1. Adopt a decentralized social media structure to encourage more employee engagement and feedback from customers. This allows a more creative, relevant brand presence. 2. Continue training employees extensively in social media tools and customer service to empower frontline interactions that build trust and advocacy. 3. Implement new listening and analytics tools to closely track changing trends and customer preferences to guide an updated strategic focus, brand positioning, and product development.

1. ● Dell - Founded by 19-year old Michael Dell at dorm room in 1984 (University of Texas)
● Offered computers with high performance at lower prices
● Went public in 1988 with market cap $85 million
● Part of Fortune 500 in 1992
● Opened manufacturing facilities and corporate offices round the world to serve global
customers
● In 1996 - launched dell.com - sales over $1 million within 6 months
● 1999 - Top PC seller in U.S. and in 2001 - Top PC seller in the world
● Late 2000s slipped down as Michael stepped down
● Computer market shifted with introduction of Apple iPad and iPhone (2007 and 2010 resp)
● Michael refocused the company on higher margins; enterprise focused industry offerings
(servers, software and networking)
● Business Models -
○ Two customer segments - Enterprise segment and Consumer segment
○ Assembled most parts - relied on 3rd party contract manufacturers and shipping
companies
○ Direct sales via mail, 1800 number or dell.com
○ Successful supply chain -> minimum inventory
Case Overview - Company Background

2. ● Strategic Shift and Privatization
○ $24 billion deal with Silver Lake Partner in 2013 using $2 billion loan from Microsoft
○ Focus on strategic shift rather than Wall Street analyst reports
○ E.g. - Customer experience vs Closing sales
● Emergence of Social Media
○ Objectives
■ Interact with customers
■ Educate users
■ Manage reputation
■ Predict trends
■ Generate sales
■ Create global brand image
○ Implementation
■ Direct2Dell blog in 2006
■ IdeaStorm blog in 2007
■ @DellOutlet Twitter handle
■ SMaC and SMaC U
■ Chatter
Case Overview - Business Shifts

3. Exhibits Overview
Description Insights
Exhibit 1
a) Dell Inc. Summary Financials,
2008-2012
b) Dell Inc. Financials as % of
Revenue, 2010-2012
a) Net Income - $2947 to $3492
Total Assets - $27561 to $44533
b) Net Income - 2.7% to 5.6%
Total Net revenue - $52902 to
$62071
Exhibit 2
Reasons Individual and Business
Use Social Media
Individuals - connections, awards,
express
Businesses - Increase traffic, conversion
rate, customer LTV
Exhibit 3 Social Media Timeline
Dell’s initiative towards social media
culture throughout 2006-2013
Dell.com to Social Net Advocacy

4. Exhibits Overview
Description Insights
Exhibit 4 Dell SMaC Organization Chart
SMaC team under Michael Dell and Karen
Quintos to embed social media culture
Exhibit 5 SMaC U Certification
3 Mandatory classes + 1 Platform of choice
Certification allowed employees to speak
on company’s behalf without approvals
Exhibit 6
Examples of Social Media
Communications with Dell
Employees resolving queries and
interacting with users
Exhibit 7 Social Media Principles
● Protect Information
● Be Transparent and Disclose
● Follow the Law, Follow the Code of
Conduct
● Be Responsible
● Be Nice, Have Fun and Connect

5. Exhibits Overview
Description Insights
Exhibit 8
Corporate vs Employee Social Media
Reach
Corporate - 1837885
Employees - 310931
Overlap - 43055
Helps reach non targeted groups
Exhibit 9
Awareness to Advocacy Continuum
(Awareness -> Credibility->
Emotional Connection -> Loyalty ->
Advocacy)
Model to move influential commentator
from awareness of Dell to advocacy for
Dell
Exhibit 10
Dell’s Social Media Listening
Command Center
Tool to show in real time what anyone on
the Internet said about Dell; how
influential the commentator was and
give the general tone about
conversation
Exhibit 11 Social Media Scorecard
Measures employees activities on social
media and their influence using Klout
Score

6. Why has Dell been
successful at
building a social
media program?
Q.01

7. 17,000 Dell employees
CUstomer trust employees
social media account
Apple launched IPhone and IPad.
Dell focused more on increasing
network of manufacture centers
Direct2Dell blog: customer
facing communication
IdeaStorm blog: customer’s
suggestion for new features
Social media training
to employees
Engage more with
customers
Understand the
shift in industry
Online influence
Using Klout Score and internal
ranking
Social Media
scorecard
Having both negative and
positive experiences
Understanding of
customer
Employees communicate with
customers
Social Media
Community

8. Can you build a top-
down Dell corporate
brand with a
decentralized social
media structure?
Q.02

9. 1. The social media structure Dell has now is centralized form.
2. The Social Media and Community (SMaC) team come together to oversee social media activities of
the company
3. It created a hub-and-spoke system in which all Dell departments communicated with the SMaC team
for guidance
4. This model is good because it is relatively easy to manage
5. Instead,the decentralized social media structure is two-way flow between central division and the
trained employees,
6. who are blogging and tweeting and engaging people with the brand in different ways and provided
problem solutions
7. The decentralized model will bring
● more brand noise
● more compelling content
● more relevant customers
● more savvy employees
● more quick reaction is a crisis
● more feedback from the customers and
● more creative ideas for social media from the employees
In order to do these,the company may train more employees to master the social media tools and
professional knowledge about problem solving and encourage the employees to build social relationship
and online communities.

10. How do you explain the
statistic that “social
media-based sales leads
were two to five times
more likely to close
sales than traditional
leads?”
Q.03
SLIDESGO.COM

11. The purpose of Dell's social media programme was
to:
● Educate and inform customers
● Address their problems
● Boost sales
● Forecast trends
● Improve brand perception online
For Dell and other companies using its platform
and tools, it altered the online communication
landscape. By tweeting links to Dell product sites,
one of the things that Dell pioneered that
increased its sales was the use of Twitter to drive
revenue. Since Dell joined social media, this has
directly contributed to an increase of over $6.5
million.
Social Media
Marketing Channels

12. B2B
Marketing
Tools
In order to enable B2B customers to
communicate with one another, Dell also
created certain social media tools. It was
discovered that visitors to these forums
were more inclined to respond favourably
if a salesperson contacted them.
One such forum is Techpageone.com,
where Dell-produced information was
sometimes incorporated with technology-
related content from websites all over the
internet. Customers wanted to access this
blog's leadership and problem-solving
information, and when they returned for it,
those customers turned into sales leads. It
also provided the most recent
international tech news.

13. How would you use
Dell’s social media
experience to
rebrand the company
as Michael Dell
wants to do?
Q.04

14. 1. "Always-on" attitude of customer support, two strategies were empowered:
a. Distributed social media approach
b. Centralised strategy
2. Customers recommended new functions or services that Dell should offer in the future through
platforms like IdeaStorm, and Dell would take their suggestions into account
3. All departments interacted with SMaC using a hub-and-spoke concept
4. Dell offered customer advisory panel events to boost engagement by setting up a Social Media
Listening Center, additionally, social media card were created to access employee social media
usage and internal employee rankings
Dell has had the chance to use social media to communicate with consumers, comprehend their
requirements and perspectives, as well as to sell their products, build brand loyalty and increase sales,
all of which have helped Dell increase revenue

15. Updating to
changing
trends
Importance of
connecting
with end users
Strategic
Culture Shift
Implementation
strategy
Key Takeaways