Dell Incorporated: One of the Smartest Brands in Social Media
1. Dell Incorporated One of the Smartest Brands in Social Media Presented by: Irene Hahn, Robert Kennedy, Katrina Martin, April Mendez, Christopher Nazareth, YinanWang
8. A better effort in 2006, resulted in IdeaStorm… “...created to give a direct voice to our customers. We hope this site fosters a candid and robust conversation about your ideas.”
9. “Listen. Learn. Deliver. That's what we're about.” Dell connects with more than 5.4 billion customers every daythrough Dell.com, social networking sites, on the phone, and in person.
10. Internally, Dell is engaging employees and reinforcing their culture of direct communications…
11. “Since when did a business not want to connect with its customers?” Use available technology to spend real time with real customers Richard Binhammer Corporate Communications at Dell
15. Measuring success isn’t easy… “Take an educated guess and go for it, measuring your progress in a way that is meaningful to your bottom line.”
16. More than $3 million in sales from just one Twitter sales promotions account… “…experiment and see what works and learn from it, versus guaranteeing success”
17. Still, Dell isn’t really optimizing potential Twitter-related sales. But, at this point they don’t really need to…
Timeline / Inception / History of Social Media at Dell (Irene) Slide 1 / 2 : The 80s1984: Michael Dell founds Dell Computer Corporation with a $1,000 loan. (Picture: Michael Dell_old picture)1985: Dell introduces the first computer system of its own design. 1987: Dell is the first computer systems company to offer next-day, on- site product service. UK subsidiary opens. 1988: Dell goes public at $8.50 a share upon opening. (Picture: NYSE)
Timeline / Inception / History of Social Media at Dell (Irene)Slide 3: The 90s1992: Dell makes Fortune 500 List1995: Dell shares climb to $1001996: Dell launches www.dell.com website1999: Dell launches online technical support “E-Support Direct from Dell” (Picture: Dell Lightbulb Idea)
Slide 4 / 5 / 6 / … : The 00s2001: Dell becomes No. 1 worldwide in market share for computer makers2003: Dell changes name to Dell, Inc.Summer 2005: Blogger Jeff Jarvis (blog: buzzmachine) unleashes firestorm “We Don’t Respond to Blogger” was Dell’s reply Beginning of Dell Hell (Picture: Dell Hell)
November 2005: Dell’s quarterly profits drop 28% - pressure on margins in PC business and fall-out from attempts to strip cost out of the business (such as off-shore customer support and ending unprofitable aspects of warranty repair)(Picture: Help)(Picture: Dell Customer Service Offshore)(Picture: Dell Laptop Fire)Dell’s Response to financial pains: Infuse $150m in their customer service opsJuly 2006: Launch official Dell customer service blog (One2One / Direct2Dell)(Picture: One2One)Reaction from Jarvis negative : “well, well, Dell. So Dell is starting a blog. Ha. Heh. Ho hoho. “ (Picture: Jarvis Reaction)Reaction from Dell – “Real People are Here and We’re Listening…” (Picture: Dell Reacts to Jarvis)February 2007: Dell launches Idea Storm (Feb ’07)(Picture: IdeaStorm)
July 2006: Launch official Dell customer service blog (One2One / Direct2Dell)(Picture: One2One)Reaction from Jarvis negative : “well, well, Dell. So Dell is starting a blog. Ha. Heh. Ho hoho. “ (Picture: Jarvis Reaction)Reaction from Dell – “Real People are Here and We’re Listening…” (Picture: Dell Reacts to Jarvis)February 2007: Dell launches Idea Storm (Feb ’07)(Picture: IdeaStorm)
Reaction from Dell – “Real People are Here and We’re Listening…” (Picture: Dell Reacts to Jarvis)
February 2007: Dell launches Idea Storm (Feb ’07)In 2007, Dell launched IdeaStorm™, where people could share ideas and vote on the ones they liked — Dell has implemented more than 400 of these ideas to date.
How Social Media Fits into Dell's Mission and Corporate Strategy (April)Using the Power of the Internet to Connect With CustomersMichaelDell started selling custom-builtcomputers from his college dorm room. This tradition lives on in the current business model. Dell.com launched in 1996 — and today we have more than four million visits to the site every day, resulting in an order online placed every two seconds.Today Dell.com reaches customers in 166 countries and 34 languages around the world.Dell helps power three of the top five Internet search engines.Dell is the second most respected brand for breadth and depth of social media activities.More than 3.5 million members belong to the Dell social Web community, which includes Dell.com communities and Dell outlets on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, SINA, Orkut (Brazil) and other sites.Visitors to Dell.com can read about and contribute to more than 100,000 product reviews.
Use of social media w/in the organization: Engaging employees and creating a culture of direct communicationsDell targeted around 80,000 employees working with them. Their aims seemed to be the changing of the culture of work inside the company regarding ‘email’ and deal with the tools in social media which are generally popular. They aimed at reduction of the constant email traffic and make the discussions among employees transparent.The two parts to the plan included:1) Blogs: The internal blog zones were created which were based on initial blogs situated externally of Dell. This idea has become so popular that it has become the main source of interaction internally. After the main body of the blog was created it was followed by various sub-blogs in individual regions and different departments.This ideation by Dell has remained a major way of giving individual attention as the internal blogs would be more relevant to the employees. At the same time the globalization of the ideas can continue through common interaction on the web but the points belong to the idea that anyone from the company can participate in it.2) Employee Storm: It has been a model after the successful Idea Storm by Dell. Employee Storm is an innovative forum where the employees can communicate their suggestions and discuss and vote on major topics via social sites such as Digg.In September 2006 the new ideas were put into action and in July 2007 its popularity rocketed with five blogs in some regions and business useful displays appearing in 7 languages. Now there are 8 blogs in main blocks and each one has its own monitor and calendar for editorials.
The Impact of Social Media on Dell Connecting with Customers1) Since when did any business not want to connect with its customers? Do we need to justify using today’s efficient, effective and readily available technology to spend 30 minutes or a couple hours a day connecting with real customers?One billion people are now online — a figure that will double by 2011. In fact, every day 500,000 new users come online for the first time. Content is exploding. There was more content on YouTube in 2006 than on the Web in 2000. This represents a significant shift in what we think of as media, or put another way, what and how people get information. Taken together, we are experiencing changes to the dynamics of how we process information to form opinions.Slide 6Measuring the success of social media at DellThere is no single tool or strategy used to measure the effectiveness of social media at Dell. Some measurements are made using Radian6 for social media tracking and revenue tracking is done according to offers made via Twitter, Facebook and others. Beyond that the conversations that occur
2) Listening, Learning and EngagingDell joins the conversation by listening to its customers, learning what they like and dislike and then join the customer in conversation to augment development of the Dell product line.3)Telling the Dell storyStarting with Direct2Dell, the first Dell blog, Dell seeks to engage its customers in every viable social media outlet available. Interaction with its customers is what promotes the company.4)Strengthening business relationshipsUsing social media has become an effective way for Dell to share information and maintain active conversations with current and prospective investors, as well as a variety of stakeholders. 5)Share content, information and collect ideas from consumersThrough the creation of ideastorm.com we encourage customers to share their thoughts about Dell. Customers can review what others like or dislike about Dell and its products.
2) Listening, Learning and EngagingDell joins the conversation by listening to its customers, learning what they like and dislike and then join the customer in conversation to augment development of the Dell product line.3)Telling the Dell storyStarting with Direct2Dell, the first Dell blog, Dell seeks to engage its customers in every viable social media outlet available. Interaction with its customers is what promotes the company.4)Strengthening business relationshipsUsing social media has become an effective way for Dell to share information and maintain active conversations with current and prospective investors, as well as a variety of stakeholders. 5)Share content, information and collect ideas from consumersThrough the creation of ideastorm.com we encourage customers to share their thoughts about Dell. Customers can review what others like or dislike about Dell and its products.
2) Listening, Learning and EngagingDell joins the conversation by listening to its customers, learning what they like and dislike and then join the customer in conversation to augment development of the Dell product line.3)Telling the Dell storyStarting with Direct2Dell, the first Dell blog, Dell seeks to engage its customers in every viable social media outlet available. Interaction with its customers is what promotes the company.4)Strengthening business relationshipsUsing social media has become an effective way for Dell to share information and maintain active conversations with current and prospective investors, as well as a variety of stakeholders. 5)Share content, information and collect ideas from consumersThrough the creation of ideastorm.com we encourage customers to share their thoughts about Dell. Customers can review what others like or dislike about Dell and its products.
How is the success of social media measured at Dell?Dell uses a measure of Return on Invested Capital. This statistic has been an excellent measure of a company's financial performance. At Dell they closely watch how well they manage ROIC, and they achieved a 294 percent return on invested capital in 2000, putting them at #1 at that time. However, with the advent of the Internet, it's clear that traditional measures for company performance are relevant and important, but they aren't the only way to evaluate a company's performance.Dell values their "internet capabilities" as a measure just as critical to their bottom line as financial measures, and view the two are closely linked.Dell Gives the following as tips to measuring social media results: Measure engagement with your company blog. You can measure the average number of comments left on each blog post. At Dell, we call this the “conversation index.” If you use Wordpress or Blogger publishing software, you will find this number on the administrative dashboard.Establish measurable objectives for your company’s social media initiative. For example, an objective might be to increase positive brand mentions online by 25 percent, to drive a 10 percent increase in traffic to the company Web site in a given timeframe or to get people to share their e-mail addresses.Utilize an analytics program to measure on-site activity. With a free program such as Google Analytics, for example, you can track the following information on an easy-to-read measurement “dashboard”: o Number of Web site visits o Number of pageviewso Length of time on the Web site o Top traffic sources o Top performing keywords o Top performing content o Conversions, or specific on-site actions that you specify as “goals.” For example, a conversion might be a customer completing an online form to receive more information from your company.Track off-site activity as well. Your Web site is only one part of the digital ecosystem, and there is a lot more that you can measure, including: o Number of mentions about your company online. You can find this using Technorati or Google Blog Search. o Tonality of mentions about your company online. The free monitoring tools do not indicate tonality of mentions (i.e., positive, negative or neutral). You can measure this through the manual process of review ing and scoring each post, or you can utilize a subscription- based tool such as Visible Technologies’ TruCast. o Placement of your content (e.g., videos, photos, etc.) on other Web sites. Tracking photos and videos is not always easy – especially if you don’t know to where to look for them. Some paid analytics solutions, such as those provided by Omniture, are starting to do this well. o Ranking of your Web site in search engines for commonly searched keywords. Search Engine Optimization is a science in and of itself. For more on SEO strategies for small businesses, visit http://www.searchengineguide.com. Mack Collier is one of the most in fluential small business bloggers and shares valuable insights on both SEO and social media. o Ranking of your blog by Technorati.com. Technorati is a leading authority on social media influence, so it’s a good idea to track how your blog moves up or down in its ranking.That Dell has made $3m from Twitter links is cool, and it's a good arrow to have in your social media advocacy quiver, but here are a number of examples we think better capture both the bottom line and some of the soft benefits of conversation. Joe Cothrel, Chief Community Officer at enterprise online community vendor Lithium, gathered these numbers in 2007 and we included them among other resources in the RWW Community Management Guide.These examples reference older related forms of online social interaction, but they also concern far greater sums of money than $3m.• A Cisco study in 2004 found that 43% of visits to online support forum are in lieu of opening up a support case through standard methods.• Cost per interaction in customer support averages $12 via the contact center versus $0.25 via self-service options. (Forrester, 2006) • Jupiter Research (now Forrester) reported in 2006 that customers report good experiences in forums more than twice as often as they do via calls or mail. • Ebay found in 2006 that participants in online communities spend 54% more than non-community users.Better customer experiences, far lower support costs and more buying activity in the long run. Those are observations that can help provide context to the high-profile example of Dell pushing e-commerce links out over Twitter.
4. Specific Examples of Social Media at Dell (Katrina)Dell Computers announced last year that it has surpassed $3 million in sales via links from one of its Twitter accounts, making one of the most high profile examples of social media Return on Investment (ROI) all the more juicy. According to Richard Binhammer, Senior Manager at Dell, “We are constantly “testing” and experimenting with different social media initiatives and opportunities. In fact, we are encouraged to experiment and see what works and learn from it, versus guaranteeing success”Four Main Areas of Dell’s Social Media TeamMore Conversations – This includes expansion of group blogs and to include more languages. Dell’s outreach to customers or others who blog about them and joining those conversations is an example of this. Other examples include: presence on Twitter and involvement at Yahoo AnswersEase of use - First off, their goal is to make their social media tools easier to navigate and use. Part of the way they hope to get there is to drive more consistency across their social media properties. Secondly, they want to make it easier for consumers to find information they're looking for. Consistency will help, but they understand that this really requires innovative thinking.Collaboration – Dell has been able to get feedback from customers via monitoring conversations in the blogosphere, on Direct2Dell (their first blog established at the urging of Michael Dell), the Dell Community Forum or IdeaStorm before they show up in their call centers. But, a pipeline for customer feedback is useless if they don't act on that information. Internal collaboration is vital to Dell’s long-term success. Michael Dell wanted the company to have a voice in the connected era, as well as establish a place for customers to be able to connect and converse with DellCommunity meets e-commerce – Dell feels, all of their efforts in the social media space should empower their customers. Dell.com specifically, is always striving to do a better job of giving customers a chance to influence content on their website. In the past, much of Dell.com focused mainly on e-commerce activities, while community tools resided in an isolated part of the website. Dell decided there should be much tighter integration between community and e-commerce. One of the steps taken in this direction was introducing the ratings and reviews functionality in many countries.
An example of Dells success with SNM is their @dell outlet twitter following.They message their followers with deals, special offers and discounts. This is a form of real-time coupons – Dell can alert people to offers and discounts as they arise. @DellOutlet also points you to a specific web page, and changes the offers immediately when they sell out. What are missing are actual bargains. These prices are comparable to the prices @dell outlet has been before they got involved with twitter. @dell outlet is the twitter component of Dell’s refurbished computer and product outlet operation. None of the deals were actually that much cheaper or exclusiveDell.com/outlet existed prior to the twitter account What’s missing is a Dell SNM association with their complete product line. This isn’t done because they are “not that interested in twitter”. They have more than 20 channels. Dell’s other Twitter channels cater to different audiences, including international ones, and it counts as one of the first major brands with Twitter channels in Chinese, Japanese, German, and Spanish. Nothing missing here Twitter is currently not monetized, at least not by Twitter itself. @dell outlet generated $3million last year from Twitter alone. When they started Dell Outlet they had 2,500 followers and they sold $500,000. Then they got on the suggested user list of Twitter and they got to 1.6 million followers and they sold only $2 million worth of equipment. What’s missing is the effort by Dell to optimize this phenomenon. I am sure they are, but publically, they show no interest yet. Maybethe lack of interest lies in the fact that this market is such a small slice of their revenue pie. Perhaps the reason Dell is successful in this market is that they have real people tweeting, interacting, and actually performing extensive customer service work. They shifted the focus off Dell and started retweeting quotes, participating on #followfriday, and answering @replies. What’s missing is the interest to create this kind of customer interaction by the leadership. To get them to board this new way of simultaneously marketing and selling products doesn’t look evident so far. But, It is a new concept to the marketing stalwarts, so it may take time.
6. Do other companies emulate Dell? (Yinan)- Dell’s opponent’s move: e.g. HP, Apple, etcOf Note: HP only uses SNM as a real-time source from which it gathers data for executive-level decisionsHP doesn’t drive sales directly in any appreciable wayApple has its own Youtube Channel Populated it with videos of the iPad presentation and the iPad introduction videoNot a direct sales chain
