Cisco - Achievement in the Use of Instagram

Company: Cisco, San Jose, CA
Company Description: Cisco is the worldwide leader in IT and networking. We help companies of all sizes transform how people connect, communicate, and collaborate.
Nomination Category: Web Achievement - Specialty
Nomination Sub Category: Achievement in the Use of Instagram

Nomination Title: @WeAreCisco Instagram Stories Trends

The Cisco Employer Brand’s social media strategy for @WeAreCisco isbased on EGC (employee-generated content) to display the Cisco life authentically to candidates, while putting our employees in the spotlight.

With a lot of competition in user’s Instagram feeds, we knew we had tocreate something "thumb-stopping" to grab the audience'sattention to generateawareness of why employees love where they work.

With a side benefit of employee advocacy in mind, wedesigned two augmented realit (AR) filters and a series of "templates" for employees to enjoyand share on their personal accounts (whichreach their network.)

These encouraged employees to tag other Cisconians. We created the templates to provide a way for our community to interact with us and to better inform future content that we share on our channels. For example, by seeing employees’ answers in a list template that includes their top #LoveWhereYouWork reasons, we can use their answers (volunteer time off, Cisco pets, awesome people) to ensure we’re showcasing these top benefits in our content strategy so that future talent can picture themselves working at Cisco and enjoying the very same perks that current employees love. It was a win-win!

The first AR filter was designed to populate“I love Cisco because” at the start, then a randomizer began at the nod of a head and flipped through answerslike “work from home,” “goofy coworkers,” “best CEO evah.” It was anInstagram trend that users were consuming already, and we took advantage of timing. The second AR filter was designed specifically around our top recruiting event, Grace Hopper Conference and featured Grace Hopper’s glasses for users to “wear" while virtually participating.

We wanted to make it as easy as possible for our Instagram audience to understand the filters, so we created a step-by-step video tutorial through Instagram Stories that walked our audience through how to use the filter and how to access it. This attention-grabbing Instagram Story made employees want to pause to take a break and participate. We asked them to tag our page in their Instagram Story so that we could repost and share each person’s answers. Employees were excited to be featured on our Instagram Story (even using the filter more than once for a chance to be featured twice!)

In addition to the AR filters, our team designed a series of Instagramtemplates, all which asked them to tag @WeAreCisco so we could reshare and also to tag their Cisco besties to increase our reach. Templates included: a GIF challenge, #FirstPicChallenge #WeAreCisco edition, This or That, List template, #WeAreCisco checklist, World’s Best GIF template and a template that describes “What does your desk say about you?”

Results/Success: Please see supplemental for more details:

-Instagram Story GIF template generated 4x the number of tap backs (a measure of engagement)
-The AR filter was shared over 270 times to employee networks (a share = advocacy)
-Instagram Story This or That template garnered 3x the average amount of impressions. By asking employees to tag others, we increased our reach on @WeAreCisco