What Dell’s Doing Wrong
If you’ve been anywhere near the blogosphere this morning, you’ve no doubt seen the fuss about Dell’s new corporate blog, One2One. Dell litters the blog with video clips discussing their new products and services, quick del.icio.us and digg bookmark links (which is getting really old btw) and the ugliest blog design since that kid down the street started blogging.
Back to the 2U example, the latest Dell 2U, the PowerEdge 2950 with the Intel 5100 series processor, delivers more than double the overall performance but requires 25% less power at maximum load.
No you’re not reading a technical whitepaper, that is an actual excerpt from a post on One2One. Instead of using the blog as a forum for active discussion of stories and topics that people can’t find out from a Dell review on Tom’s Hardware, Dell decides to use the blog as an avenue for advertising products and services. Bad idea Dell, bad idea. Steve Rubel states that the blog’s failure comes from Dell’s strategy to avoid hot topics that could be safely discussed. Things like the recent news of that exploding laptop or Jeff Jarvis, who has more than a few quips with the computer giant.
Another thing Dell’s doing wrong is fostering discussion. They have inadequately trained comment moderators who are not letting any comments through. I have left several constructive and fairly well-mannered comments but they have yet to appear on the blog. With all the traffic they must be getting, I can only imagine they are being flooded with comments, but hastily deleting them is a wrong move. Now there are guidelines for what types of comments to immediately delete - comments with profanity, spam or off-topic jargon. Everything else should be fair game. On a corporate blog, such comment censorship is a reviled tactic.
One last thing… as if spamming the blog with product advertisements and videos wasn’t enough, Dell’s videos aren’t even embedded. They are streaming Windows Media Video, which means they open externally in WMP. Unknowingly, Dell just e-slapped every single Mac/Linux/Alternative OS user on the web. The corporate blog is a fantastic idea for companies and can foster a productive pedestal of user interaction and put a face and personality on an otherwise bland establishment. Unless they completely turn it around (and redesign that hideous thing), Dell messed up their one shot to reclaim a fan base.
Remember the book “Web Pages that Suck“? Maybe it’s time to start one for blogs. Seriously though, Dell’s latest blog post seem to show that they are acknowledging their problem. It’s really a cultural thing which many companies really have to understand while diving into the blogosphere.
Eh, I give them points for trying. You’ve got good points though. Maybe they’ll “keep working to get it right”.
Wow, way to slam them after they have only been blogging for 1 day. It’s gonna take them several weeks to figure out the best way to run their blog. I don’t think it is quite fair to slam them so hard so early on like this. Of course if they had been up for months, it would be more appropriate. Btw, I seem to remember you writing some kind of tutorial for putting those digg and delicious buttons on your site.
Ahem maybe Dell needs to hire a real blogger to handle the front?
I think this very public Dell beating is a good thing. Let me explain. Dell is a corporate machine with a very corporate culture. The bloggers are a face to this corporate culture and machine. They are making an attempt to go outside of what they are comfortable with (they get points from me for this) but do it in the corporate way which is just not going to fly on the net. Now, in order to save face they will learn something. They will learn about blogging or the blog and Dell will get horrible press for it for a long time.
If Dell is able to adapt it will be a good thing and hopefully this type of good adaptation away from the typical corporate culture can seep into other parts of Dell.
Just my 2 cents.
Wow, that is a joke. I mean they could at least let a intern run it with a little oversight.
On a Mac… Right click video, copy/paste link into Quicktime Player (w/ “Flip4Mac”:http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx), the video plays fine… *upside down*. That’s fitting.
I agree they will get better, they’ll have to. If they are doing things like listening to Scoble, better moderating comments and trying to be more transparent they will at least be half way there. As far as design, I have seen *much* worse out there. A new header graphic would definitely be a 60 sec quick fix… that’s the worst part.
I can’t believe I am sorta defending Dell. Where am I, what’s my name again?
Yes Mike I know of F4M, but the UB was just introduced as a beta and it is not near mainstream enough for the average mac user to have installed on their system. WMV is the worst choice for a file format to distrubute their content in.
Beep beep, bork bork. Yes, I agree… I was not inferring any different. Merely pointing out that the video plays *upside down*.
Well, I don’t approve the fact that they use their blog solely for advertising purposes, but the design (except the hideous header) is not that bad.
I didn’t venture too deep in the blog though…I hope I’m not talking nonsense.
As a former Dell employee, this does not surprise me at all. The Dell “culture” is counter to what blogging is all about. Everything at Dell is measured, metered, monitored and controlled. If it is not cookbook, forumula, or in a pivot table, they can’t adapt.
You can give Dell a year and you will never find a true “open forum” where you can have a true open dialog to discuss issues.
“digg bookmark links (which is getting really old btw)”
Heh, comedy irony. Good on you for noticing the errors of your former ways.