Yesterday, "The Network: Cisco's Technology News Site" was honored by Ragan PR Daily as "Best Online Newsroom."  (Great .gif of Sandra Bullock on this page as well, by the way!)

And, last month, we received the Grand Prize from Bulldog Reporter 2012 Bulldog Digital/Social PR Awards for "The Network."  I also talked to Richard Carufel, Editor of the Daily 'Dog about "The Network" and offered some thoughts for our approach to brand journalism, online newsrooms and offering value to your audience.

Certainly, recognition is extremely nice and we all want some form of this in our lives. The Social Media Communications team at Cisco* is  honored and humbled by these awards and add them to a handful of other great honors over the past few years.

First, thank you, Ragan PR Daily. Thank you, Bulldog Reporter. Thank you, American Business Awards (The Stevie). Thank you, PR News People Awards. But, mostly, thank you, audience.

Why did we get these awards?  In a word: innovation.

Let me count the ways that (imho) we innovate on "The Network" and are continuing to innovate:

1. We use great journalists to create our content.  Not only do we have reporters who used to be at BusinessWeek, Wall Street Journal, Forbes and more producing great stories for us on the technology topics that we care about (i.e. cloud, security, mobility, collaboration, etc.), but we have former journalists in-house producing great content about Cisco (see our Cisco Innovators series, for example).
2. We listen! Our audience gives us great feedback through engaging with our content through comments, RTs, likes, shares, etc.  If a theme does particularly well, we give the people what they want. That's customer service. : )
3. We connect content.  Meaning, we produce content that is serialized or that has themes...so if you liked one piece of content, then you may like another piece from the same series.  We are especially proud of our recent "My Networked Life" series, but we also have our "Songdo, Korea" series, our "Social Spoken" series (Webby Honoree!!) and our "Leadership@Cisco" series.  Check them out.
4. We do podcasts. We've recently implemented podcasts attached to some of our feature stories.Mike Anderson is a jack of all trade and writes and narrates these podcasts.  We want to get our content to our audience how they want it. Some want podcasts, so, you're welcome. Listen to the podcasts here.
5. You can read our stories in 65 languages. Thank you Google Translate! We have recently embedded Google code on our pages (on the top right of our stories, you can't miss the drop down menu) that allow you to read our stories in nearly whatever language you'd like. Are you a global company? You need more than English to reach your audience. Sure, it is a machine translation, but it is getting better and better. Try translating this great bio video on EVP and Chief Development Officer Pankaj Patel into, say, Greek, for instance.
6. Also, we want you totakeour content and use it on your site. We love our content and want others to see it. If you are a technology site, a Cisco partner, reseller or customer and eyeball driven (or content driven), take our content, give us a little credit and everybody wins. See here.

What are we going to do next? We have great story ideas in the queue and more videos of our leaders coming.  There will be more Network Trailblazers, more Cisco Innovators and more creative, compelling video and written content that help tell the story of the impact of technology on business and on our lives. I do hope you stay tuned.

What wouldyoulike to see more of on "The Network."?

*Social Media Communications Team At Cisco:

John Earnhardt -@urnhart (that's me!)
Joie Healy -@JoieHealy
Autumn Truong -@AutumnTruong
Karen Snell -@KCSnell
Alex Romano -@Arom1000
Lindsay Kniffin -@lkniffin
Kati Dahm -@KatiDahm
Rommel Bermudez
Mark Wynne
Mike Anderson
Kirsten Chiala -@kchiala
Shelley Harper -@harpermosaica
Stephanie Marinez -@stephmarinez
Maddu Maddu