The Cisco blog review

Oct 28, 2006

This post has been long due. In fact I shouldn’t say “This”, I should say “A” because I haven’t been writing much here. Ever since my illness there’s been a lull over here because almost for a month I didn’t work, and fortunately, almost all of my clients waited for me to get better. So I thought, well, at this moment when I need to slog on the backlog and earn money to fill the hole created by my medical bills, blogging can wait for a few days. I have sorted most of the things now, and I think this weekend is a better time to re-enter the realm of regular bloggers.

A few weeks ago Easton on his blog announced the Fortune 500 Blog Project where he invited different bloggers to write reviews on various blogs being run by the Fortune 500 countries. There is a WiKi on the Fortune 500 Blog Project where you can follow the progress and participate in this group effort. You can select (among the remaining) a Fortun 500 corporate blog and write a review of the blog on your own blog and then put the link to the review on the list of the group’s WiKi. I have chosen Cisco’s blog for today’s review.

You can say the Internet wouldn’t have been easy if it weren’t for Cisco. Back then Cisco was the only company producing enterprise level routers. Routers are needed to connect and establish computer networks. Different computers use different networking protocols to communicate so Cisco produced for the first time a multi-protocol router that enabled various networks to comprehend each other. Anyway, this post is not a primer on the router technology, it’s about the Cisco blog.

The Cisco blog, titled Blogs@Cisco, has many sub blogs:

but I’m for the time just going to write about the main Cisco blog

Design and layout

Being a former web designer whenever I visit a blog or a website my first instinct is to assess the design and the layout. There is no design as such to comment about but the layout is clean, easy on the eye, and linear. Could they have made it look better? Sure. But still, it is a lot better than other corporate blogs I have visited so far (not many, of course). There are very little distractions in terms of bright colors and whacky gifs and over-the-board shockwave visual attacks. I wouldn’t suggest improvements because I believe every website and blog design has infinite scope for improvements.

Content

Content is the backbone of every blog — the vertebrate. So while reviewing the blog, ideally this heading should come at the top. OK, I’ll do it next time. The Cisco blog has a good heading at the top:

Welcome to Blogs@Cisco, an open discussion forum where Cisco leaders address key technology issues and where community interaction is encouraged.

Community interaction is the keyword here and every corporate blog should aspire to achieve this. The blog’s comment section works although they require that nagging thing called the “TypeKey”. No wonder none of the top posts have been commented upon yet.

There is no “Archive” or the lengthy “Recent Posts” section conspicuous on every blog worth its salt. I think this is something they should put on otherwise the blog carries a claustrophobic look. If I can read but just three posts at a time and can have no means to read the older posts I feel quite confined.

Content-wise, nothing much interesting. Maybe the IT-journalist would like to keep an on what the Cisco honchos publish over there but as a general reader I don’t plan to go there unless there is an ineluctable compulsion. There other blogs, for instance News@Cisco Notes are much more interesting and they also have the archives links. The personal touch lacks in all the blogs — at least the blogs I’ve seen. Most of the posts seem like news reports or press releases. Although they are not drab, but you don’t need a “blog” per se to post such texts — you can do it on your website. A blog is different. In order to encourage “community interaction” the blog must convey a person touch. The “I” and “You” is prominently missing at the Cisco blogs.

Concluding remarks

Overall, a nice collection of “blogs” if they want to call them so. A good thing about blogs is that you can do with them whatever you feel like. You can host videos, pictures, random musings, and yes, even your press releases and marketing hypes. My take on a corporate blog — Cisco, in this case — would be non-corporate. A blog, whether corporate or otherwise, should sound as non-corporate as possible. Although they prominently use the expression “community interaction” I don’t see that happening on their blog/blogs. For that the blogs will have to assume personalities, like that Microsoft guy who used to publish a Microsoft blog.

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One Response to “The Cisco blog review”

Easton Ellsworth
October 28th, 2006 at 9:47 am
I hope you’re feeling better, Amrit. Thanks for the write-up; this will surely add to the research we’re all collecting over at the project website.