Lauren Brommer is an experienced digital marketer with a passion for social media. Currently at Cisco, Lauren leads the US social media strategy where she works cross-functionally to ensure customers are met with engaging content on Cisco’s social channels, insights from social listening inform the go-to-market strategy, and the power of a live event is multiplied through social reach. Her data-driven approach has helped establish social as a strategic channel for engaging Cisco’s diverse range of customers.

Check out our interview with her in anticipation of her talk at the Social Media Strategies Summit!

At the upcoming Social Media Strategies Summit in Anaheim, you’ll be sharing the story of how you consolidated over 400 of Cisco’s social media accounts into 100 – a huge project! Can you tell us a little bit about Cisco’s social team structure and who was involved in executing this initiative?

This was definitely a huge project! It all began two years ago with our global tech stack team which accounts for all of Cisco’s architectures, regions, and so on. This project spanned all of our global regions and has had 4 different project leads since it began. It was a big undertaking, but well worth the results!

What did the leadership approval process look like when this project got started? How did you showcase the value of revamping your brand and social personalities?

Our leadership team began this initiative. The process began by taking an entire look at our channels, and comparing which of our channels received higher engagement. We realized that we can more effectively reach our audience by utilizing a bigger, better channel with select targeting instead of having several segmented channels. Having a brand personality is important, but identifying a social personality allowed us to humanize our brand and build trust with our audience.

Are there any collaborative activities or exercises you did with your team that you found particularly useful for helping define Cisco’s social personality?

Our team looked across the board to see which companies were doing social effectively. We compared our brand’s social personality to social savvies such as Wendy’s and Netflix, and we also compared ourselves to other B2B companies to see how they used their own social platforms. What were Wendy’s and Netflix doing effectively that we were lacking in our own social personalities? While we realized that not every brand can be a Wendy’s or a Netflix, we had to see where Cisco would best fit in the social space.

What social media tools do you use on a daily basis that you can’t live without?

We rely on Sprinklr and Domo to help us gain real-time insights on our paid and organic posts. Everything we do is backed by data, so we have to ensure that our content is resonating with our audience and creating an authentic experience instead of spamming them.

What do you love most about your work as a social media strategist?

Social media is changing daily. There is always a new feature being added to a platform, or a new platform emerging altogether. The work that I do is exciting because it allows us to have 1:1 conversations and form genuine connections with our customers and continually learn about them through their actions.

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