Our Work

The Small and Medium-Sized Business (SMB) unit of Cisco, a leading international networking services provider, was struggling to increase global awareness, enhance its perceived relevance, and increase customer loyalty for its suite of products. Forum One developed an online community and social media strategy that identified specific content for Cisco.com, a destination community site for SMB, and a strong Cisco presence on independent SMB blogs, communities, and social media sites.

To construct this strategy, we interviewed internal stakeholders to document business goals and challenges, conducted an extensive ecosystem review to discover the current sites and influencers around SMB, and surveyed nearly 300 Cisco SMB customers to understand their content and feature needs. Our recommendations spelled out how to launch an SMB community brand, highlight SMB "heroes" and their success stories, complement online activity with local meetups, create an SMB presence on mass social media sites, and establish relationships with prominent SMB bloggers. We finished with a framework for measuring the success of these efforts and allocating resources appropriately.