Those fine fellows over at Ragan have just released a quasi case study on Cisco and how “Social media gets you closer to your customers for less money”.
It’s a great read, but the golden nuggets for me were the following:
The use of homegrown video has become a crucial part of Cisco’s social media strategy. In 2009, Cisco acquired Pure Digital Technologies, maker of the popular Flip handheld digital video camera, so the company evangelizes the value of self-produced video as often as possible. And [Jeanette] Gibson [director of global social media for Cisco Systems] is convinced that video is becoming an ever-greater force within social media: “It’s the next generation for communications and marketing,” she said. “If you don’t know how to use a video camera and upload video to YouTube, you’ll have to learn how very soon.”
In addition, blog authors are encouraged to post video, with the result that videos have become a significant chunk of total posts—which is key because video posts often draw five times as many viewers as text posts, Gibson said. [my emphasis]
All of which ties in with my own belief that video will be the killer app for 2011 and 2012, and sites like 12seconds.tv will really take off.
