But this tracking is not just about Dell’s customers. As Dell’s Vice President of Social Media and Community Manish Mehta said: “Dell’s Ground Control is also about getting that information to the right people wherever they are in the Dell organization, globally and functionally.”

And Dell has certainly stepped it up when it comes to ensuring that each and every one of those employees is a fully functioning and engaged member of their social media strategy. Dell considers them all, no matter what their position or department, to be important brand ambassadors, and they put their money where their mouth is by creating an innovative and company wide social media certification program. We had the pleasure of chatting with Amy Fowler-Tennison, Dell’s SMaC University Program Lead, about this initiative. Read on for some great tips on empowering your employees in social media, and why it’s so vital to your organization.

Hi Amy, nice to meet you. Tell us about your role at Dell?

Thanks and it’s nice to meet you. I lead Dell’s Social Media and Community University program or SMaCU. The program is designed to educate Dell team members on our overall social media strategy, governance and principles. While many social media training classes and documents are available online, our program focuses specifically on how Dell team members can use these tools to build authentic and long lasting  relationships with our customers. By empowering team members to get more involved the right way, we can imbed social media deep within the fabric of our company for the benefit of our customers and our brand.

What is the Dell Social Media Certification Program?

The certification program was established last year to equip team members to be effective Brand Ambassadors for our company. Any team member, regardless of their function or business unit, that wants to engage  on behalf of Dell in the social media space is required to complete SMaC Professional Certification. Once certified, team members receive an official certificate and they can start interacting with customers within their area of expertise. They can also request new social media pages, groups or accounts to be created with approval from the social media leadership team.

What was the thinking behind getting it started?

Our customers were and are looking for team members within the company that are experts on their area of interest or need. That meant that no one group could be responsible for all of our social media outreach, but rather that we needed team members from all functions within our company to engage, including marketing, sales, product development, HR and services. Fortunately, our team members were already participating in these platforms personally and many had the desire and ability to listen and engage on behalf of the company. By allowing any interested team member to attend our classes and get certified from the launch of the program, we enabled team members that already knew the space to move from personal to professional engagement.

You mentioned that “no one group could be responsible for all of our social media outreach”. That sounds a bit chaotic. How does Dell keep their SM outreach tracked and – for lack of a better word – ‘controlled’?

Great question. Social Media governance and Dell’s overarching strategy is owned by the SMaC team. Once team members are certified, there is a request form for all new requests and access to our tools. Once any new account launches, we monitor it to make sure the account is active, brand compliant and has tracking available.

How exactly do your employees end up “certified” in Social Media?

There are two levels of certification: SMaC Professional and SMaC Spokesperson. Professional certification requires basic understanding of four main content areas: our SMaC Principles, Dell’s overarching social media strategy, how to represent the Brand in social media and governance for the platform they choose to use. Spokesperson certification requires additional media training since these team members are using social media to communicate to shareholders and media.

What has the employee response been? Has there been any push-back? People who didn’t embrace it at first? Employee generation gaps..?

Overall, the response from team members has been overwhelming. Promotion of the program has primarily been spread through word of mouth. Some team members attend the classes because they are active practitioners and want to get more engaged, while others are not familiar with the tools, but see this an important career development opportunity. Eager attendees have even participated remotely during extremely late hours, called into a class during their vacation or paid to fly to a global training location themselves.

Wow. That’s a motivated employee base. Do you have any thoughts or advice you could share with other businesses who are just getting their internal Social Media programs/training up and running…?

Don’t jump into training without laying a strong foundation first. Our classes are successful because they are based on how Dell uses the tools and provide actionable next steps. Before you start training, you’ll want to think through who can engage (all employees or just a particular group), engagement guidelines and governance for company social media pages, groups, accounts, etc..

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A huge thank you goes out to Amy for taking the time to chat with us about this great program!

What do you think? Could your organization create something similar? Do you agree/disagree that each and every employee is a brand ambassador and should be trained in social media best practices? We always appreciate your feedback, please leave your thoughts in the comment section below.

Note: Radian6′s social media engagement and listening platform drives Dell’s Social Media Listening Command Center.

The #Social2011 experience for me started off last Thursday night when we were put into awkward situations (some call in networking) in which we were introducing ourselves to others and talking (or bragging) about what we do. That night I saw the power of social media. Meeting with other students and chatting with people I followed on twitter, but never met, was an eye opening experience. Eager to forge on with my newly discovered super awesome networking skills I was halted by the man of the hour, Isaiah Mustafa. His presence in the room that night could be felt instantly, everywhere. I patiently waited in line to shake his hand and ask him how he was doing. Let’s be real though, I just wanted some tips for the gym. How does he do it?! P90X?, hours in the gym? He wouldn’t budge.

The real education began early the next morning with the day’s opening keynote. The topic of Paul Greenberg’s speech was Is Social CRM For Real? He laid the framework for conversation by showing how we are going through a communications revolution. Mobile business has become critical to the environment we are in. He emphasized that businesses need to start paying attention to this and create content that is “mobile friendly.” Paul then discussed the Trust Barometer, which is a product of a global PR firm called Edelman. This Edelman Trust Barometer listens, questions, and evaluates the consumers trust in various businesses based on certain metrics. By using credible sources along with relevant experiences, Edelman can measure the depth of relationships that help brands build credibility. The Edelman 2011 conclusion: “you trust your peers far more than you trust a company.” It was important to understand how important influential consumers are compared to the reputation of a company. This new trust architecture is heavy on transparency and engagement, which hopefully sets new expectations for corporate leadership. Paul left us with some encouraging words before concluding; “…the fear of what might happen, is the power of the social consumer.” Start listening.

Next, I had a chance to sit in on some of the breakout sessions. Define the ROI of Social & What’s the Value of Influence? were the two I chose. The discussion on ROI left me with a sour taste, apparently “it depends” is the answer used a lot in how to measure in certain situations. I understand that you may have to create different standards from business to business, but some factors must be consistent, right? Lauren Vargas did a great job moderating and not letting the social media “smack down” get out of control. The key takeaway for me was from Joe Thornley “It’s easy to have a score, but better to know what needs to be improved upon.” I understand we can come up with metrics to represent what we are trying to measure, but what happens when it boils down to making a hard decision? We are left with your understanding and experience of what those numbers mean that lead you to making smarter decisions.

The breakout session on the value of influence was a huge hit for me. It helped me to be aware of the notion that we need to study and analyze human behavior in order to maximize value. Chuck Hemann mentioned “Influence does not equal reach, but when you combine relevance AND reach, you’ve got a powerful equation.” What I learned most from Chuck was that we have many influencers on various social sites as well as in our daily encounters. Being able to identify these influencers and understand what kind of communications platforms they get most excited about will turn into a big win. In closing the session, Philip Sheldrake encouraged us to, “focus on the people who are already influenced, they will ultimately do the influencing for you.

My experience over these quick 24 hours truly heightened my excitement for the future of social media programs in business. As a soon-to-be college graduate, the education gained will help give me a leg up on competition.

Overall, what was your favorite part of #Social2011? Your key takeaways? Are you more prepared to defend your ROI numbers?

Trent is a BU student studying Organizational Behavior and Business. He consults for the BU school of management on their social media strategy. Trent enjoys playing racquetball and cycling around Boston!  An avid twitter user, but still an emerging blogger, you can learn more about him here, and follow him on twitter.

To say the least, Social 2011 was more than a conference. By definition, a conference is an act of conferring or consulting together, but that is only a small piece of what occurred. Sure, in the two-day event there were multiple keynotes, breakout sessions, panelists and product announcements from significant movers and shakers in the social media world. But on top of that, conversations were happening in person and online from like-minded individuals seeking to quench their thirst of social media knowledge. And so, we learned from each other through conversations. I found myself just as excited to meet and talk to people as I was to sit down with my laptop before a session. I knew I was learning at all times.

From the agency perspective, the learnings were immense and I’m still thinking through the key nuggets. Here’s a taste.

• No one is saying that traditional media is going away and social is taking over. This is about integration and finding smart ways to reach your audience through multiple mediums. Social needs to be a part of the strategy but it is not the only strategy. Neither is traditional. Make them work together.

• Listen to the conversations about your brand and respond. It can be as easy as searching on Twitter or utilizing your Radian6 dashboard. From there, act. Like American Airlines found, responding to a small yet frequent question (i.e. which planes have wifi?) can turn stressed travellers into loyal customers because you were there when consumers needed you.

• Ensure your team is part of the conversation. Employees are the brand. They are communicators. Use this to your advantage and embark on social evangelism as a company. Chief Listening Officer can be the title of each and every employee at your company. We all have that role.

Looking back on the event, I can safely say I was amazed at how much I crammed in my brain. It took a while to digest and I believe I’m still doing so. I have at least five Google docs of notes jumbled around to cull through and re-read. Then there’s the 10,000+ tweets in the #social2011 Twitterstream. Not to mention the nearly 10 videos from the keynotes. But those are all signs that point to one thing – a good experience. By the time I’m done reflecting and implementing what I’ve learned, it will be time for Social 2012. I’ll be ready.

You’ll find a selection of photos from Day 1 of Social 2011 here.

Amanda Nelson is a New York and Connecticut advertising campaign manager for over eight years. She’s worked on all facets of advertising from interactive (her personal favorite area) to traditional media. She enjoys creating unique, on-strategy campaigns. She also enjoys her border collies, tap dancing and her husband Tom. She blogs at a-media-mix.com. @mileigh13

Radian6′s CEO Marcel Lebrun opened up with some personal thoughts from the day before. What a pleasure it had been meeting so many new people. And how thrilled he was with all of the feedback. He highlighted tweets from the day before, and, a la Bruce Springsteen from his “Born in the U.S.A.” days, he pulled from the audience and spoke directly to the author of his favourite tweet, one which may or may not have started the rumour that Radian6 will be launching it’s own beer soon! It was a fun, genuine moment that clearly highlighted the power of what social media is all about – person to person communication.

Wasting no time, Lebrun introduced speaker Paul Greenberg. President at The 56 Group and author of the hugely successful business bible CRM at the Speed of Light: Social CRM Strategy, Tools, and Techniques for Engaging Your Customers, Greenberg quite simply owned the room. A relaxed, real speaker without pretense, he spoke about how social media has absolutely and without precedent changed our world. It hasn’t only changed how we communicate, but has fundamentally changed how we trust. And he asked a powerful question: can we strip away the hype, without killing the buzz? Watch his keynote for that answer and much more.

The day moved on with more product announcements. The new Managed Accounts feature provides centralized management and sharing of your corporate social media accounts for collaborative workflow. We will be rolling out support for Twitter Managed Accounts in the next few weeks. And the Engagement Console Extensions Gallery will provide a bagful of useful utilities and third party integrations to make your engagement more efficient and easy. Customers and third party developers will be able to create custom extensions for the Extensions Gallery and optionally, share them with the community. Watch for more information on these new products coming soon on the Platform blog.

Attendees then faced an almost Sophie’s Choice’esque dilemma of choosing which of the next two rounds of Breakout Sessions to attend. There were lessons on ensuring the voice of your customer reaches your employees at Integrating the Voice of the Customer Beyond the Call Center. Plus the always hot topics of influence and ROI in social media were debated – sometimes hotly – in Can You Define the ROI of Social? and What’s the Value of Influence?.

The afternoon’s Breakout Sessions began by exploring the trust that keynote speaker Paul Greenberg spoke about earlier, with the panel How to Scale ‘A Person Like Me’. The power of real-time engagement was looked at during High Performance Participation Brands. But what really lit up the twitter stream was the group of agency “Mad Men” who took the stage, scotch in hand (a prop, surely!), to discuss The Evolution of the Agency. Panel participant Blake Cahill crafted a great post about it, complete with a series of panel related tweets and pictures. And as we mentioned yesterday, search the Twittersphere with #social2011 for tons of takeaway and people’s thoughts and impressions from all of the event panels.

In between coffee breaks, training sessions and product demonstrations, people also could attend Friday’s line-up of Un-Conference sessions:

• From Web Montitoring to Data Driven Strategic Management
• From Strategy to Engagement: How Omaha Steaks is Riding the Social Media Wave
• A Foundation for Strategic Success
• THRiVE: A Product Built by the Savers, for Savers

All of these sessions were well crafted, presented and well received. We have included links to some of the Un-Conference participants slides and video, and will be including many more in the next few days.

The closing keynote panel was exceptional and deftly handled by Radian6‘s Chief Marketing Officer, David Alston. Wendy Harmen, the Social Media Director for the American Red Cross, summed up the theme of Social 2011 when she spoke about how every single ARC employee and volunteer are seen as spokespeople for the organization. And she provided a clear case study on building a robust community, a community with one goal – helping people. Then B. Bonin Bough, Global Director of Digital and Social Media, PepsiCo, bounded onstage with characteristic energy, and shared an amusing anecdote involving newsrooms, Barack Obama, and their groundbreaking Mission Control listening and engagement centre. Lastly, Old Spice’s ‘man your man could smell like’ Isaiah Mustafa took the stage. Ever wonder how much CGI is actually used in the making of those iconic spots? Less than you would imagine. Think harnesses, ice cold water, and a props team beyond compare. Mustafa was a warm and self-deprecating “every man”, and managed to squeeze in time for photos with people, even though he was rushing to catch a flight.

And then there were none. Which brings us – brought us – sadly to the end. Turns out that old nugget is true: time really does fly when you’re having fun.

We welcome your comments and feedback about everything you’ve seen here. If you were at the event, what was your favourite part? Suggestions to make next year even better? And we encourage you to keep your eyes peeled for a lot more Social 2011 content in the next few weeks.

Our guest bloggers and live tweeters rocked it for those 48 hours, providing fabulous insight on everything from the breakout panel sessions to the unconferences to the exciting product announcements. You’ve already been reading some of their great work, so watch this space for more reflections in the days ahead.

Day one of Social 2011 kicked off with an inspiring opening keynote from our own Marcel Lebrun. Taking us on a historic tour through communications, from the printing press to early television to the internet to the cloud, he deftly illustrated how, as the powerfully prophetic Marshall McLuhan said, ‘the medium is the message’ and the village truly is global. You can watch his speech here.

The keynote then moved on to the first product announcement and the room buzzed after watching the video introduction to Insights. Insights is the latest dashboard platform, and allows you to dig deeper and go behind the words to truly understand the underlying meaning, to get a clearer feeling for sentiment. Please take a stroll over to our Platform blog for an in-depth post on what Insights can do for your company.

Lebrun then handed the stage over to Dell’s Senior Vice President and CMO, Karen Quintos and Dell’s Executive Director of Social Media Adam Brown. As guest blogger Amanda Nelson astutely summed it up: “If such a big corporation could realize the opportunity of social, implement it and succeed at it, then there was increased opportunity for other brands to follow suit.” Read her entire post on Dell’s keynote address here.

After a quick break, attendees of Social 2011 regrouped at one of three Breakout Sessions. Staying Private in a Public World explored heavily regulated industries and social engagement; Amber Naslund hit it out of the park as usual with her presentation on The NOW Revolution: 7 Shifts to Make Your Business Faster, Smarter and More Social (check out blogger Maurice Rahmey’s thoughts on Amber’s panel); and Build a Better Campaign: Research Plan and Integrate, explored breaking through the clutter and delivering a message that resonates with the audience. We opted to take a light hand with Powerpoint and slides during this event, but if you search #social2011, our event hashtag, you will find tons of takeaway, as people live tweeted at every panel. Also, as mentioned above, watch for panel blog posts rolling out the rest of the week.

The afternoon of day one was no less chock-a-block than the morning. The product announcements just kept coming, with the revelation that we were taking it to the streets. Mobile that is. With the new mobile app and the handy Summary Dashboard, your day will be simplified and smoother than ever. The video presentation can be found here, and again, check out the platform blog for an intro to these latest products.

People filtered in and out of a series of training sessions, and the post-lunch lineup of Break Out sessions began: Socializing the Enterprise from Inside Out; Know Your Audience: Discover Learning and Development Insights; and Cutting Through The Red Tape. Plus Behind the Curtain: The Wizards of API; Community Manager 2.0 – Who’s Running This Place, and Social Good Begins with a Strategy.

At the same time, a series of Un-Conference Sessions were going on.

• Social Media for Industrial B2B at Caterpillar Inc.
• Operationalizing Social Media Across the Enterprise: AutoDesk’s Journey
• Risk Management and Addressing Social Challenges
• TV Gets Social – Measuring Resonance With Radian6
• Leveraging Radian6 to Develop an International Digital Crisis Plan
• Social Search: Refining Topic Profile Keywords

The day wrapped up with an eclectic and electric talk by Mitch Joel. As was said in his introduction “…it’s not what *has* Mitch done, it’s what *hasn’t* he done!”. President of digital marketing agency Twist Image, best selling author and speaker, he’s shared the stage with everyone from Bill Clinton to Dr. Phil. Please enjoy his talk, in its entirety, here.

We love feedback and would love to hear your thoughts on some of what you’ve seen here. Tomorrow, we’ll take a look at Day 2 of Radian 6’s Social 2011.

Thanks to all of you (Radian6 team, panelists, speakers and attendees) for making our inaugural user conference a success! Over this next week, our team will be sharing the slide decks from our panels and speakers, as well as posts written by our extraordinary team of guest bloggers. As you digest the post-conference materials, check out the brilliant pictures of #Social2011 captured by Jim Storer and Joselin Mane.

And to answer the question, all of you have been asking…what music was playing during the conference? We have built a playlist on YouTube, so you can rock to all the cool tunes as you relive the conference in the content we post later this week. Also, the catchiest tune of the entire conference was Viola, Popsicle Summer. Good luck getting this song out of your head!

At the close of the week, we will round up a list of those posts published by you about your thoughts on our conference. Please share in the comment section below the link to posts, pictures, videos and any other content from the conference you would like added to this post.

Also, as always we love your feedback. What did you take away from the event? If you weren’t there, did you manage to follow along via Twitter and/or our livestreaming? Who was your favourite speaker? And which panel provided you with the most food for thought?

Objective I: Faster

Amber explained that everybody on the web feels the demand of speed and that demand is amplified thousands of times now. We don’t wait around for information like we used to. In order to deal with this dilemma, companies need to build a new bedrock – a cultural foundation within the corporation that is shared and believed by all employees. Having a larger force of your employees out there helps customers get the answers they want and need quicker. She explained how some companies are scared to put the power of social media in their employees hands because they don’t trust what they will say. But according to Naslund, this means that the company has a hiring problem, not a social media problem.

Objective II: Smarter

Amber explained how although some companies are doing social media, they only respond to positive sentiment and ignore the negative complaints.  As an analogy, she brought up the idea of customer service centers and explained that in those situations, we wouldn’t hang up on someone for complaining – an idea that should be transferred to the world of social media.

Smart companies, she stated, have to make these complaints work for them. An example of this is @DellCares, who created a Twitter account that takes customer complaints and responds to them via social media.

Objective III: More Social

Even if a company transitions to just answering complaints and apologizing, they’d be making progress in social media. However, companies that really want to be a part of the NOW revolution need to engage in and create conversations.

Amber posted a picture of what she called the Humanization Highway.  This highway showed the transitions that a company needs to take to really own their brand in the social space:

Ignoring →  Listening → Responding → Participating → Storytelling

Companies need to also communicate in helpful, interesting, and human ways. An example of this is Subway and their spokesperson Jared. The brand created a memorable story that stood out in viewers’ minds and left a lasting impression on customers – far more than any $5 footlong could.

To conclude the breakout session, Amber emphasized that social media is a hard skill, and with more companies demanding employees know how to use social sites like Facebook and Twitter, it’s a job that can’t be handed off to the intern or tacked onto someone else’s job.

Maurice Rahmey is a student at Boston University studying public relations and business. He’s a member of BU’s Public Relations Student Society of America, an avid blogger at mrahmey.wordpress.com and a prolific tweeter (@mrahmey).

But let’s go back.

Dell came to a realization that seemed to spawn their entire culture shift – social media is real. It plays a huge role in infinity and loyalty to customers and runs deep into cultural beliefs. So Dell made a move.

On day one at Social 2011, these facts were spewed all over the #social2011 twitter stream:

• 9,000 Dell employees are trained on social media
• 25,000 conversations about Dell are happening each month (which Dell rightfully refers to as “25,000 opportunities”)
• One woman with big ideas came forward to Dell and was soon hired as the Chief Listening Officer (@SusanBeebe)

Dell has clearly woven social into the fabric of their brand. They treat customer communications as a dialog versus a monologue. With tracking in their command center, they have demonstrable ROI. They understand their homepage is not Dell.com. It’s google.com, youtube.com, twitter.com, qq.com and so on.

This session was inspiring, but not because of the story. I knew the story. I’ve read the articles. The way Karen Quintos told the story is what got to me. She truly understands today’s media mindset and was engaged in spreading her solution.

As I work on the agency side of things, I help clients “get it” and be engaged and excited about their solutions. But it’s a journey. Hearing experiences like these should motivate marketers like me to work even harder.

You’ll find more awesome photos from Day 1 of Social 2011 here.

Amanda Nelson is a New York and Connecticut advertising campaign manager for over eight years. She’s worked on all facets of advertising from interactive (her personal favorite area) to traditional media. She enjoys creating unique, on-strategy campaigns. She also enjoys her border collies, tap dancing and her husband Tom. She blogs at a-media-mix.com. @mileigh13

The Pacific Grand Ballroom at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel, a 10,744 sq ft massive space, was quickly filled with hundreds of social media players humming tunes of interest and excitement amidst glowing smartphone, tablet and laptop screens. A community had formed. And once Marcel Lebrun started speaking (CEO of Radian6), community was demonstrated.

“Community is the essence of what we believe in. We walk the talk about listening and engaging with customers,” said Marcel in regards to Radian6. His excitement to announce the upcoming Radian6 product was apparent and infectious.

Before the product was revealed, Marcel discussed the social medium and how it can change the world. After all, it has a bigger reach than TV. It has a longer lifespan. Most of all, social propagates through a network of trust. That’s invaluable. It’s the angle to use when talking to traditional-media clients. Don’t get me wrong, traditional media is valuable (I’ll discuss this in a later post) but social may soon out-perform it. It already does when it comes to engagement. Perhaps that is the angle to take to make an impact and get a client to invest in this space. Or at least entertain the idea.

The Salesforce acquisition was then mentioned in a welcoming, delightful manner.

On to the product announcement. And it looks awesome.

Radian6 revealed their new Insights platform – a concoction of multiple technology companies that can network together to shed light on social media results. In other words, the Radian6 dashboard platform can now read deeper into the social space and understand the meaning behind the tags. Not to mention its ability to process all of this at a mind-blowing pace.

This is going to make life easier in my agency world. Instead of culling through content to gauge sentiment manually (although I do enjoy the River of News), I can soon let the tool do that for me and relay that information. What was the most popular band at SXSW? Boom. Here you go, Amanda.

Then, we met the panel. The group of men working for the different insight providers to make this semantic plumbing of social technology flow to its fixtures. Amazing. They included Matt Thompson, VP at Klout, Tom Tague from OpenCalais, key Radian6 players and Mark Redgrave from Open Amplify. All were excited and eager to speak about their role in the process of turning this idea into reality. They were a community of like-minded thinkers working to make social media reporting and analysis an easier game to play.

Amanda Nelson has been a New York and Connecticut advertising campaign manager for over eight years. She’s worked on all facets of advertising from interactive (her personal favorite area) to traditional media. She enjoys creating unique, on-strategy campaigns. She also enjoys her border collies, tap dancing and her husband Tom. She blogs at a-media-mix.com. @mileigh13