for W3c validation

NOTE: This is a work in progress until I remove this note!! If you have any insights into Dell’s blogging, please let me know to make this a complete description of Dell’s blogging policy. Thanks (and don’t be mad it’s not complete yet)!

Corporate Blogging:

Dell (#25 on the Fortune 500 list) launched its corporate blog, called Direct2Dell, on July 5th and got reemed for it! Why? Well, start off with the fact that their 1st 6 posts included videos of products and not much else. Look at the 1st post on their blog– it included a video showcasing the XPS 700 BYO (what the hell is that anyway). They didn’t even do a welcome note to their users.

This post on July 11 was where they started to get things right:

Yesterday was the first official day of Dell’s one2one weblog and already Jeff Jarvis and Steve Rubel were kind enough to tell us what we’re doing wrong. Thanks for the feedback, guys. We’ll keep working to get it right.

Shel Holtz weighed in a bit more constructively. Our intention with this blog is to address issues that are important to our customers. Give us some time and we’ll prove it. Robert Scoble told us to listen, and to link to the folks who don’t like us. First step was to launch Dell’s one2one. Check. We’re excited to be here, and we welcome your ideas.

Four links and counting.

I do like the look and feel of Dell’s blog. The header can be seen above and the sidebar (below) looks clean.

For further details, be sure to check Easton’s great post over at Business Blog Wire. He also followed it up with a round 2 of analysis.

Q & A with Michael Dell Regarding Social Media:

• Podtech has a great video where bloggers were free to ask Michael Dell questions, with many of those questions relating to blogging, at the 2007 CES.
• Jeremiah Owyang posts some interesting insights from the video with a post titled “Roundtable with Michael Dell: Social Media, Reaching out, New Products”

Non Corporate Blogging:

I’m looking for Dell employee blogs- haven’t found any yet. Let me know if you know in the comments if you know of any.

Overall Impression:

Dell did a great thing by changing their tone on the blog based on feedback from customers. It just goes to show- listening to your customers is key. Users are willing to forgive you for mistakes. You just have to admit them (I know it’s hard)! And act on complaints to make things right.