In my recent discussion with Josh Hallett about corporate responsibility with respect to commenting on viewed blog posts I mention that bloggers should use a channel created by the corporation if they want to ensure a direct response.

In the comments, Josh indicated that some firms don’t have good direct channels. That’s a shame because those businesses likely find themselves losing customers on a daily basis. The comment got me to thinking that it would be interesting to compare the top computer companies on their use of Social Media to connect with their customers and investors. So I did a bit of research and here’s what I found when comparing Apple, Dell, HP and Lenovo.

The four areas of comparison are RSS, Blogs, Podcasts. Wikis, Forums.

Apple: RSS feeds galore here including news, developer information and Mac OS X downloads. They also list support article feeds here. Apple even generates a number of feeds for the iTunes music store. And you even have the option create your own. Apple is notorious for not maintaining a corporate blog. Apple maintains a discussion forum where customers can trade information on a wide variety of topics. Apple does not produce a podcast or maintain a public wiki that I know of.

Dell: Very nice RSS feed page that includes one click subscribe links for Google and My Yahoo. Categories include News, Product Information, Promotions, Blog and Forums. Dell recently started a corporate blog called Direct2Dell. Dell maintains a discussion forum for many topics including hardware, software and gaming. The forum includes the option of subscribing to topics via RSS. Dell does not produce a regular podcast although they do distribute the audio of their earnings calls via a podcast RSS feed. They do not maintain a public wiki that I know of.

HP: Corporate RSS feeds found here. Categories include Company Info, HP Labs, Business Services and Enterprise. A nice variety of blogs by executives and others can be found here. HP regularly publishes podcasts on a variety of subjects and maintains a podcast information page here. They do not maintain a public wiki or discussion forum that I know of.

Lenovo: Leonovo maintains a blog called Design Matters with plans for more to come. Only using RSS for Design Matters. No feeds for corporate information or support. Lenovo does not produce a podcast, maintain a public wiki or discussion forum that I know of.

Conclusions

HP is the hands down leader in using Social Media to create channels to connect with their customers. Their prodigious use of blogs and podcasts tells me that this a company that really understands the benefits of reaching out to your audience. Dell is the overall runner up in my opinion. They have emraced RSS in the areas of corporate information via their many news feeds and customer support via their RSS enabled forums. Their use of a podcast feed to distribute earnings calls makes great sense as well.

Apple and Lenovo pull up the rear. Apple has some very nice RSS support. And I like the use of RSS as a way to extend iTunes. But the absence of a blog or podcast just doesn’t make sense for a company that creates so much hardware and software used by podcast producers. Lenovo is way behind the other three companies profiled here. The lack of RSS support for corporate news is puzzling given the low cost and effort required to produce RSS feeds.  They are making strides with the introduction of the Design Matters blog so this situation could change at any moment.

Wiki use is non-existent as a channel for connecting with customers of these organizations. That doesn’t necessarily reflect poorly on wiki functionality. I would be interested to hear ideas on how these companies could possibly use a public wiki to collaborate or exchange information with customers.

The most important conclusion I derived from this analysis was the fact that all of these companies have taken steps to open non-traditional channels to customers by using social media. The technology is accessible enough that one or more of these companies could catch up to or maybe even surpass HP in the next few months in terms of utilization of social channels. As companies increasingly compete with each other to use social media driven channels as a differentiator for their business I believe that customers will emerge as the clear winner in the contest.

[tags]Social Media, Blogging, Podcasting, Wikis, Forums, Apple, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Direct2Dell, Design Matters, iTunes, Analysis[/tags]