Why Social Media is Not Just a Gimmick for Dell SMB

The opportunity to speak with the global Director of the Small to Medium Business Division for Dell was a chance to get some insight into how a Global 500 company leverages social media to market their products and services to both the business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) and our time with Michael Buck was no disappointment.

Michael is the Director and General Manager for the Global Small and Medium Online Business at Dell, and is responsible for the overall online business and strategy for Dell SMB worldwide.  When he spoke with us from his offices in Stuttgart Germany, Guy Powell and I were able to find out a great deal about how Dell manages and measures their social marketing and their online presence.

In our first episode, we learned about the Four Pillars of the online marketing strategy they employ and in episode 2 we heard about the five Customer Value Drivers and the five key metrics they apply to measure the success of their online efforts.  In our last episode, Michael shared how Dell works hard to present a broad offering of online communities and communications options to support the B2B and B2C initiatives and to give customers a chance to have their voices heard and to drive the innovations in products and services they want to invest in from Dell.

In this episode, we wrap up the conversation with Michael with him sharing how Dell is absolutely committed to social media as a fundamental tactic because they see success in it and they see how well the customer base responds to it.  He also points out that the massive increase in social engagements in other geographies, away from North America, to other regions that including Brazil, Russia, India and elsewhere.