In order to be successful and maintain prosperity in today’s continually evolving economy and world of business, most companies and corporations have realized that changes must be made to traditional core marketing strategies. Digital marketing and the maintenance of a prominent presence throughout all forms of social media have become top priorities and aspects of companies that have recently experienced growth and success. An important feature of this relatively new phenomenon of social media use for business performance is the monitoring and measurement of the impact that this use of social media has on the business, formally known and referred to as social media metrics.
A study conducted by Bazaarvoice in 2009 shows us that 84% of companies using social media as a part of their core marketing strategy and operations weren’t measuring its impact on the business. They were completely unaware of their return on investment. If you don’t know what impact each aspect of your activities and efforts are having on your business, you have no idea of telling what is successful and what is simply a waste of time, effort and resources. A company that does focus on the use of social media for various purposes that profit the business is Dell. Dell has integrated social media into various different aspects of their company. A case study on Dell discuses how they keep live profiles on Twitter, Facebook, and their own social media sites, Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm, constantly connecting with consumers all over the globe.
It appears that the most successful form of social media for Dell has been Twitter. Dell operates various different Twitter accounts that cater to different areas of the company (offering different levels of service), as well as different areas of the world. It’s largest account with the most following is its @DellOutlet account, which deals with general orders and issues for customers in the United States. After assessing the impact that Dell’s presence on social media has had on the business, Dell has produced some extremely interesting results:
“The company jumped into the social media space more than three years ago, and is today one of the leaders among brands making the most out of social media. @DellOutlet is close to 1.5 million followers on Twitter, and the company announced last June that it earned $3 million in revenue from the micro-blogging service. Today it nearly doubled that figure, saying in total its global reach on Twitter has resulted in more than $6.5m in revenue – adding that @DellnoBrasil made nearly $800,000 in product revenues, and @DellHomeSalesCA more than $150,000.” – The Guardian
The results from Dell are also explained to go beyond these millions of dollar. The impact that Dell’s use of social media has not been limited to fiscal profit. Dell’s use of social media has also lead to better customer relations, better awareness of problems and issues with products, product innovation and a display of the company’s digital competence.
Lessons For Others
It has been clear that Dell’s use of social media has had a large impact on the business. Dell has been maintaining an outstanding presence on multiple different platforms of social media, but through the monitoring and measurement of the impacts of these different forms of social media, they have been able to use social media metrics to identify Twitter as their main influence on the consumer society. By identifying your strengths, influences and impacts of social media, you might be able to use social media to be as successful and profitable as a company like Dell.
Web References
Submitted By: Aryana Heit, SMBP Student, University of Waterloo
To contact the author of this entry please email at: aryanaeheit@gmail.com
If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Programme Director, Social Media for Business Performance.