Grounded In Reality

Over the past week, Dell has been the topic of many conversations in the blogosphere, spurred by a Forrester Groundswell Award and BusinessWeek article discussing the company’s transformation from digital bystander to leader.  In reading these posts, I am incredibly proud of the GCI team that helped make this happen. (NOTE: Dell is a GCI client)

Below are a few highlights from the blogosphere:

• BusinessWeek: Dell Learns to Listen: Jeff Jarvis takes a guest columnist role to discuss his two-year relationship with Dell and an overview of Dell’s social media initiatives. The online version is complete with a 25-minute video of an interview with Michael Dell (also available on Jeff’s blog: BuzzMachine).   He also posted the un-edited version, which notes a very measurable impact of Dell’s programs:

“Thanks to this new relationship, the company learns about issues online before they do in the press or sometimes in-house. They are stanching the flow of bad buzz. By their measure, negative word of mouth in blogs has dropped from 49 to 22 percent. And my Dell Hell posts, which used to come up third on a Google search for the company, are now relegated to second-page search-engine Siberia. ‘That change in perception just doesn’t happen with a press release,’ Menchaca says.”

• Direct2Dell - Dell’s Blog: Lionel Manchaca did an interview with Jeff near the end of the day and posted the vlog that resulted on Direct2Dell.

• Forrester’s Groundswell blog also mentions Dell’s transformation when referencing the Forrester Groundswell Awards that were given out last week.

Company transformation. Dell.
We created this new category to capture the powerful changes happening across all functions at Dell. The Dell Customer Advocate program, which pursues fast resolution of support problems, decreased the negative share of online comments about Dell by 25%. Direct2Dell, Dell’s frank and informative blog, generates 3.5 million page views per month. Ideastorm, Dell’s innovation community, tallied 500,000 votes for over 7,000 ideas and generated a new product, Dell PC’s with Linux pre-installed. And Employee Storm, an internal idea community, has generated 2,700 ideas and seen visits from 22% of Dell’s employees.

• From Geoff Livingston at The Buzz Bin:

Relationships and RELATIONS are about being human — not God. Together as humans we experience life and grow together. Mistakes happen, and good PR can overcome this. Consider Dell’s incredible lesson in admitting wrongs, listening and changing. This week’s BusinessWeek story is a celebration of relations.

• Our own Paul Walker mentioned that he is “really proud of the people and programs mentioned in the article. Thanks, Dell, for letting us be a part of it.” 

On behalf of GCI, I want to give the entire team a big pat on the back! The consistent creativity and innovation in new media waters is something to be extremely proud of.