How Cisco uses Facebook for building its support community

Facebook is not only for sharing those awkward pictures that you took in a bar with your drunken friends or telling how much you liked or hated the local restaurant you ate at. It can be used as an effective medium for many more purposes. Facebook provides an eco-system where a community can engage, participate and share common interests. You can find a community on Facebook for almost any topic. Search for a topic and you are sure to come up with something. Given the size and the active nature of the Facebook community, does it make sense to create a technical support community on Facebook?

Cisco has taken a bold initiative to experiment with this idea and although it’s too early to measure the outcome, it definitely seems to be headed in the right direction. CiscoSupportCommunity , a fanpage on Facebook has nearly 50K fans and is growing fast. In contrast to the common perception about Facebook, you will find a great deal of technical conversation on the fan page . You’ll notice fans posting questions and answers in near real time. Cisco has gone a step further in experimenting a concept called ‘Facebook Forums’. This is a real time conversation between the community and a technical expert at Cisco. The event takes place on the Facebook fan page and fans get to ask questions and receive instant responses from the expert. This event has grown in popularity and a sample of this can be seen on this Facebook Forum .

So, for those of you, who thought Facebook was not for geeks, think again. The world is becoming more connected and there is nothing wrong in joining a Facebook community. For the skeptics, I say, Facebook is a tool and it is up to you how you want to use it.