Cisco Live Social Media Hub: The Pulse of #CLUS

Did you post a selfie that was photobombed by John Chambers? What about tweeting more than 170 times a day to be the top of the leaderboard? Cisco Live – referred to as “summer camp for grown-up geeks” – was a hotbed for social media activity. In fact, after day three, on Twitter alone, references to @CiscoLive and #CLUS received more than 35,000 tweets by about 8,000 users. We are poised to nearly double the amount of social media activity around Cisco Live this year versus last year. But how did the Cisco Live team manage all of these incoming and outgoing tweets? The Cisco Live Social Media Hub! Modeled around a social media listening and engagement center, the Hub kept the pulse on social media conversations around the event and was also as a venue for responding to and promoting those conversations in real time.

On-site, the Hub became even more than the incredible social media command center; it also became a meeting place for friends that wanted to connect in person as well as share their experiences in real time over social channels. Between showing live feeds of keynotes and featured sessions to hosting tweetups and social events, we were able to create an experience within Cisco Live for our customers, partners, /colleagues and friends.

New to Twitter? The Hub team helped people sign up for social media sites, use and track hashtags and contribute to Cisco Live conversations. Need help? The Hub team was able to provide guidance, troubleshoot issues and lend a helping hand both over social media channels and in person. Ready to win? The Hub team hosted more than 40 contests for prizes such as an attendee-designed social media t-shirt, mobile device battery chargers and even Nerds candy!

Real-time responses. On-site content creation. Mobile engagement from after-hours events such as the Customer Appreciation Event. The Cisco Live Social Media Hub elevated not only the outgoing conversations about the event, trends such as the Internet of Everything and content from keynote speakers, but also the engagement with incoming content. Our attendees are the best eyes and ears into every session, and they provided incredible insights and feedback that we responded to as well as aggregated and analyzed for future Cisco Live events.

In fact, during the opening keynote featuring John Chambers, Padmasree Warrior and Dave Evans – which you can view on Cisco Live 365 – there was such a high level of tweets and engagement back and forth with attendees that we actually exceeded the number of tweets allowed per hour! We essentially broke Twitter.

Whether you participated in social media at Cisco Live by watching the conversations on one of our six screens featuring social content and trends, stopped by the Hub to chat or engaged with us online, we thank you for helping us elevate the social experience at Cisco Live!

So who were the friendly faces at the Hub and behind @CiscoLive? Our fearless lead, Charlie Treadwell (@CharlieAtCisco) along with our incredible team: Davythe Dicochea (@davythe), Buffy Koscielniak (@BernadetteK), George Metrik (@gosha), Kari Gunderson (@karigundy) as well as our social media agency, GolinHarris. A very special thank you goes to Kathleen Mudge (@KathleenMudge) for being our Cisco Live champion and helping this come to life!

Want an overview of the social conversations? Check out our Storify channel! We look forward to seeing you in San Francisco for Cisco Live 2014!

For more information about the Cisco Live Social Media Hub, check out this BizBash article.