Dell Tweets Are Financially Sweet

Say what you will about Dell and its customer service and declining PC market share, (and boy, do I know some "reputable" tech journalists who obviously have a bias toward Mike Dell and company, and that bias clearly impacts their supposedly objective coverage — but that's fodder for another blog), the company sure does know how to make social networking work.

That is, work to the tune of $3 million in sales using the micro-blog Twitter tool, smart and savvy staff bloggers and very smart sales and marketing channel leaders.

As  Dell's Stephanie N. reported this week, Dell's tweeting is paying off in spades. The 2-year-old effort has brought in $2 million in outlet sales (the outlet Twitter list is Dell's most popular), and about another million in direct new sales.

Dell entices followers to keep up by offering special sales only available to Twitter fans which now number over half a million (quite a spike from just 11,000 three months ago).

If Dell isn't a walking commercial for Twitter, I don't know what is. Maybe Twitter co-founders Biz Stone and Evan Williams can figure out, finally, how to make a business model from what Dell's accomplished.

What's even neater is how Dell is connecting its Twitter activity to its Facebook presence. For example, it advised Twitter followers to do the following earlier this week:

For those of u who got today's email, please post ur unused coupons on www.Facebook.com/DellOutlet in Dell Outlet Coupons discussion tab.

Nice, very nice integration. More than a few companies could take a page from Dell's social networking strategy. To make a few million in a tough economy, and an ever-competitive PC market, is something worth tweeting about.