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The FT ran a piece in its Digital Business supplement (and on-line) yesterday on Lionel Menchaca, chief blogger at Dell. It’s well worth a read - although it’s not the best written article to appear in the FT - because of the unequivocal conclusion: blogging works.

As the article points out, Dell’s reputation was in the doldrums. As a large number of its customers were on-line and these same customers - and soon to be ex-customers - were vocal in their criticisms of Dell, Again, on-line.

Dell responded to charges that they were poor at listening by creating a sort of ‘chief blogger’ role and launching the Direct2Dell blog. It seems fair to say that the effect was positive in a surprisingly short space of time. Of course, the fact that the blog started at all was seen by the blogosphere as a bonus point. But the key thing is that Menchaca keeps it open and honest. As he says,

“We wouldn’t have any credibility at all if we only used the blog to publish marketing messages.”

The blog is a place that customers, ex-customers, and potential customers can air opinions, see what others are saying, and hear what’s happening at Dell, It also present a human side of Dell and makes the company seem approachable and willing to listen and to change.

In less than two years, Dell has turned its on-line reputation around. There may still be customer service issues from time to time or serious hardware faults but the blog can take a lot of the sting out of those potential PR disasters by acknowledging them and engaging with them before the gripe spreads across the internet.

And now for something completely different…
In another example of blogs driving interaction, Dennis Howlett’s guest post on Chris Brogan’s blog yesterday kicked off a debate about the terms ‘Web 2.0′ and ’social media’. The post itself was a blast of iconoclastic dyspepsia from Dennis. This was followed by a quick retort from Tim O’Reilly and then the comments started flying.

I won’t recreate the debate here - read the comments on the post for a great insight into some of the problems associated with taking these tools mainstream - but what the comments revealed was the power of an open forum for trying to define something and reach a consensus. This is what drives change.

The beauty of it is, that before you start, you don’t know who might have an opinion and who might be able to add something useful. In the enterprise space, this would be like inviting everyone in the company to every meeting just in case they had something valuable to contribute. Ideal but not practical.

(A quick aside: this happened on a smaller scale when I worked in Asia for Reuters. When I regularly visited Tokyo to present project plans and specifications for new systems, instead of the just the two or three decision makers, I would be confronted by a whole department of perhaps twenty staff filling the meeting room. The vast majority remained silent throughout the meetings.)

Opening up the debate might seem scary. You may hear things you don’t want to or which reveal things you would rather stay hidden. But, as Menchaca says in the FT piece, being open leads to credibility. I also think it improves the business culture of the company being open: it encourages a change of mind-set. Better still, of course, it lets you tap the knowledge and experience of the vast number of people your company will never normally encounter in the day-to-day running of your business.

Tags: Chris Brogan, dell, Dennis Howlett, FT, Lionel Menchaca, Tim O'Reilly