Cisco’s UKI Google+ page isn’t getting a lot of engagement. Joe Fitzpatrick, PR executive at Search Laboratory, offers his thoughts on how it can improve
As a huge international company working out of numerous countries, Cisco has decided to localise its Google+ presence in each nation and market. In this instance it is the right way to go as it allows Cisco to speak to a smaller audience on topics specific to that market. This is something that is clear on Cisco’s UK & Ireland Google+ page, with three of the last 12 posts containing a market-specific reference, such as London and The Telegraph.
Page: Cisco UKI Google+
Number of followers: 3938*
Number of circles: 1253
1: The Cisco UKI Google+ page is one of about 50 and it can therefore be confusing finding the relevant page to follow.
2: This split in Google+ accounts does allow Cisco to speak to specific audiences and markets.
3: There isn’t a lot of engagement on most of the posts, this is probably related to Cisco’s content generally being internally-focused.
The downside of this approach to Google+ is that when you are such a large business you’re left with lots of accounts. Type ‘Cisco’ into the search bar and you’re served with more than 50 different pages and profiles all professing – and crucially – appearing to be official business accounts in one form or another. This is very confusing and although I could quickly hone in on the UK page, having so many different accounts, which are not only split into regions but also services such as networking and data, only proves to devalue Cisco’s Google+ real estate.
Another confusing aspect is the fact Cisco’s UK page bears a verified tick, whereas its official global account does not. The URL on this page doesn’t even bear a verification tick and this is something that appears automatically if your website is correctly linked to the page. This initially made me think it couldn’t be the official page – however it’s the one that is linked to the search engine results page for ‘Cisco’.
A comparison of the two pages shows that there doesn’t appear to be any duplication of posts. However, there are a couple of posts on the UK page that aren’t culturally sensitive. For example, there was a post about Duke University. The average British consumer – presuming they’re not fans of American college basketball – would not know where or what Duke University is. This problem could have been easily allayed by the sentence: “Prestigious American university…” as an introduction.
Engagement
Despite Cisco’s reasonable following there is hardly any engagement on its page. The vast majority of posts don’t receive any +1s, shares or comments. The most engaged post in the last month was about organising computer cords, it got +3, and one share. It’s no coincidence that this post was a) useful and b) asked the reader a question, therefore encouraging interaction. There is about an even mix of corporate broadcasting and questions being asked in Cisco’s posts, yet it’s interesting that it is a post that had nothing to do with the company’s services and everything to do with being helpful that was the best received.
If I was managing Cisco’s page I would look at scaling back on the Cisco-specific posts and introduce more along the line of the above. Although, to be fair to Cisco, its posts are by no means bland, and there is a good mix of images and videos.
Cisco’s UK & Ireland page is well maintained, with generally a couple of posts every day, and reasonably well followed for a country-specific page. The follower count could probably be increased by scaling back on the number of Cisco accounts on Google+ and also by tweaking the content strategy to be less inward facing – solve problems, give tips and advice rather than push company news.
Overall rating: 6/10
