Image by Alex via Flickr But Dell tell a different story. How is Dell doing it? Dell sells refurbished computers through @ DellOutlet and has about 600,000 followers. And whilst $3 million revenue is a relatively small proportion of Dell’s overall sales, this does mean that they have taken an average or $5 for every follower There’s been a lot of talk about Twitter so far this year - starting with the incredible growth in number of Twitter users to more recent discussions about a Harvard Business Review report that 10% of Twitter users generate 90% of activity .

Image by JMC Photos via Flickr Dell is an example of ‘bad turned good’ and has moved from its period of ‘Dell Hell’ to being perhaps one of the best example of businesses having an integrated approach to social media. We discussed in the workshop the case of how Dell make $3 million on Twitter , and how their forums are so well used that peers are solving others’ problems and saving Dell significant amounts of money on support costs. Earlier this week we wrote about Thomson Holidays and how a blogger can impact your brand reputation and how with social media, complaints have moved from being a customer service issue to being a branding and corporate reputation one.

Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr There are some well know examples of businesses working with consumers on co-creation in this way: MyStarbucksIdea and Dell’s Ideastorm being among the most well known. Tags: Innovation Matt Rhodes Online communities Social Media Social networks Arnold Schwarzenegger Brand Business co-creation cocreation customer communities Dell Dell IdeaStorm facebook freshminds FreshNetworks Ideastorm innovation myidea4ca myidea4ca.com mystarbucksidea On the Web online communities online networks One powerful use of online communities is to help get new ideas into a business; taking advantage of the fact that many (if not most) of the best ideas for your business are likely to come from outside, from people who don’t work for you.

Image by Marco D via Flickr This is what Dell did, and this is how Dell managed to work out that one member of its customer support community saved them $1m a year in support costs. Getting started in social media Matt Rhodes Measurement Online communities Social Media Dell FreshNetworks On the Web online communities Rate of return Revenue social media social media measurement Technical support Virtual community web 2. For any brand getting started in social media , the most important thing is to be able to show the impact you are having. To be able to evaluate

Image by Pink Sherbet Photography via Flickr Dell’s $3m in revenue from one Twitter account is just one example. Tags: Matt Rhodes Social Media Social networks Biz Stone Brand Business Company Dell freshminds FreshNetworks Marketing and Advertising social media Social network Social network service social networks Twitte Reports today suggest that Twitter is planning to roll-out a range of new premium features that it hopes will appeal to a corporate market. We’ve written before about how brands can use Twitter , and there are many examples of brands

Image by communista_unicorn via Flickr The cases of Dell, Starbucks, Nike and others are great stories and there is much that we can learn. Dell (123) From MyStarbucksIdea , through the Dell Community and eBay Discussion Boards . There are some great examples of brands using social media that we use a lot at FreshNetworks . Not because they necessarily get everything right, but because they show what works for them and why, and they help to give ideas and inspiration to others.

Second, we engaged in a content marketing strategy using blogs, YouTube videos, Flickr photos, online press releases and a number of other online media. Southwest Airlines At Southwest Airlines , the social media team includes a chief Twitter officer who tracks Twitter comments and monitors a Facebook group, an online representative who fact checks and interacts with bloggers, and another who takes charge of the company's presence on sites such as YouTube, Flickr, and LinkedIn. It’s really helpful to look at what some good examples of what companies are doing with their listening skills: deflecting customer anger, researching new products, or correcting mis-information.

Dell jumped into the social media space more than three years ago . We built a Flickr page (which recently passed 1 million views) and a Dell YouTube channel to facilitate the sharing of picture and video content we produced for Direct2Dell . ..... Today it's not just Dell Outlet having success connecting with customers on Twitter. Impressive results re: use of Twitter, etc. with with demonstrable impacts in addition to the relationship and community-building aspects:

Image by MartinPhotoSport via Flickr Dell is a great example of how to use social media, and how to experiment with it. Use it to engage people in Twitter just as you might engage people in Facebook, YouTube, Flickr and other social networks and online communities. This week I was asked to talk to the Marketing Directors Network in London about how organisations are using Twitter. We’ve written before about how celebrities are using Twitter and how organisations are using Twitter as an engagement tool .

d rather pick my battles (Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, for example) and fight them well rather than have my social finger in too many pies (all the above plus MySpace, Bebo, YouTube, LinkedIn, Hi5, Friendster, Orkut etc.) There are different ways to engage online, the most popular being -       Community-building: Protect The Human , Metrotwin , or Dell Communities are examples. -       Crowdsourcing: MyStarbucksIdea and Dell Ideastorm are examples. -       co-creation: Lego Factory , and open APIs are examples. I’ve been thinking of how to measure engagement in the digital space for a while now, so I wanted to aggregate my thoughts and put them in one place.