Cisco blogs is excited to announce the updated and improved Social Rewards program! We think you’ll love the new features. Here’s a short list of the changes; check out the video for more details. Oh, and don’t forget to login—using Cisco.com login—or join today so you get credit for reading this post and watching the video!
Updated and new features:
- Log In – We moved to Cisco.com login. If you don’t have an account already it’s easy to register, just click on the “Join Today” banner found on the right column of each blog page.
- Notifications – You will receive a pop-up notification each time you earn a new badge! You can also share your accomplishment on Twitter and Facebook.
- Missions – Learn what you need to do to earn your next badge by hovering over the icons under the “Earn More Badges” section of your Rewards console.
- Leaderboards – See how you rank on the “My Leaderboard” widget found on each Members profile page. See who the top ten members are for the week and month on the “Learn More” page.
- News Feed – Populates whenever anyone becomes a member, earns a new badge, or progresses to the next level.
- Engagement Score – Replaces the Reputation meter; you can now earn points for everything you do. As your points add up you progress to the next level!
- New Look – We updated the badges, added some new badges, and refreshed the overall look of the program.
We plan to add new challenges throughout the year; you will want to continue to participate so you don’t lose out on all the fun! Let the games commence!
Lindsay, regarding the anticipated increased engagement, do you believe that re-launching the Cisco Social Rewards program will improve the substance of visitor comments on posts? If so, how?
Also, I recall there were fewer than 300 members, mostly Cisco employees, of the Social Rewards program after several years of exploring the impact of social gamification. Do you anticipate that the return on investment will now improve, due to the re-launch?
Hi David, Thanks for reading my blog post. The Rewards program has been very successful and our membership has been growing and is much larger than the number you mentioned. Yes, I do believe that the re-launch will improve the substance of comments as it allows users to be publicly recognize for their valuable contributions. I’m thrilled with all the new features and excited how our program will reward our most active members and bloggers.
Lindsay, where is the metric that would measure “meaningful and substantive” comments? As I see it, the problem with the award of these Badges is that it continues to encourage the Ken and Barbi short comments (cool, awesome, sweet, etc.), and it doesn’t encourage people who actually take the time and effort to compose a thoughtful response to the content in the post.
Hi David,
There’s a mix of the quantitative and qualitative in your comment. It’s typically best-practice to keep those two separate in terms of metrics and analysis. For instance, if there was a goal to increase the quantity of a particular action (e.g., comments), you would give rewards/points for leaving a comment – any comment at all. If you have a goal of increasing the quality of an action, you would reward child comments, upvotes/likes, and/or other actions that would validate quality.
One of the badges available on Cisco Rewards is “High Rated Commenter”, this badge has many levels and is a good indication of a commenters perceived quality over time as rated by other readers hitting the “Like” button. I hope that answers your question!
Hi David,
I will echo Mitch’s comments in that validating the quality of the comments can be achieved through the “like” button that is associated with each user’s comment. I choose to like a user’s comment if and ONLY if I find it to be meaningful and valuable. Over time, a user’s “passive points” earned will be a valuable representation of the quality of their overall content/comments.
Gamification is all about motivation and encouraging people to participate on an emotional level – standing up for something you believe in or are passionate about, driving innovation forward, achieving goals, changing behaviors, representing something that is meaningful to you or that you’re proud of, etc.
Gamification is not just about points, badges and leader boards. It’s important to understand your audience and in turn focus on the importance of what those types of achievements represent to them.
We will be expanding the Social Rewards program even further as we continue to learn and progress. It’s great to hear from the audience on what they find useful and meaningful within this program so please keep your comments coming.
Congrats, Lindsay and team on a great redesign and relaunch of this exciting program!
Deanna
Thanks Deanna and Mitch for your support of the program!
David – I think this is where the “comment like” button comes in. If we all make a point of “liking” valuable comments these will become more visible. I do share your concern on limited value comments.
Lindsay, I forgot to mention, please ask the WordPress developer to fix the bug where the paragraph breaks are now being removed from comments. — Thank you. — All my comments include more than one line of text, so it’s impacting my user experience.
The look and feel make it more enticing; it’s so colorful. Eventually, the ambassador page will be there. I like the way it’s rated, too. Not just applause rate, but more value placed on real engagement. This is awesome!
Lindsay,
I’m sorry to hijack this blog, but I don’t know where to report it. I sent a message to @CiscoBlogs but didn’t get a response.
There’s a broken link in the page. The More Posts sends the page to the 2014 posts page and not 2015.
Thanks and sorry again.
Looks great. Awesome job!
Congrats on the new and updated program!
Thanks, Leslie 🙂 It is so great to hear from you. Thanks for reading the post 🙂
This rocks! This is so aesthetically pleasing and I love the new look.
Thanks everyone! So glad to hear you like the new features so well.
@Jose, can you send me an email directly to socialrewards@cisco.com so I can better understand the issue you are reporting?
Lindsay,
It’s OK now. I guess someone from your team solved the issue. I appreciate it.
Hi Jose, I saw your feedback come through yesterday, so it was a little delayed but we got to it 🙂 so glad everything is working now. Please continue to use the feedback link at the bottom of every page. Thanks.
Blown away by the positive changes Lindsay. Awesome updates!
Sounds cool, games are good!
Love the new look and features, great job Lindsay and team!
Sweet!
Thank you everyone! I appreciate the positive feedback 🙂
Lindsay,
Is there any way to join my old account based on Twitter with the new one based on CCO? Otherwise I will lose all my previous badges.
Thanks,
WP
Hi Waldemar – Is this your new account? http://blogs.cisco.com/rewards-profile/314
My apologies for migrating your accounts incorrectly. Hopefully, the above is yours and correct now. If it is not, please let me know and we will get it resolved today.
-Clint
Thanks !!!
Thanks, Clint!
A big thanks to Clint for the smooth transition of all my previous points and badges!
Great job with the overhaul! I like the variety of actions and rewards that are now available.
Thank you, Mitch! So glad you like the improvements 🙂
This update not only looks lovely but it’s also a lot of fun! Great job, Lindsay!
Great refresh, modernization, and expansion of this program. Well done!
Really nice, gamification is a good way to encourage your readers to participate ! great job
Lindsay, the blog Gamification experience is better than ever. Excellent work!
I really like the new rewards program. I am already motivated more. Thanks for the update.
Congratulations! 🙂
Lindsay, the improvement is really great and I like it. Only two things are needed to be modified:
1-The paragraph formating.
2-The badges are so big. if there are so many comments, imagine the page loading time!!
Best Regards,
Maher
Thanks for all the great comments and feedback, everyone!
@David, the commenting format is not a bug, but we will look into adjusting it to accommodate multiple paragraphs. @Maher, I appreciate your feedback to and we will take it into consideration as we make improvements to the site.
Thank you, Lindsay!. I forgot to mention another issue, mail alerts. We should receive mail alerts whenever someone replies to one of the comments we make.
As a new member of the Cisco family, I find it refreshing to see an active and engaged social community. Grassroots social movements speak volumes about a companies brand in the eyes of it’s employees and customers.
Although I do like the new layout, has Cisco reviewed social media platform interfaces from companies like Influitive (http://influitive.com/). This interface is simple, consistent and fast. I am stumping for any one company, but interfaces like this will bring more social engagement users.
A few questions for the Cisco social team:
-Have you considered allowing users of this to follow/message each other? I like to follow people in communities to see what they post, like and share
-Gamification: Although I agree Cisco is using a part of the Gamification offering, it is not 100% gamification. Will rewards be offered in gift cards? Are rewards available in any form other than badges, points?
-We have a system at Cisco called Amplify. Will Amplify ever be integrated into this forum so we know what to tweet, post on LinkedIn, etc? A great tool is offering canned tweets and posts for user to share.
More ideas to come. Great job on the new look!
I’ll admit that I have been much more active since the new changes have been rolled out.
Engagement Score is better than the old Reputation Score. New icons and awards have a fresher and more modern look. Overall the changes are all good!
Please keep the community posted on how these changes increase membership!
Excellent, this will surely make me improve my game here 🙂 great work guys.
After using it a few days, I can tell you the program has encourage me to read a wider variety of blog content than I used to before. I am learning a lot about Cisco technology and am glad.
Ha! You chose the same song I chose for an EMSP video I currently have in production. 🙂
Great new features, they are sure to encourage more comments and overall community growth.