The best ideas aren’t just from Apple anymore.

Much to my surprise, I don’t think I would have given Dell much credit in being able to create an effective online community, but they have, and it’s awesome. Do you ever wonder how you would make a suggestion to Apple or Sony on how to make their computers better? Well, more commonly you’d find that they have some sort of feedback page, where you can supposedly “contact” them directly about any suggestions or comments you have about their products. Apple has a page like that here. That’s fine and dandy if you have the time and effort to write a detailed piece on why their computer is too heavy, too clunky, breaks easily, etc… Sometimes you find out that your suggestion is similar to the thoughts of other people you know. Pretty soon you realize that there’s thousands of people online that share the same opinion, and all you have is a form that you send out to the company, hoping that someone out there is listening to you. Initially an internet savvy user might go to his/her favorite online community and start a small discussion there, but that doesn’t really mean that Dell, Apple, or whoever is listening. Well that’s all changing right now because Dell has introduced a site called Ideastorm.

Connectedmarketing.org made a good point in it’s first prediction that connected marketing would become more strategic, where innovation becomes the focus rather than promotion. This holds true in the highly competitive market of electronics and especially computers. Once upon a time, Dell would not have been in the same sentence as innovation. But with the connected marketing that is being used with Ideastorm, Dell has provided an online community that gives it a better reputation with its customers, and can potentially help them provide better products in the future.

The format of the website is familiar to the concept behind Digg.com. Basically a suggestion or idea is submitted and posted to the site. From there, users of this website can approve (promote) or disapprove (demote) each idea. Not only does this affect its placement on the site (front page or bottom of the list) it helps show Dell what ideas are most important to its user community. The idea behind this is ingenious because it requires that the users of this online community stay involved, by providing comments on each idea, and checking to see if Dell has recognized any in its ideas in action page. So not only does Dell have a way to easily market it’s new products, they are doing so in a way that is utilizing ideas that originate from its own customers.