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.

How do I take my idea to the market?

Many budding entrepreneurs have great ideas but don't know how to take the next step, or the anxiety and fear forbids them to make the next move. If you are one of those, don't despair. Here are a few things I recommend.

Step 1.

Talk about your idea to your closed ones like a friend or a spouse. See if they are excited about it? Talk to a few more of your close friends and see what they think. It's ok to tell them you are considering of getting into this seriously and ask them their honest feedback.

Step 2.

Do a search on the web to find if someone else is already doing it. Don't be heartbroken if someone else is because chances are 99 times out of 100 you'll see that your idea has already been implemented in some fashion or another.

Step 3.

Now, don't give up if your idea was already implemented by someone else. Try and see how many other people are doing it? Is there room for improvement? Could you do it at a lower cost etc.

If no one has implemented it yet, try to answer the question, "Why?" . Chances are that the business model didn't scale or there was no real need for it in the market place. Spend some more time doing your research and talking to your friends and exploring the idea. If possible talk to someone who has some start-up experience and see what they think about your idea.

Step 4.

Once you have a gut feeling that your idea is viable, you should check if there's a need to prototype your idea. I would recommend a prototype only when there is no real product out there similar to your idea. If there's one, then you can point people and tell them that you are trying something similar yet with these differences.

If you are building a prototype, make sure it has enough feature so that you could show it to people, let them use it and get their feedback.

In my next post, I'll share with you how to find the right people to help you build your prototype.

In the meantime if you would like to share your experiences, please add a comment.