To get a good feel for today’s event check out this quick montage of the goings on, including Michael’s remarks and the cutting of the virtual ribbon (FYI on either side of Michael are Dell’s CMO Karen Quintos and VP of Social media, Manish Mehta).

What’s the big idea

Taking a step back, there are three main reasons for a business to leverage social media (the following is based on a conversation I had with the VAR guy who in turn wrote my ramblings up into something coherent):

1. Monitor & Respond: You need to protect your brand. By monitoring FaceBook, LinkedIn, Twitter and blogs (through Google Alerts), you can defend your brand, answer questions and stop misinformation about your company before it goes viral across the web.
2. Educate and Inform: This is where you take the time to tell customers more about your services, expertise or unique selling proposition. Generally speaking, this involves speaking to established customers or speaking to customers who have needs for your services.
3. Establish Thought Leadership: This is how you pull new people into the sales funnel. Perhaps a local business owner didn’t realize (A) they had a pain point and (B) you have the skills to solve that pain point. Through pro-active communications, you’re able to describe your expertise and create sales opportunities that otherwise may not have materialized.

While Dell participates in all three of the buckets above, the command center is primarliy focused on bucket 1.

Monitoring and Responding

As reported today in Mashable,  “The center will track on average more than 22,000 daily topic posts related to Dell, as well as mentions of Dell on Twitter. The information can be sliced and diced based on topics and subjects of conversation, sentiment, share of voice, geography and trends.”

VP of Social Media Manish Mehta explained the center’s purpose back in October in a comment on a blog post by Altimeter’s Industry Analyst Jeremiah Owyang:

“Our new ‘Ground Control’ is about tracking the largest number [of] possible conversations across the web and making sure we ‘internalize’ that feedback — good and bad…

“Dell’s Ground Control is also about getting that information to the right people wherever they are in the Dell organization, globally and functionally. It’s also about tracking what you might call the ‘long tail’… those smaller matters that might not bubble to the surface today, but are out there… and deserve to be heard. We want to ‘hear’ them too — contrary to the scenarios about ’squeaky wheels getting grease.’”

Don’t touch that dial

I am very excited by the momentum I’ve seen in the social media space at Dell since I joined a little over a year ago.  Things are really picking up.  Stay tuned for more!

Pau for now…

Extra-credit reading

• Mashable: Dell To Launch Social Media Listening Command Center [EXCLUSIVE]
• Dell Blog: Dell’s Next Step: The Social Media Listening Command Center
• Jeremiah Owyang: Social Media Mission Control, The Contact Center Must Evolve
• The VAR Guy: Three Basic Social Media Goals for Managed Services Providers

While at the conference I ran into Social Media guru, author and founder of the Altimeter group, Charlene Li.  I was able to grab sometime with Charlene and get her thoughts on a few topics.  Here is the result:

Some of the ground Charlene covers:

• How social media efforts are transitioning from tools and tactics to a strategic and holistic approach.
• (3:01) Charlene’s thoughts on Monday’s Facebook announcement (Facebook Messages) and what she finds most interesting about the move
• (4:22)  What Charlene thinks of Dell’s social media efforts, what have we done well and where can we improve.

Extra-Credit reading:

• Talking with Charlene Li about Social Networks – Be sure to check out the blooper reel

Pau for now…

Some of the topics Sean tackles:

• How Chatter has done since its launch on June 22.  What type of traction they’ve seen with customers.
• How Chatter differs from other internal social media platforms (hint: not only can you follow people; records, objects and information within your business applications have feeds as well, e.g. your notified when a presentation changes or a sales deal you’re following moves to a different stage.)
• How the idea of Chatter came up. What role chairman Marc Benioff and his use of Facebook played.
• Currently Chatter is tied closely to CRM but it will be tied to other apps going forward.
• They believe that many more folks will use Chatter than usesalesforce.com.

Extra Credit reading:

• eWeek.com: Salesforce.com Seeks to Make Chatter an All-Purpose Collaboration Tool
• BusinessWeek: Salesforce.com Channels Facebook
• An earlier interview I did with Sean: Cloud Pioneer, Salesforce.com

Pau for now…

After the panel I grabbed Morgan from JetBlue and did a short video.  I’ve broken the interview in two, the first part talks about JetBlue’s social media strategy and how its working and the second part addresses the tools and channels that they use.

Check it out…

Part 1: How and Why does JetBlue use Social Media?

Some of the topics Morgan tackles:

• Started the social media engagement back in ’07.
• The four reasons JetBlue uses Social media: 1) monitoring, 2) engaging, 3) informing and 4) humanizing.
• Social media can serve as “a canary in a coal mine.”
• The importance of vetting and confirming information before reacting.
• FYI if you want to sneak a folding bike on a plane you no longer need to claim its art or bike parts.

Part 2: What tools, technology and channels does Jet Blue use?

Some of the topics Morgan tackles:

• When engaging with customers and communities its important to remember that you are a guest of that community and dont try to bull your way in.
• They have a Flickr channel which is populated by crew members and helps to humanize the brand.
• JetBlue has a YouTube channel where they feature videos generated by JetBlue
• Twitter is their biggest channel (@JetBlue).  When I did the interview last week they had 730,000 followers, today they are at 780,000.  This is a great way to monitor customer feedback and disseminate information.
• Morgan is looking forward to seeing how people adapt and evolve existing tools to fit their own needs.

Pau for now…

To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.

Some of the topics that Gaurav tackles:

• Looking at social media from an international perspective and examining how businesses, civil society and governments make use of it.
• The seminar Gaurav teaches is one of the 2 or 3 social media courses that Georgetown offers.
• What Gaurav was doing in India before he got the fellowship.
• Social media and activism
• The analysis and measurement of social media and how to tie it back to business processes, civil society goals or government objectives.

Pau for now…

To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.

Some of the topics Scott tackles:

• Ford’s goal of becoming one of the world’s leading social brands.
• Setting content free.
• Innovation is made up of small tweaks on existing platforms that build value over time.
• How did Ford come to decide they needed a head of social media and how did they pick Scott.
• The two things coming up that Scott is most excited about: the Fiesta Movement and the evolution of Fordstory.com into Ford’s social media hub.

BTW, If you want to follow Scott on Twitter, its @scottmonty.

Pau for now..

Charlene was at SXSW as a speaker and I caught up with her not long after she finished her session in the main ballroom.  You can check out the slide deck she presented below.  You can also access the Twitter feed and a summary of the presentation from Charlene’s post. [BTW don't miss the blooper reel at the bottom]

To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.

Some of the topics Charlene covers:

• Groundswell: How company leaders can leverage social networks rather than fear them
• Which companies are making the best use of social networks
• What social tools Charlene uses and her use of twitter (how it got her quoted in the Wallstreet Journal)
• Not being afraid to show your age on the web
• What Charlene is most excited about in the coming year with regards to social networks
  

The Blooper Reel

You may have noticed that there a few cuts in the video above.  This is because they were shutting down the show floor and kept announcing it over the intercom.  Check out the blooper reel below for proof — and these aren’t even all the interruptions.  (Unfortunately I didn’t capture the part when the Elvis impersonator started singing.)

To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.

Pau for now..

The entrance to the convention center

While the biggest part of SXSW, Music, doesnt start until later this week, the Interactive and Film festivals kicked off on Friday.   Film and Interactive had a combined “Trade Show” which ran from Saturday thru today and that’s where I hung out on Saturday.

Although the show floor was a modest size it was chock-a-block full of tech and cinema offerings (here’s the map and list of booths — my unofficial guess would be it was 80% tech/20% film).  I hung out there for about four hours catching up with old friends and checking out the various offerings.

Artifacts from the event: Rackspace tube socks, business cards, BarCamp pass, Montana film board leather coaster, a brochure from "Austin's only tiki shop" etc.

As you would guess, social media apps dominated the tech offerings and a lot things seemed to be some derivative of facebook/twitter/craigslist/linkedin with an innovative (or not so innovative) spin.  Microsoft had a big booth as did Sun who was showing off its JavaFX.

Don’t touch that dial!

Coming up later this week, the video podcasts I did with Charlene Li of the Altimeter Group and Jason Hsiao of Animoto.

There were a fair amount of apps that looked like this.

Here are a few of the faces from the show floor.

A picture of Guy Kawasaki taking a picture of the Lunarr booth.

The ever helpful Josh Dilworth of Porter Novelli working the press info stand.

Ka’awa was there promoting a tour of singers from Hawaii.

Kevin takes the hand-off. PR firm Porter Novelli gives new meaning to the expression "booth babe."

Pau for now…

It was designed for college kids.  But it took legions of people their parent’s age to fulfill its ultimate destiny.

The article illustrates that the greatest value of Facebook comes not from facilitating connections, but facilitating re-connections.

Facebook is for Old Fogies

Here are the 10 reasons that the author, Lev Grossman, lists to support the above thesis:

1. Facebook is about finding people you’ve lost track of.
2. We’re no longer bitter about high school.
3. We never get drunk at parties and get photographed holding beer bottles in suggestive positions.
4. Facebook isn’t just a social network; it’s a business network.
5. We’re lazy.
6. We’re old enough that pictures from grade school or summer camp look nothing like us.
7. We have children
8. We’re too old to remember e-mail addresses.
9. We don’t understand Twitter.
10. We’re not cool, and we don’t care.

The article is short and you should read the whole thing.  That is of course unless you are an old fogie whereby #5 will stop you.

Pau for now…

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