Life at Cisco blog community grows to more than 100 employee authors

The “Life at Cisco” blog—one of the best in corporate America—avoids the typical business blog approach, taking the stance that a post should be akin to sitting down at a coffee shop where someone asks how work is going and then telling engaging tales. Although the blog—from the Talent Brand team, so its objectives are recruitment-driven—features stories from key hiring areas, the stories come almost entirely from employees. This approach has earned Life at Cisco first prize in the “Blog” category of the PR Daily Awards. 

Most of the stories posted to Life at Cisco are sourced through social posts shared by employees using the #WeAreCisco hashtag. The team reaches out to employees to ask about the story behind the photo or message they submitted. The team encourages the employee to write a draft; the team, which provides an outline and guidelines templates, is there to guide and edit the author, then to enhance the story once the employee submits a rough draft; the goal is to maintain the author’s voice in the post.

Authors are part of a Life at Cisco Community + Ambassadors group, which has grown to more than 100 participants who support one another through difficult times and congratulate each other on uplifting moments. In 2019, the team implemented a tagging strategy based on role, region and topic. The tags are added to the recruiters’ RSS feed in Outlook, so recruiters get an email any time a new post goes live in the tags to which they have subscribed.

The blog continues to deliver for Cisco, with the best-performing posts of the year earning more than 3,300 unique views each.

Congratulations to Macy Andrews, Carmen Collins and Casie Shimansky.