Page 215 - Social Media Marketing

Threadless is a great example of a collaborative business. Founded in 2000, 193
Threadless is also a testament to the viability of a collaborative business. According to
the Small Business Administration, on average new businesses have slightly less than a ■ BEST PRACTICES IN SOCIAL BUSINESS
50/50 chance of making it five years, let alone twice that.

Threadless

You can learn more about Threadless and its history by visiting Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threadless

Dell: Customer-Driven Design

Dell turned to its customers, initially through surveys and polls and then more for-
mally through its IdeaStorm platform, for suggestions on what customers wanted to
see more of (or less of) in the product line. Where Threadless encouraged its customers
to design the entire product, Dell was after the ideas that informed its future product
options and the way they were offered to customers.

In 2007, building on the Salesforce.com Ideas platform, Dell launched
IdeaStorm. Like the My Starbucks Idea program, IdeaStorm is a transparent adapta-
tion of the classic suggestion box. What makes this suggestion box work is the fact that
voting—done by other customers and potential customers—is out in the open. The bet-
ter ideas move up as they are discussed. Ideas faring less well sometimes get combined
in the process, strengthening their chance of making it into the idea pool from which
Dell’s product managers ultimately pull ideas.

The suggestions implemented through the IdeaStorm platform include Dell
offering the Linux Ubuntu operating system as a preinstalled option. Additional ideas
receiving higher than average attention included aspects of customer service, sugges-
tions regarding the website (a primary source of income for Dell), and suggestions that
preinstalled promotional software be optional. Looking at these ideas, it’s clear that
social technologies have applicability and impact that extend beyond marketing.

Crowdspring: Crowdsourcing

If you’ve never tried a true crowdsourcing application, here’s your chance. For a couple
of hundred dollars, you can get a snappy new logo and card design for your upcoming
birthday party...or just about any other event that you wanted “branded.” Of course, if
your business needs a visual makeover, you can use Crowdspring to do that too.

Crowdspring attracts artists—designers, typographers, CSS wizards, and more—
who compete for projects. Unlike eLance, where project awards are made before the
actual deliverable is prepared, Crowdspring participants see the actual designs as they