Cisco wins ‘Best Use of Twitter’ for third consecutive year

Cisco Systems gets social media. This year, Cisco has for the third time won first place in the “Twitter” category of PR Daily’s 2019 Digital Marketing & Social Media awards.

Cisco’s Twitter campaign happened at Cisco Live, the company’s signature event (its own take on the Dreamforce/Dell World-type experience for customers and other stakeholders). Four goals drove the Twitter strategy in 2018: building awareness and generating buzz, bridging the gap between those attending the event in-person and those experiencing it virtually, encouraging on-site conversation and enriching the overall event experience.

The team encouraged attendees to create user-generated content to distribute on Twitter, whether users were attending live or remotely. For example, attendees had the opportunity to blog about their experience and views, and the Cisco Live team would then promote those posts via their official social media channels.

The team held a sweepstakes for a meet-and-greet photo opportunity with a pre-event performer and debuted an attendee Social Ambassador Contest, selecting three popular contributors from the prior year’s event as “ambassadors” to compete in helping Cisco’s social staff in responding to event-related tweets.

Participants who tweeted to @CiscoLive got a personalized digital photo from the guest keynote speaker or a featured performer through Digigraph technology, which delivers a digital keepsake to those who tweeted to @CiscoLive with the event hashtag. Meanwhile, the Social Media Hub monitored online conversation and engaged with as many contributors as possible while also providing a physical location for in-person tweetups.

The effort resulted in more than 70,000 social mentions, 98% of those on Twitter, along with the delivery of 4,731 personalized photos via Digigraph (which resulted in 9,581 tracked views) and the event hashtag trending nationally on Twitter.

Congratulations to Kathleen Mudge for her outstanding work.