Wednesday, February 15, 2012

#howdoyougetinfoproblems….


As a brief description, I am a twittet/blogger social media dip my feet in the oceaner.  What does this mean?  I cannonballed into the pool on facebook…no sharks to worry about…just the nice comfort of my friends.  In my life that is the one that I grew up with.  It is interesting when you begin to think about it, the 1981-1984 affluent babies were the first ones on Facebook.  This is when ol’ zuck was in college and the early adopters, the velvet ropers, were given access college to college…[oh yay I just got my pinterst account today!...if only digital velvet ropes also let me buy bottle service?!]  Anyways what does all this mean?! I have no problem posting on Facebook.  Hey these are my friends, girls I want to check out, my pledge brothers, more girls I have thought about hooking up with, random people I kinda met before on a weekend in New Orleans so now we should be friends for life, girls I awkwardly hooked up with became friends with don’t contact anymore but still get to see what they are up to, and don’t forget hip friends of my parents that were early adopters and tried to sign my mom up….oh yeah everyone but my sister because she thinks of the FB as a VD.  FB is a comfort zone.  A comfort zone like jamoca almond fudge or girl-scout cookies….Its an addition like comfort zone….but one that I actually think I might kick….we will see….[next blog I hope will be about why facebook should be called facebrag….”off to vegas” I read….”#goFyourself” is what I think…by the way “only 4 days till I go to whistler ;)”

But wait…I want to be an entrepreneur?! Oh S#it! That means what…..I have to build a community…I need to grow organically.  I need to follow all the industry leaders in hopes that they think #thepartywalla will connect them further to knowledge of the best business things happening in the world today…..That means I need to tweet “10 things an entrepreneur loves to do”….dear lord I am possibly going to attempt SXSW this year and I think I might freak out with all the # or twitter handles Im going to be following.  I certainly hope I don’t get carpel tunnel.….in foresight at least I’ll have my rechargeable iphone battery case with me so Ill freak out with 100% battery….#rangeanxietyproblems

Anyway this gets us to what in the world we are doing here.  I am a person a little scared about this world of twitter and blogging.  Why would anyone care to hear about #s#itIhavetosay?   (ugh oh a double hashtag, is that like a double rainbow).  Even more interesting than this, how do brands extract information from someone like me.  I am “afraid” to really start tweeting…let alone I could give two craps about voting what Panera bread should be bread of the month….how do companies interact with me in a positive manner and how do they extract this information to better their company? hmmmmm quite the pickle.

I look at social media as a place to learn about new things, occurrences, info aggregation, and hear funny things people say.  [btw Dane Cooks tweets arnt funny].  Do I care about the small business sector of Dell? Holy crud no!  But how could the knowledge inside of the small business sector of Dell be of benefit to me.  An entrepreneur, tech interested, creative, connected, life plan curious, but someone who could possibly need their products in the future. Hmmmm

1)      Exclusive webcasts- Deadmau5 just recently held a light show concert from London event exclusively for his facebook followers.  They offered an exciting opportunity for his followers.  Dell Small Business could offer a similar event (obvi not with deadmau5) but who are their clients interested in…entrepreneurs, tech experts, Michael dell.  I am not saying the event needs to be something as square as “How to use Dell in todays economy” blah…but something more creative and engaging.  During the event people can comment on something being said interactively and from there Dell can learn real information from its followers.  Also, now that it has an engaging audience, Dell could post side questions in the interactive session and some people might respond with ideas, suggestions, thoughts.  This is how they could get real time feed back on current curiosities.  

2)      How do you make Dell Small Business Social Media interesting?  I really have no idea but let us think.  Small businesses probably have much less of an IT department.  An entrepreneur is probably caring for all these issues they really don’t care about. How could Dell offer help to alleviate this pain?  How could Dell find this pain?  Hmmmmm Dominos pizza went with an entire campaign saying we make horrible pizza, but we are making changes from our customers suggestion.  (personally the most hilarious campaign ever because they would have people hidden in a room and then somehow the room would become a farm where the ingredients are being grown and the people would s#it Frisbees in amazement.  So does that mean that Dominos went Jack Bauer style and knocked out 7 possible focus group members and took them to an undisclosed location with black sacks over their head…sorry I digress)  Could Dell have social correspondence with their customer and have a semi-annual …If I could fix one thing with my Dell day…and people would respond with one key pain point they are currently having with Dell.  Is that something that could give them key pain points.  Accepting you have problems is the first step to recovery…just ask dominos…#papajohnsisdabombproblems

Long story short the goal of social media is to help build a brand and a community of interested users.  The only reason Dell has this interaction is to eventually have people realize, man dell actually is a cheaper option for my small business and though it is not as cool as apple, it will help our company out because ___________________________.   This ___________________ must be what they need to find out and build a community around.  I have no idea what Dell does now but silly “likes” or multiple choices questions will make me vomit.  If Dell wants to do it, they need to be informative regarding issues potential clients have.  What value-add would having dell on my twitter feed give me?  telling me there is a new laptop available aint helping nobody…so what do they do….I guess I will now follow up and actually starting following them to find out….haha don’t you love blogs, I just made you read all this stuff and I aint really got no idea what im talking about.  But I got 93,000 followers so sip on that for awhile.  #doIordontIproblems

To circle back around what can Dell do to cause me to re-communicate what they have sent me.  This is a key to a campaign.  And I am already a tough case to crack.  Im a toe dipper remember!  I am already a self-prescribed Social media pansy! Dell has a social media issue because they arnt that cool.  No longer is “dude your getting a dell” awesome.  On the other hand since I am trying to build my twitter/blog brand, I have got to be hot and fresh.  And I am sorry Dell, Miles Davis you are not.  Dell has an uphill battle but they can do it.  But they got to be different.  Unfortunately as of late the L in Dell has stood for Lemming so lets see what they can do…..

1 comment:

  1. Hi Craig - After your thorough and humorous set up (which I did enjoy), I think you present a couple of cool ideas for Dell Small Business to improve on their social media. Making it more personal and relevant in the beginning, and pulling out qualitative information when they are engaged, makes perfect sense. Thanks for the effort.

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