[Interview] Ritu Gupta, Director – Marketing, Consumer & Small Business, Dell India

Dell India confirms that their investment in social media has grown significantly and in FY15 was 2X over the previous year. In conversation with Ritu Gupta about: Dell India's social media approach, involvement in PC Literacy Week, and their Listen and Respond programme.

How do you manage to filter down the categories of the target audience on each of the social platforms online?

The audience on our social platforms range between the age groups of 18 to 34. However, each product from Dell addresses a different audience set, depending on the purpose and extent of its use. Every customer is unique in terms of their preferences, and our endeavor is to address what they desire from their respective devices. For our Facebook page, we ensure that communication for each of our products is adapted to address the target audience.

What's a good content strategy?

Content is the driving force behind generating engaging as well as informative two-way communication with the audience. This is the focus of our social media strategy – encouraging our audience to listen and respond. A good content strategy thus, is one that evolves with trends, thereby addressing conversations which social media users are an active part of.

We believe in a pull strategy rather than a push strategy. While our products are the focal point, shareable content and content around the Dell brand also feature as a part of our content strategy. As a technology brand, our users are always scouting for information they can use in their day to day lives. The frequently asked questions on our page offer an insight into the minds of our audience, contributing to the process of content creation for our social platforms.

We also regularly run contests on Twitter, with or without incentive; not just to encourage two way conversations but also to build a tangible connect between our social network presence and the physical brand. The objective then, is to create an uninterrupted connection with our audience, be it online or offline.

Tell us about your involvement with PC Literacy week?

Dell has been investing its efforts in increasing PC awareness, usage and penetration in India, where only 9% of the total population is benefiting from PC technology adoption. Dell announced the ‘Dell PC Literacy Week’ Program, celebrating World Computer Literacy Day on December 2. The initiative was designed around expanding the accessibility of PC to the masses, and was aimed at both online and offline engagement with users. In the pursuit of educating customers about modern computing, the program was focused on sharing educational content for users through the Dell social media channels and through pre-loaded applications and content on new Dell products.

The PC Literacy Week motivated us to augment our presence online. It created great momentum and increased our social engagements. Tying our updates to an educational and informative cause allowed us to post thematic updates, whilst enabling customers to recognize the value that technology can bring to their lives. Frequent conversations keeping in mind the social networking behaviour and usage patterns have definitely helped increase our engagement rate from 3% to a current rate of 10%.

Tell us about the Listen and Respond programme

The level of conversation across different media needs to be versatile. A brand needs to address its audiences on social media in the same style that its followers use it in their own lives. It brings more value to engagement between users and the brand, as opposed to single-mindedly targeting a brand’s messaging at the audience without accounting for context and content. To this effect, wWe initiated the ‘Listen and Respond’ campaign, in order to engage our audience in conversations that they have initiated, and around topics that are of interest to them. ‘Listen and Respond’ has been one of our successful Twitter campaigns during which, Dell as a brand engaged with its users individually, tapping into generic Twitter conversations that were relevant to Dell and its users.

This content is customized for each user we interact with, based on the tweet/conversation we want to target. These targeted tweets are based on conversations around topics which are relevant to the consumer and to Dell.

Read Part 2 here.