December 1st, 2008 by Andy Merchant
Welcome to a new regular feature on Liberate Media’s blog: the social media site inspection. Inspired by NMA’s long-running site inspection, which has graced the back page of the magazine for many years, we will be looking at four websites from a different sector each month. This month’s chosen sector is technology. The chosen few will be reviewed by members of the Liberate Media team and scored on four key aspects of social media:
- Social media components
- Sharable content
- Social bookmarking score
- Freshness of content
We will also add an overview of how we rate the site in its current form, where improvements could be made and generally give feedback on our impressions.
We hope you enjoy the reviews, and please let us know your thoughts on the sites or our ratings – we would welcome the feedback.
Cisco
Social media components – 23/25
Sharable content – 20/25
Freshness of content – 25/25
Social bookmarking -
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681 bookmarks at Delicious |
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145 pages posted on Digg |
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30 pages posted on Reddit |
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311 page references from Yahoo! Answers |
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14470 blog reactions from Technorati |
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1156 inbound links from Wikipedia |
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3 pages made to the first page of Digg |
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9 comments on StumbleUpon |
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7 inbound links from Google Groups |
Comments
Recently redesigned, the Cisco corporate site is an extraordinary business and technical resource at the top level, with strong engagement and conversations as you drill down.
Sales focus and one-way messaging dominates the early part of the journey through the site but this quickly gives way to a mass of downloadable technical data and active discussions around the products and services. Forums (you need to register) and blogs form the main points of conversation and knowledge-sharing.
The first taste of the corporate blog site was very pleasant – a mass of well-organised, clearly-signposted information on a wide range of topics that Cisco, as a company, touches on a daily basis.
The gentle brilliance of this site (I’m no particular fan of Cisco, its methods or culture) is clarity in information design and therefore usability. Fully searchable by post and author, with pretty good matches, good calls to action with newsletter sign-up and feeds subscription, popular tags, most popular posts and “What we’re reading” – it has that almost indefinable quality of “rightness” – you feel comfortable there.
The top layer focuses on general issues around the Cisco corporate culture, from current views on the economics of business in challenging times, through corporate social responsibility to cloud computing and inclusion. This layer is stuffed with YouTube videos, an extraordinary amount of info that’s updated almost daily. Maybe, with this level of passive activity (well, that’s how I see web video a lot of the time) that’s why the actual text conversations are buried deeper in the Cisco blog universe. You have to scroll down a long way on this layer to find a comment.
As soon as you leave the “Platform” layer, less worthy and more inspiring materials start to appear, in Collaboration, Mobility and Virtual Worlds, for example where excellent essays nuzzle up to trends in higher education, security, environmental activity and tools. It’s hard to tear yourself away once you’ve started scanning.
Review by: Tim Greenhalgn
Other sites in this sector:
Nortel Networks – www.nortel.com
Juniper Networks – www.juniper.net
Alcatel-Lucent – www.alcatel-lucent.com
Hitachi Data Systems
Social media components – 12/25
Sharable content – 12/25
Freshness of content – 9/25
Social bookmarking score –
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34 bookmarks at Delicious |
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3 pages posted on Digg |
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0 pages posted on Reddit |
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0 page references from Yahoo! Answers |
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386 blog reactions from Technorati |
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2 inbound links from Wikipedia |
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0 pages made to the first page of Digg |
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0 comments on StumbleUpon |
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0 inbound links from Google Groups |
Comments
Hitachi Data Systems is one of the goliaths of the storage industry and that’s enough to lose most people, but before you give up on this review, bare in mind that storage is not only an essential element of any business, it’s also a multi-billion pound industry involving some of the largest technology companies in the world.
Therefore, I was interested to find out if a data storage company, which should be full of tech-savvy thought leaders eager to share their findings online, could develop its communications and embrace social media.
First impressions on opening the site is it’s a typical B2B corporate site – there are a few free applications, briefings and downloadable elements, but nothing that grabs the prospect.
In the web feeds section we find blogs, RSS, podcasts, forums and newsletters, which is much more promising, but it’s a bit disappointing that I had to route through the site to find them. On further investigation the blogs are updated with varying frequency, some at least weekly and others not this year! This could explain the lack of comments. Overall the blog posts do contain interesting information, that I would find useful in the sector, but all too often it has a sales slant, which is enough to put anyone off.
In terms of other social media-specific elements, there are a range of podcasts, but only one from 2008. On the plus side, the forums are perhaps the most used and interesting element of the site. Overall the site has tried to embrace elements of social media, but it appears this began circa 2006, and the evolution halted there, as did the appetite for providing useful content.
Review by: Lloyd Gofton
Other sites in this sector:
Texas instruments
Social media components – 19/25
Sharable content – 16/25
Freshness of content – 20/25
Social bookmarking -
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224 bookmarks at Delicious |
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16 pages posted on Digg |
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7 pages posted on Reddit |
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188 page references from Yahoo! Answers |
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438 blog reactions from Technorati |
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434 inbound links from Wikipedia |
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0 pages made to the first page of Digg |
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2 comments on StumbleUpon |
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2 inbound links from Google Groups |
Comments
Texas Instrument, huge brand, huge site, huge amount of products, huge let down!
Texas Instruments is a designer and supplier of digital signal processors. Other products include discrete and integrated circuits, calculators, and digital light processing (DLP) technologies.
So why is it a huge social media let down? I’ll tell you why. First of all I’m still trying to find the link from the homepage to the blog (I only know it has one because I found it via a search). Once inside the blog you notice they have attempted a few podcasts and have some featured company bloggers, but unfortunalty the blog looks like it is updated very rarely. The page also consists of some basic social boomarking features and RSS feeds from various pages. I dig around some more and click on DSP Discussion Groups which leads me to Join TI’s new Online Community. This looks more like it, as the first thing you notice is a nice big BETA sign. From here you can easily navigate to one of the four blogs it has, go to the discussion forum or check out the endless videos (shame there not sharable). Other nice features it has on the Community page are tags clouds and the ability to see how many members are live in the forums – I take it all back T.I!
To sum up the Texas Instrument site is very confusing to navigate your way through to the social media stuff, but when you do you can see it has made a good job of it, although you still cannot find a link to the Texas Instrument Twitter account.
Review by: Andy Merchant
Other sites in this sector:
Dell
Social media components – 18/25
Sharable content – 10/25
Freshness of content – 21/25
Social bookmarking score –
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1407 bookmarks at Delicious |
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626 pages posted on Digg |
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70 pages posted on Reddit |
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4801 page references from Yahoo! Answers |
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12882 blog reactions from Technorati |
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379 inbound links from Wikipedia |
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35 pages made to the first page of Digg |
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22 comments on StumbleUpon |
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11 inbound links from Google Groups |
Comments:
Back in 2005, Dell was lucky enough to learn an early lesson in the amount of brand damage one disgruntled customer can do across social networks. The infamous ‘Dell Hell’, as coined by well-known blogger Jeff Jarvis, drove the PC and laptop manufacturer to adapt quickly to the rise in social media.
It is therefore disappointing that the homepage to Dell.com remains a product showcase and sales site. The ‘Participate’ category is hidden well below the fold, and offers little hint that it leads to the heart of Dell’s online community. The overall message is clear – sales are still more important than engagement.
But dig a little deeper and you get to the Dell Community with features including blogs, forums, media galleries, groups, and its brainstorm hub called Ideastorm. Its recent single sign-on feature is a nice development, making content easily accessible.
There’s a good mix of Dell product information and industry commentary, and aside from the awful welcome video on the homepage, there’s no hard sell. Information topics are well categorised and supported by a tag cloud, with recent content being easily visible in content boxes across the fold.
The community have access to 12 internal blogs – Direct2Dell seems to be the most popular, generating 3.5m page views/month apparently. Posts can be sorted chronically, as well as by ‘most viewed’ and ‘most commented’, with the most commented-on post being about Inspiron Notebook product delays with no less than 1455 responses! Dell has been blogging since June 06 and it shows- the content is refreshed daily, well optimised and on hot topics.
The only down side to the Community is the lack of shareable content and entertainment features. The entire portal is text heavy, and although it’s full of help and advice, there’s little you can take with you. This is a missed branding opportunity by Dell, and more could be done to improve the level of interaction and reward across the site.
Review by: Wendy McAuliffe
Other sites in this sector:
Watch out for four more social media site inspections from a different sector next month!
Tags: cisco, dell, hitatchi, Social media, social media site inspection
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