News ideasLast week, I wrote about the importance of listening to what is being said online about your company and by whom. But, we all know that listening is only one element of the conversation. We not only need to listen to what our customers are saying, we need to engage our customers, participate in the dialogue, and then act on the conversation. By doing this, we keep the conversation moving and enable live dialogue to flow where the ideas and interests of those participating choose to take it. A coherent social media and Web 2.0 strategy can make that happen.

One great example of this strategy in practice is Dell. They recently created Ideastorm to open the conversation with their customers. The site enables Dell to talk with their customers, and listen to advice on products and services. According to Dell, the site was formed to foster candid and robust conversation about customer ideas and to bring customer ideas to life. Congrats to Dell for opening the conversation! To date they’ve generated close to 8,000 ideas on the site!