Getting closer
to customers through
common language

Dell Technologies is a pioneer in using social media to connect with its customers. Since the first social media platforms were established, Dell has used them to build deeper, stronger relationships with customers.

Metia Group supports Dell by capturing customer stories to retell through digital, social and campaign content worldwide. Last year Metia executed customer content programs for Dell across 39 countries, in 21 languages.

Using the Content Resonance System

The sheer volume of content all audiences are exposed to online is huge. This only increases with the proliferation of new channels. Dell understands the implications and always seeks to make its content and conversations more relevant to its customers.

One of the tools which Metia brings to clients is its own Content Resonance System (CRS). Using CRS allows organizations to gain a data-driven insight into how a particular audience or segment talks about any specific subject area.

CRS proved its value to Dell in a pilot project examining how IT managers discuss flash storage. The pilot showed how IT managers articulate specific challenges and explore solutions around their flash storage needs, and how their language changes across different channels and at each stage of the buying process.

Analysing the conversations of 80,000 IT decision-makers

Metia’s Insight team used CRS to analyse 12 months of linguistic data from nearly 80,000 IT decision-maker conversations across a range of social media, blogs, and online communities.

This was then compared with the language used in Dell’s own marketing output across that same time period – from blogs, social postings, whitepapers, product brochures through to videos and case studies.

Metia also analysed five competitor vendors in the same space to provide an industry overview for peer comparison.

Determining a Content Resonance Score

CRS then compares the audience’s language with the vendor’s language using ‘topic modelling’—a statistical technique that analyses combinations of words in the raw data and generates topics—around 1,000 in this study—from certain combinations. The CRS method then isolates each word in a statement and looks at how likely that word is to be used in relation to a given topic.

This generates a Content Resonance Score, which shows how well the sample content resonates with the target audience. The better the score, the closer the match between the way vendors and IT managers talk about flash storage, in this case.

This data can now be used to shape Dell’s content strategy. The pilot enables Dell to understand specific changes it can now make to new content to better match the language and needs of potential customers. Additionally, how the language in that content should be optimised for different channels and for each point in the buying journey.

In this way, CRS is helping Dell to refine and finesse the customer’s experience of engaging with Dell

Strategic uses of CRS to understand new trends and points of discussion 

In the longer term, CRS also allows an organisation to see how an audience refers to a subject over time, from early emergence to broad adoption and understanding. This is particularly important in technology sectors where new trends and services constantly evolve.

Roe Thiessen, Director, Content Strategy & Strategic Social Insights at Dell, explained: “The pilot using CRS gives us a unique insight into how the content we produce around a specific topic resonates with the language used by the audience itself.”

“We have worked with Metia for many years and value their ability to bring new techniques and tools to the task of improving every customer’s experience of engaging with Dell. This is the type of tool that can strengthen our content strategy going forwards.”