Lesson #4: Prepare a Strong Defense, Win with a Great Offense

Give employees the power to do more with social media

It's been fascinating growing up with social media as it transformed from something cool in high school to a valuable business tool today. Let's see: I've been on Facebook for seven years, Twitter and LinkedIn for three years and I've managed social media for at least four entities.

At first I thought managing social media for an organization or company would be fun and easy, but I soon learned how hard it is to manage your online presence. In previous jobs, I've hit walls with leaders who assumed social media was a waste of time, which prevented any real interaction with participants. On the flip side, I've observed trolling and hijacking as well as negative comments from workers. I'm rather risk-averse, so I understand why some companies avoid social media, but Michael Dell told Business Week, "...you can be a better company by listening and being involved in that [online] conversation." Under his lead, Dell actually invests in educating and empowering its employees to listen and engage in valuable conversations with its customers and community.

Sean Carey at his best! 

I recently joined other Marketing MBA Interns in a day-long social media training seminar hosted by SMaC University, Dell's in-house social media training group. Thousands of Dell's employees have gone through this training and are out there blogging, tweeting and sharing unified messages about Dell. This is a vast improvement from the 300+ messaging or branding elements you could find about Dell just a few years ago. Within one day, we learned why it's important to be on social media, how we should listen to our customers and the community, how we can join in the conversation and how to best represent Dell as well as our own personal brand.

I got to update my email signature! High Five!

In this way, Dell spends more time actually doing more for its customers than reacting to crises. Dell has a 125-member team to respond to any issues customers are facing (@DellCares on Twitter), but it also has over 9,000 employees trained and ready to listen and talk with you, which includes Michael Dell who is actually quite active on social media. It's no surprise that Dell was named the Top Social Brand in 2011 and its Social Media Listening Command Center has received numerous awards.

I used to spend so much time worrying about how to respond to negativity and attacks instead of building a lively community and I always felt that some sort of company-wide training could help prevent them. Now Dell has taught me that investing in educating and empowering employees will prepare you for bad times, but enable you to do so many more good things.

So, Lesson #4: Prepare a strong defense, but win with a great offense. 

PS - A huge thanks to the SMaC U team for a great session! 

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