Bob Pearson, VP at Dell had some great points in this video that I wanted to highlight here. He was interviewed by Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester

Highlights for me were:

1. How core is social media to Dell? It is not just something they do, Bob states, “Social Media is a part of who we are”.

2. For Dell, social media is first and foremost about customers, “Social Media is a way to communicate with our customers more effectively”

3. It is impacting product design, “using social media to integrate customer ideas into our product design” (ex: www.ideastorm.com ).

4. Where is Dell going next?

a. Bob said they just finished chapter 1 which is, “how we integrate social media within Dell”.

b. Chapter 2 for Dell is “how does social media revolutionize the business infrastructure of a company”. We will hear more from Dell about this in 2009

5. What about Social Media in a recession? Bob states, “in a recession, social media becomes more important”. Dell sees a greater adoption in this kind of economic climate. Why?

a. It is not that expensive to do

b. It gets us closer to our customers

6. Customer Support. Dell sees that customers have a tremendous amount to share with each other and that this is a huge trend online that Dell is helping to facilitate, “we see ourselves as an enabler”.

7. Why is social media so important? “The corporate web site, Dell.com, is not really our home page.”, says Bob. “The new home page is Google, or Yahoo or MSN. Wherever people go to search – THAT is the new homepage”. When you see what comes up in the first page of results, “those are the people forming the impression about your company”.

8. My favourite quote from Bob, “What we see is that the web reflects reality”.