The above video interview is from the ANA Brand Conference in NYC.
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I can’t imagine there are any brands out there that don’t view social media as an important channel to connect with and engage audiences. I also don’t know many brands that understand exactly how to measure the ROI provided by social media activities.
The company that is probably closest to solving the social media riddle is Dell.
Dell analyzes an enormous amount of social media data and tries to correlate data from social media conversations that mention the brand to actual conversions. Dell views social media as a lead generator. The company analyzes what people saying in social media environments about the brand and tries to determine whether those conversations lead to sales.
The e-commerce giant uses social media monitoring tools, such as radian6, which was recently acquired by Salesforce.com, to listen to what people are saying about the brand and to then actively engage people.
Dell actively listens to the 25,000 daily conversations that mention the brand. It participates in as many of those converastions as possible, not just to listen, but to act based on what the brand learns from these conversations to develop new products, market more effectively and handle customer support. The entire organization, from new product development, to marketing and customer support, is developing Ross Perot sized ears and strategies to engage consumers where they are talking about the brand.
On the company’s Web site, Dell is working with vendors such as Bazaarvoice to facilitate user-generated product reviews on product detail pages. According to Dell, site visitors who read product reviews by other consumers are more likely to purchase products than those who do not have access to reviews on product detail pages.
The next step will be to feature social media conversations (twitter, facebook, youtube videos) right on product detail pages.
Dell’s social media strategy focuses on review (monitoring), respond, record (video), and redirect (search engine marketing and optimization). On the record front, Dell creates product videos that appear on the product detail pages and on Slideshare, Youtube, Facebook, and anywhere else it believes its’ target audience might stumble across relevant product videos developed by the marketing, product design and customer support teams.
