Journalists’ lessons — from companies like Dell?
Richard Binhammer (Credit: www.briansolis.com via Flickr)
I came across the social media engagement report in July from Wetpaint and Altimeter focusing on how companies measure the bottom-line effectiveness of their social media efforts. The report focused on four companies — Dell, Starbucks, SAP and Toyota. The online database/website focuses on a great many more. To me, it’s not surprising that the study found…
…that the most valuable brands in the world are experiencing a direct correlation between top financial performance and deep social media engagement. The relationship is apparent and significant: socially engaged companies are in fact more financially successful. So now we know it pays to be social, but it is important to note that by “social,” we’re talking about deep engagement, not merely having a presence.
The report ranked the level of social engagement by various brands. Dell was second. That, of course, is noteworthy four years after the “Dell Hell” period, in which the company seemed to turn a deaf ear to the rage in the blogosphere over various customer service issues. Chief among the negative bloggers was Jeff Jarvis, who shared intimately his own customer service issues with Dell, and later declared an end to Dell Hell in Business Week after having an opportunity to interview Michael Dell himself and spend time at the company.
Not long after the Engagement report came out, I was offered the chance to speak to Richard Binhammer, Dell’s senior manager of corporate affairs. This was shortly after the uproar over the Washington Post’s social media guidelines for its newsroom. So it was amusing to see how open and engaged a massive company like Dell was willing to allow its employees to be.
Dell's Community Page
We also talked about Dell’s willingness to listen to — and host — readers’ comments on their various sites, which is something newspapers are still struggling with. Of course, Dell has also been willing to put resources behind its efforts, which at least 30 people who have responsibility for tending to the conversations the company has on its own community site, on Twitter, on Facebook and elsewhere. You can link to all Dell’s social spots from its community page.
Dell’s social media strategy falls under Binhammer’s domain. Binhammer comes out of public relations after working in Canadian politics. He had a two-year stint with Fleishman-Hillard in St. Louis from 1995 to 1997 and joined Dell in 2005 — right around the “Dell Hell” period, when he was given the assignment of dealing with the blogs that were talking about the company.
“It was an assignment I hadn’t asked for. I think I got the assignment because I was doing community affairs and we identified digital media at the time as almost community outreach. I think it was also my background in politics and issues management.”
Binhammer is accessible at his personal blog, on Facebook, LinkedIn, FriendFeed and Twitter. Here’s a few other highlights from our conversation.
On corporate social media policies.
“Every business has its employees sign some sort of employment contract or code of conduct. We ask employees not to divulge proprietary information, or badmouth competitors. My argument is you already have rules and regulations that govern how to represent the company. In terms of representing the company, be smart, don’t be stupid. Are there times when people make mistakes? Absolutely. And we learn from them.”
Does Dell have a guideline for social media?
“There is a policy that we call the Policy on Electronic Dialog. You need to make it clear that you speak for Dell and you have to live up to your obligations under the Dell Code of Conduct. We’re forcing the issue of transparency onto the web.”
But in general, “Do you give (your employees) guidelines when they take an employee to lunch or speaks to someone on the telephone? I know I have to live up certain standards with respect to our own code of conduct. How does social media become different?
“If you are a person in the company who is going to both upload under your blog and have pictures of your kids online, but you’re also going to talk to datacenter IT managers about issues around green data centers, he does have to identify himself as a Dell employee. And I think that’s OK because it humanizes the company.”
On community ambassadors. Dell’s community website lists bios for 30 of them.
“That page is probably being redone, because some of it has changed around a bit. The number is plus or minus a few. What’s happened is that at one time we had a very centralized team and what we’ve done is started to spin off a lot of that team into the various business units. As Dell reorganized into four larger business units — consumer, public sector, small/medium business, large enterprise — that’s how we’ve changed. We’ve been driving deeper into the business at it relates to social media. There are still 30-some people. Some have jobs mostly involved in community forums. It all depends on the business.
“The other thing that is of interest, we also know of about a hundred individuals on Twitter that are using Twitter. For example, there is JohnBatdell …who focuses on the gaming community. Not only does he attend gaming conferences and send reports and interact with the gaming community there, but he’s on gaming blogs.
“I think it’s interesting because if it was five years ago or even three years ago and two customers were having a conversation in a Starbucks, I can’t hear that conversation or hear that conversation. But if they’re exchanging that on the web, I can become part if it and contribute or learn from it. That whole part of listening is a competitive advantage.
“Businesses are used to hosting the dinner party. The situation has fundamentally changed. The dinner party is being held and we’re guests.”
How much traffic goes through the Dell Community web site — page views and unique visitors?
“I don’t know the answer to that question. It’s not Dell.com. But it gets enough that it’s important to us.”
Can you quantify how much money your social media efforts have generated?
“@DellOutlet (on Twitter) has generated over $2 million in revenue in a year-and-a-half. It was $500,000 and then suddenly it was a million in half-the time.
“People are also following the DellOutlet link on Twitter, then going on to Dell.com.” Binhammer explains that readers will click on a link for a deal they’re offering; if they buy from DellOutlet, that contributes to the $2 million. Reader also come in through that link, and may not purchase and outlet item, but they’ll slide over to the main Dell.com and purchase something new. “It’s having a spinoff effect.”
On the effectiveness of Twitter versus conventional advertising.
“The important thing to remember about DellOutlet is that it is an outlet for returned products. We take it back, it’s never been used.” So, he says, he may never know at any one moment how much inventory he has, how many clearance items. “Taking an ad in the paper isn’t effective….I can clear them on Twitter and they go out the door that day.”
On non-revenue benefits to being involved in social media.
“We always think in terms of the revenue benefit, but there are other benefits as well. By listening and learning you can become a better company. You can always improve. You can only improve your business processes by garnering that kind of direct feedback. That’s a business improvement that can be realized by solid listening and learning.
“In some cases, we’ve heard about those kinds of cases (customer issues) sooner on the web than we would have otherwise — we’ve tracked it to a three-week advantage in some cases. If an issue bubbles up — say a driver (conflict with) a mouse — suddenly a little issue bubbles up. Normally that would bubble up through the call lines. By the time that gets aggregated and goes to the engineers, sometimes this gives us three-week advantage.”
On the initial blogger relations program. How did it work?
“Here’s the history. In the first part of 2006, we established essentially some tech savvy and people savvy team members into what you might call a SWAT team. They began filtering various searches to identify customers who were having issues and/or blogging about them. They would go in and help solve the problem. Some were simple issues where people didn’t know they needed to get a driver update. That came directly from Michael (Dell). People can phone us and go to our forums. If people are blogging about us, we need to be there.
“In June 2006, we started blogging (the direct2dell blog). And then in August 2006, we established a broader view. It’s more than just customer support. They’re interacting with us in all sorts of ways, why would we not extend this beyond just tech support. We broadened our blog outreach to whatever other issues they might be talking about. For example, people were talking about whether it was right for us to be in Walmart — Dell’s strength was always in direct to the customer…
“In the early days, in early 2006, almost 50 percent of what we saw on the web about the company was negative. We’ve seen it decline at least 30 percentage points — it ebbs and flows depending on different things. The metrics aren’t perfect. We try to capture most of the conversations.”
On allowing customer comments on blogs, in forums.
“In the ratings and reviews in Dell.com — low ratings aren’t deleted, but we reach out to those customers and see what we can do to fix that problem. Now if you bought a low-end product and are expecting to do high-end work with us, there is a bit of a conflict there.
“It’s also important to remember in social media is that social media is not just a way to say yes for companies. There are some people who make negative comments that don’t really comprehend the whole picture or have a complete understanding. When you go in an explain that, that’s often very helpful. I’m not saying that deals with all negative commentary. I remember one blogger — when Michael came back as CEO — this blogger wrote that Michael Dell needed to understand his company had a customer service issue.” But what the blogger could see in public coverage of his return didn’t include any mention of the issue to his employees.
Binhammer said he reached out to the blogger with evidence to the contrary. “You need to see what he had to say to Fortune two months ago,” and the entirety of Michael’s email. “The next day that blogger wrote ‘this blogger stands corrected.’”
On being Dell’s social media guru.
“I’m part of a team. I happen to be the forward-looking face for a lot of the team and I became part of the team early. I’m not the guru, I’m just one of many. I come out of a public relations background.”
Related Posts:
Comments
Kurt's Tweets- Funny. SW airlines magazine bothers to mention that pacemakers are always authorized electronic devices. #fb
- A disgrace, St. Louis. People still litter? http://post.ly/OUsk
- Redemption for Lindsey Jacobellis in snowboardcross? Only click if you really wanna know. http://bit.ly/99OgbM
- West Countians: If you're in the market for a pancake supper tonight, there's one here: http://stmartinschurch.org.
- The fiddling continues, even as Rome burns.