Dell: One of the First Big Social Media Breakthroughs

Continuing with our series on social media case studies, WITS Zen takes up this time Dell,which was one of the first big breakthroughs using social media. Now after years of success, the company is continuing with its social media program, not just to sustain its validity, but to adapt social communications as a tool across the whole fabric of the company.

WITS Zen has pulled together a series of articles, write-ups, interviews and videos on Dell social media initiatives, making it truly one of the insightful social media case studies.

Dell: Social Media Initiatives:

Blogging: Direct2Dell generates 3.5 million pages views/month. Nine official internal blogs and hundreds of team/departmental blogs in English, Chinese, Japanese, French Canadian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Dell Hell. Osaka flaming laptop.
Brand Monitoring: Uses conversation monitoring from Visible Technologies.
Crowdsourcing: Ideastorm allows users to suggest and vote on ideas, has generated 9,800+ ideas. Employee storm, internal idea community has generated over 2,700 ideas.
Microblogging: 22 corporate accounts on Twitter, as well as 17+ individuals using “[Name]AtDell” handles
Virtual Worlds: Second Life island.

Case study: Dell’s evolution on Twitter

Dell is one of those companies that has gotten a lot of attention as an early adopter on Twitter. But getting into a new medium early isn’t the same as getting the most out of it. Sometime last year, the company realized it had over 20 Twitter accounts. Not all of them were effective… more

Case Study: Dell Becomes a Socialprise

Dell was one of the first big breakthroughs using social media. During a period of time in 2006 and 2007, the company engaged in a customer service program to turn around its reputation. It started with a 49% negative blog post ratio, and reduced overall tonality to 22% negative… more

Roundtable with Michael Dell: Social Media, Reaching out, New Products

Just got back to the BlogHaus, and there are a few Dell folks here Emily Price, Sherrie Smith from AMD, Michelle Bowman, Brent Wampler. I was telling them how the roundtable went with Michael Dell. Reaching out to the community is key, both as goodwill and strategically being able to build better products using near real time social media tools… more

Dell Hell :The Impact of Social Media on Corporate Communication

The internet within the space of ten years has changed in regards to the manner in which individuals use it. In particular, the development of social media has forever changed the manner in which individuals communicate. This new evolution of social media, including social networking sites as Facebook and Twitter and activities such as blogging, have begun to show themselves as a prominent tool for not only social networking but also as an effect communication medium in the realm of business… more

Insight That Matters: A Look at Dell’s Social Media in Asia

I had the honour of sitting in a panel at a recently concluded Social Media Marketing Conference 2010 organised by EMP Asia. Esteemed speakers include social media marketing leads from Dow Jones, JP Morgan, Cisco and Dell… more

Is your business making full use of technology? Case Study: Dell

Now here is an incredible statistic. Dell carries only about 7 days of supplies/ inventory. A typical company might have 30 or 50 days of inventory. ” That makes a difference in our cash flow, in our ability to have the freshest and newest products- so when there’s a new processor iteration, or a new display, or a new battery, it means we are many weeks ahead of others.” (Michael Dell)… more

Creating Excitement for the Dell DJ Ditty

THE CHALLENGE: Dell wanted to enter the increasingly competitive digital music space. But, given that the brand had little music credentials, and would only be selling the DJ Ditty online and through mall kiosks, we needed an innovative strategy that could launch this new MP3 player into one of the most crowded categories in the world, to one of the most cynical audiences — and achieve both unit and ROI goals within six months… more

Twitter Drives Traffic, Sales: A Case Study

Back in December, Dell reported that offers from its Dell Outlet Twitter account had led to more than $1 million in revenue. A small percentage for a company that books $16B in revenue annually–but a nice number nonetheless, particularly in a dreary economy.Question is: are they the only ones? … more

From the book: New word of mouth case study on Dell

One of the biggest additions to the new edition of the best-selling book, Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking, is the five new case studies of brilliant word of mouth marketing from Dell, Potbelly, FreshBooks, Microsoft, and Levenger. We’re highlighting a different case study each day this week, starting with Dell… more

Fortune 500 Blog Project: Dell

Dell (#25 on the Fortune 500 list) launched its corporate blog, called Direct2Dell, on July 5th and got reemed for it! Why? Well, start off with the fact that their 1st 6 posts included videos of products and not much else. Look at the 1st post on their blog- it included a video showcasing the XPS 700 BYO (what the hell is that anyway). They didn’t even do a welcome note to their users… more