Dell Breaks New Ground with new IR Blog

I have been telling audiences that Dell Computer is my favorite case study involving social media and the enterprise. It follows the formula for the old True Confessions magazines--Sin, suffer, repent.

Dell's sin, from my perspective, was that it trimmed too much quality out of its products and services in the interest of winning a price war. It on the war, but the blood on the battlefield belong to a good customers and the shrapnel on that field were computers that died before their time.

Blogging played a role.  When Jeff Jarvis started it all with his now legendary "Dell Hell" post, he was disdained at first by the company. But Jeff revealed there was an entire community of angry Dell users.

Dell emerged as l'enterprise terrible in the eyes of the blogging community.  The were the poster child as a company that didn't get it.  A company that didn't care, a company that would spend more on advertising than on support.

Then Dell suffered record losses. Remarkably awful losses, and Michael Dell, a founder whose 20 years of straight talking had built solid credibility, returned to take full control of Dell helm.

I forget the order but two things happened: (1) Dell announced it would spend $1 billion to repair  its tainted customer support and  (2) Lawdy, Lawdy.  Dell started a blog.

For about the first month, Direct2Dell, as it is now called, must have set the Guiness record for angry comments.  They were shouted, shrieked, screamed, blasphemed at.  But they took it all, and they took it in.

It developed an attitude of, we had no idea, you customers were really that mad. In response, you could almost hear a collective sigh from the customers.  At last, Dell was listening.  Then, they started responding. New Dell machines are getting better marks. The blog has developed an ongoing dialog that creates either the reality that Dell is closer to its customers than any other PC maker.

A couple of weeks ago, Jeff Jarvis who had pulled the thread that nearly unraveled the company , interviewed Michael Dell for BusinessWeek.  It was a pretty favorable story.

Now Dell has gone a step further, announcing a couple of hours ago, Dell Shares,
an investor relations blog. It is a ballsy move. The conventional wisdom is that no publicly traded company would  allow a stock-related blog because of all the regulatory land mines.  This would only  be true, if the blog author was an idiot, I have previously stated.  Lynn  Tyson, the Dell VP for Investor relations appears to be no idiot.  Her first post is pretty good and she'll get better because most bloggers get better. And, I'll be she's pretty aware of what she can and cannot say.

So now Dell is breaking new ground. It is showing other companies what can and cannot be done in the blogosphere.  It is one Hell of a story. It would make a great ook... hmmm.

 

Comments

[Neville Hobson]

Shel, Shel (the other one) and I had an exclusive FIR podcast interview with Lynn Tyson yesterday that we published as the new blog went live today. Some great thoughts from Lynn on her vision for Dell Shares.

http://tinyurl.com/359f8y

[RichardatDELL]

Great perspective of the journey, Shel....and it is a journey for us...and a good journey too :-)

[Connie Reece]

Dell continues to amaze me with their growing social media savvy. I feel fortunate to live in the same city and to have gotten to know some of their bloggers personally. Really looking forward to the Social Media Workshop there on Tuesday with the Dell Digital Media team -- and you, of course, Shel!

[Thomas Terry]

Shel, Thanks for speaking at the Social Media Workshop on Tuesday. I really enjoyed hearing your perspective. Hope you can make it back to Austin soon.