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Business and Blogging

Dell: A Blogging Success Story?

by Laura Spencer on January 10th, 2008

(businessandblogging.com) With the help of one of our fellow bloggers, Liz and I discovered this BusinessWeek article about how blogging turned Dell’s image around.

To make a long story short, two and a half years ago blogger and columnist Jeff Jarvis was just one of many thousands of dissatisfied Dell customers. Not only did Jeff complain about Dell service on his own blog, thousands of other Dell customers complained too.

Thinks looked dark for Dell. They had a runaway image problem that was going to be next to impossible to repair.

It took almost a year, but Dell started to respond to the bloggers. First, they connected technicians with the bloggers to solve their equipment problems. Next they created two blogs:

  • Direct2Dell - Blogger Lionel Menchaca adds a human touch to the company
  • IdeaStorm - A bloglike site that encourages customers to tell Dell what they want.

Is blogging working for Dell?

It seems to be. Slowly Dell’s image is turning around. When I searched on the company’s name the first sites that I found were the corporate sites followed by the company blogs. The complaints are still out there, but they are fewer in number and buried several pages into the search.

A look at the Direct2Dell blog shows that it is getting some customer participation. It’s not overwhelming, but it is there. This recent post announcing a new monitor had nine comments. Another recent post had 22 comments. Other posts had many more comments. Some posts had no comments at all.

What could the Dell blogger do to encourage more participation?

I noticed that he doesn’t seem to participate in the comments section of his posts. At least he didn’t participate on the posts that I examined. While it might be difficult for him to answer every single comment, it would be good to see him enter the conversation from time to time.

(For other opinions on Dell’s Direct2Dell blog, read this blog review by Easton Ellsworth or this one by Drew Meyers.)

A look at the IdeaStorm site had me really excited. In my opinion, this is one of the best ideas that Dell has had. Anyone can post an idea here. Readers can promote or demote ideas based on how well they like it. (Demotion seems like a reasonable safeguard to protect against really silly or frivolous postings). Readers can also comment on the ideas and they are commenting.

I hope that Dell is paying attention. The IdeaStorm site is alive and kicking with hundreds of ideas, many of which look quite viable. Of course, Dell can’t implement all of the ideas, but whenever they use one of them they should definitely make a point to mention it.

What are my conclusions about Dell’s foray into blogging?

They are definitely on the right track and they are now starting to reap some of the benefits from their efforts. They’re not quite there yet, but if they can keep moving in this direction their future should be brighter.

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POSTED IN: Blogging, Corporate, Public Relations

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