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Creating Connective Micro-sites

Dell

A Dell Case Study

Engaging the Insight Community in Conversational Marketing Efforts

Dell needed a creative way to start a conversation with experts in a very specific market. Typically, the time and cost of gathering such subject-matter experts is prohibitive. Using the Insight Community, Dell succeeded in connecting with experts, customers and even other vendors in a far deeper conversation than had previously existed in the space.

The Need

In the fall of 2007, Dell bought enterprise storage provider Equallogic. As Dell continued its expansion into the enterprise storage market, the company also wanted to grow its brand equity in the space. The Dell team felt that one of the strongest ways to accomplish this was to connect and begin conversations with enterprise storage experts to get feedback and insights on the direction of the market.

The Solution

Dell worked with Floor64 analysts to design a series of targeted Insight Community cases that would invite and inspire the world’s enterprise storage experts to participate in a conversational forum. Floor64 also sought out and invited enterprise storage experts from around the globe to join the Insight Community and be a part of the discussion.

In order to support Dell’s conversational marketing strategy, Floor64 developed a streamlined method of publishing the most insightful, timely and relevant contributions from the cases to a live public platform. In Dell’s case, a micro-site - The Future of Storage - was created by Floor64’s partner, Federated Media to share the content generated by the cases.

The Result

The Insight Community cases and The Future of Storage micro-site have been a resounding success, leading to widespread conversation both within the site and across the web, as a variety of other blogs began linking to, and talking about, what was being said on the site. Eventually the discussion garnered enough attention that other vendors in the enterprise storage market joined in and took part in the overall discussion - whether they agreed with Dell’s vision or not. The Future of Storage project has been completed, and the micro-site is maintained for posterity.



The Future of Storage

The interaction between Insight Community cases and micro-site in the Dell case draws attention to the real strength of using the Insight Community model to generate open and insightful conversations. The Insight Community provides turnkey access through the thoughtful design of cases to hundreds of subject matter experts from all walks of life. And when the content is well leveraged by the sponsoring company, the result is connection and insight into the market that hadn’t previously been possible.

Dell (http://www.dell.com/) listens to customers and delivers innovative technology and services that they trust and value. They offer a broad range of product categories, including desktop computer systems, servers and networking products, mobility products, software, peripherals and enhanced services.