Just come across this great video on Social Media. It originates from Social Media World Forum 2010 – a SixDegs’s Channel on YouTube. There are some 15 related videos. Enjoy …
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Dell
Dell launched Storm Sessions in December 2009.
Background: Dell’s IdeaStorm was launched in early 2007 “as a way to talk directly to our customers“, and “to have on-line brainstorm sessions to allow you the customer to share ideas and collaborate with one another and Dell.”
The model is a simple one: users of the Direct2Dell site post suggestions and requests. As these posts are promoted, by other users of the site, their score is increased. Dell then uses this ranking to identify which ideas are the most important. It has proven to be a very successful model with some “2,000 ideas submitted within the first few weeks,“ and, over the three intervening years of use, Dell claim to have “implemented almost 400 ideas.”
IdeaStorm is therefore an extremely successful example of crowdsourcing (and what a horrendous term that is!) – which Wikipedia (another model of crowdsourcing!) insightfully defines as “the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing them to a group of people or community.”
So why has Dell changed this successful formula? What does Storm Sessions bringing to the equation?
Vida Killian‘s (VidaK: Twitter Bio “Idea girl at Dell“) in her Direct2Dell blog post “Storm Sessions Launch on IdeaStorm” suggests that Storm Sessions is the “next level“. Essentially, Dell will now be choosing the topics! Driven by Dell’s current business needs Dell will post “targeted, relevant, and time bound ideas” and seek the users comments. Dell even offer to provide, when the “time bound” is up, feedback on “how and when the idea will be put into action.”
Now this sounds like something worth monitoring …
IdeaStorm and Storm Sessions are powered by salesforce.com 
See salesforce.com’s IdeaExchange. On the IdeaExchange site salesforce.com users can “suggest new products, promote favorite enhancements, interact with product managers and customers.” Similarly, all editions of salesforce.com CRM come with an in-house “on-line suggestion box” called Ideas – where “a community of users [can] post, vote for, and comment on ideas.“
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Working on Setting Your Social Media Strategy? Then this video, from salesforce.com’s Dreamforce 2009 (the “Global Gathering” of nearly 16,000 people in San Francisco – http://www.salesforce.com/dreamforce/DF09/site/), is a must
The presenters are Jamie Grenney (Sr. Director of Social Media at salesforce.com), and Vida Killian (Social Media and Community Technology Manager at Dell – with some 10 years experience of Social Media at Dell). Dell are a salesforce.com user
In the video Jamie presents a slide showing some quite astronomic growth in Social Media usage. This includes:
- Facebook: 124 million “actual users” with 202% growth rate year on year
- Twitter: 26 million “actual users” with 660% growth rate year on year
(source: complete.com 2009, growth rate Oct. 2008- Oct. 2009)
Continue reading…
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… Social Media for Small Business
I’d read early this year that Dell was experience great success with its marketing program on twitter, and the other day I received a link to their entry in Facebook. Dell have also provided, based on their experience of “conversations with customers” a series of “Social Media Guides” for small business. They can be found here: http://www.facebook.com/dellsocialmedia
On twitter Dell has been offering great deals exclusives to the those who follow them on @DellOutlet. This is one of more than 80 Dell-branded twitter accounts! Twitter, in their Business Twitter 101 series (see my earlier post) have also entered a case for Dell that contains some useful starters: http://business.twitter.com/twitter101/case_dell
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