While Dell still operates a social media department, it now uses social media across all its divisions to connect with customers through online channels such as Facebook and Twitter. Last year, about 100 employees sent tweets through 35 channels, reaching customers in more than 12 countries. And it benefited the bottom line, generating more than $6.5 million in business through Twitter deals during 2009.

About 1.5 million customers follow the company on Twitter, while altogether more than 3.5 million people communicate with Dell via all social media (Twitter, Facebook, Direct2Dell and IdeaStorm). As the company says, it wants to be wherever its customers are.

Facebook was the most-visited web site among respondents, with 81% saying that they had visited Facebook  in the past month.

Women are 77% more likely to look for products and 67% more likely to purchase them in a store after reading online reviews on a community forum or message board.

Read the full report (PDF).

Since then, the brand has increased its Twitter reps from a handful to 20 and grown its follower base to 32,200. While not huge, the followers are generating a return on the investment in Twitter, the company says. To encourage people to follow its Tweets, it has employed giveaway promotions for new-to-market technology products like netbooks.

To manage its Twitter account, the company recruited specialists from within its customer care department who had been simultaneously handling phone, e-mail, and chat. That also called for new training, so these reps wouldn’t just use copy-and-paste response sentences that they may have become accustomed to employing during instant chat sessions. The reps are trained to help followers who ask about items find them by providing  links to specific pages at Staples.com.

The full story is on ClickZ.

The company turned to Chemistry for help and the agency decided to rely upon social media to have an immediate impact at low cost.
Paul Magnani, SVP of Digital Strategy at Chemistry, explains the strategy employed on iMedia Connection.  He says that Chemistry felt that the brand (socially responsible, health-focused) and product (natural, organic, healthy) were ideal for word of mouth (WOM) among moms, the primary buyers.  So it began a campaign that relied on:

• Internet coupons: Many family shoppers use social networks to share “deals.”

• Social media marketing: Listening tools such as SocialMention.com and Viralheat, as well as Facebook and Twitter.
• Twitter party: on the subject of how and why to select organic and natural foods when at the grocery store. The event generated 2,830 tweets in a one-hour period.
• Pay Per Click search: That drove roughly 20,000 site visits.
• Facebook Ads
• Blogging:
• Email: To all 68,000 in the company’s opt-in list.

Actual results were 250,000 coupon downloads (with a 20+ percent redemption rate), 6,000 blog and social network mentions, and more than 3,000 new fans/followers. Steaz’s December sales were double its previous best month ever. And Steaz shelves in Target stores nationwide were emptied.

37% of people joined a fan page due to coupons and discounts.  Users were fans of an average of nine pages.

White Facebook users were least likely to become a fan of brands and retailers, while Hispanics had the greatest propensity to become fans in all the categories studied. One-half of Hispanic respondents said Facebook was a good tool for researching new products, compared with 46% of Asians, 44% of African-Americans and only 31% of whites.

More at eMarketer.com.

For Land O’Frost, the campaign represents its first foray into the social media. There is a web community called Land O’Moms, where visitors can exchange recipes and parenting advice, download coupons, read articles from women’s magazines and communicate with popular mommy bloggers. Land O’Frost and the campaign also have presences on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube.

For Sara Lee Deli,  its focus is its Facebook fan page , where visitors will be able to watch humorous video clips and interact with experts in fields like food preparation and family advice.

Land O’Frost in Lansing, Ill., says it was a big step into social media as only two years ago had it begun to advertise on television. The president of the company was taken aback when he first saw the proposed website for Land O’Moms because it hardly mentioned his brand. He estimates the cost of the new website is in six figures, including costs like compensating somemommy bloggers it has signed on.

The New York Times has the whole story here.

Whole Foods uses Twitter primarily as a customer service tool. Erwin says Whole Foods does promote its blog content and may mention, “We’re having specials for the holidays,” and that sort of thing. But its number-one focus on Twitter is customer service.

Whole Foods Market, the leading natural and organic food store in the world with nearly 300 locations in North America and the United Kingdom, is the most popular retailer on Twitter and is a leading example of Twitter’s power to build millions of relationships a single customer at a time. Michael Stelzner, executive editor of Social Media Examiner, recently conducted a long interview with Marla Erwin and posted excerpts on the Social Media Examiner website.  

More than half of all online shoppers use Facebook, and among those shoppers who engage in social media, 81% are on Facebook.  But only a quarter of the top 100 online retailers by sales volume have a formal Facebook presence, and another quarter have less than 10,000 fans.

Visitors use social networks with retailers to learn about special offers (49%) and product information (45%) than, say, getting customer support (5%).

Download the free report from ForeSee (registration required).

Article at MediaPost.

To enter, participants need to follow “AMgreetings” on Twitter and then tag their response to the daily question as “#LoveAG.” The question posed February 1: “What does it feel like to fall in love?”  During the first day of the contest (Feb 1), American Greetings modestly increased its number of followers by around 100 – from 1,200 in the morning to more than 1,300 in late afternoon.  As of February 4th, the feed was up to 1800 followers.

Full story at ClickZ.

Einstein Bros. is calling this the world’s biggest bagel giveaway, and if its hundreds of thousands of new fans cash in for their $2.50 bagel–or $840,000 worth of would-be sales–it certainly will be. Fast Company has the details here.