K times a day and roughly 3% of those conversations are actionable. Our Social Media Listening Center allows us to visualize those conversations, and enable our 1,500+ social ambassadors to have meaningful engagements with customers.

Forrester Research recently recognized our listening efforts by honoring Cisco with the Groundswell Award for London 2012 Social Media Listening. The Groundswell Award recognizes winners for excellence in effective use of social media to advance an organization or business goal.  Go team!

Check out these write-ups and mentions to read what people are saying about the Cisco Social Media Listening Center:

• Cisco Transforms Social Media Monitoring with New Listening Center
• Cisco Sees and Hears Social Media at New Listening Center
• Visualizing what you hear: Getting to engagement and action
• FIR Interview: Cisco Systems Social Media Listening Team
• #CiscoListens on tagboard (PDF -3.4 MB)

 Additional resources available include:

• Replay of the Oct. 24 unveiling (Video -48 min)
• Previous blog post: Cisco Unveils Social Media Listening Center
• Cisco EBC Social Media Listening Center Launch Event from Cisco Systems

 How is your brand engaged? We'd love to hear how your organization is listening and engaging.

 This blog post was written in collaboration withNancy Rivas.  Stay tuned for additional posts around#CiscoListens.