This article is sponsored by the 2nd Annual Middle East Social Media Marketing conference organized by marcus evans, which will take place on May 13 -14, 2012 at the Al Bustan Rotana hotel in the UAE.
As the conference approaches we’ve sent out some questions to the organizers in order to receive insights from the speakers and trainers on how they view and use social media in their corporations. Below are Stephen Jio’s answers, who is the Global Mobility & Vostro Online Merchandising Manager at Dell. You can follow Stephen on twitter and google+.
How do you use social media in your corporation?
At Dell we see Social Media as part of our DNA and use it throughout the entire lifecycle of our solutions and customer interactions. We encourage all employees to embrace the value of Social Media as a tool to gain insight from the community and ultimately help provide solutions and products that benefit our customers.
Which department handles Social Media in your corporation? And why?
As Social Media is extensively used throughout the company, we have many different business units managing Social Media directly for their departments. However we do have an overarching body that provides training, certification, best practice along with ensuring that all employees and departments are compliant with our Social Media strategy and key principles. In addition our Communications Department would be very active in ensuring that all conversations are consistent with our external communications policies.
What are the most important factors that brands have to focus on when setting up a Social Media Strategy?
The keys are to:
- Define exactly what you want to achieve in Social Media
- Gain sponsorship from Executives
- Budget for scalability and
- Train your employees before they engage as representatives of the company.
The key elements in the execution of the strategy are to Listen and Engage. Listen to what is being said, understand your Customer. Engage and be part of the conversation and solution.
What did you find to have the best return and on what basis was it measured? Can you give us an example?
Social Media provides Dell with so many benefits that have directly and indirectly impacted our ability to best serve our customers. One example would be the efforts of our @DellCares team which reach out proactively to the Social Media community and help answer questions, solve issues or direct Customers to where they need to be. This builds trust between Dell and our Customers and results in higher customer satisfaction, brand elevation and higher consideration of our solutions and products to Customers.
We’d like to thank Stephen for taking the time to share his insights with us as well as the organizers at marcusevans. If you would like to see Stephen in action you can register to attend the conference at the marcus evans website.
Every large companies are using social media to promote their business. Even company like Dell are using this strategy.