New Adventures in Social Commerce

What is social commerce? It's a term you'll be hearing more and more, and it's already got a Wikipedia entry.  But what does it look like?

It might be shopping for your favorite jeans online and telling your friends on Facebook about it. Or, it could be "liking" a product on Dell.com to let your Facebook community know you're a fan.

There's a blog that showcases new social commerce implementations and last month, Altimeter group ran a two-day ‘Rise of Social Commerce” conference in Palo Alto, bringing together some of the top players – retailers and solution providers – in the social commerce game. Many examples of social commerce, including our Tag Team application on Facebook and ratings & reviews on Dell.com, came out of that event.

Today, we're excited to announce that we're taking another step in integrating online shopping with the social sphere. Specifically with LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network with more than 80 million members worldwide. Previously, you could find LinkedIn merchandise on the site, but now you can also find Dell products and services!  It's part of LinkedIn's newly enhanced Company Pages announced today at LinkedIn Connect:10 in New York. 

Primarily a recommendation vehicle, the new Products & Services tab on our LinkedIn Company profile allows LinkedIn members to publish reviews that are then linked to their professional profiles. Here's what it looks like: click on the image below to go right to the page in LinkedIn.

We're excited to be one of the charter companies leveraging this new feature to not only highlight our products within the social sphere, but to give customers the opportunity to recommend solutions that have worked for them.

Twenty-two — wait 23 when I just hit refresh — recommendations have already been received, and with 57,810 LinkedIn users following our company profile, I anticipate many more will be coming.

So, next time you're getting ready to make an IT purchase decision, be sure to drop by LinkedIn and see which products your network is recommending!

About the Author: Laura Pevehouse

Laura Pevehouse was profiled as one of five “social media mavens” in the March 2009 issue of Austin Woman Magazine and named an AdWeek’s TweetFreak Five to Follow. She has been part of the Dell organization for more than 15 years in various corporate communications, employee communications, public relations, community affairs, marketing, branding, social media and online communication roles. From 2014-2018, Laura was Chief Blogger/Editor-in-Chief for Direct2DellEMC and Direct2Dell, Dell’s official corporate blog that she help launch in 2007. She is now a member of the Dell Technologies Chairman Communications team. Earlier in her Dell career she focused on Global Commercial Channels and US Small and Medium Business public relations as part of the Global Communications team. Prior to that, she was responsible for global strategy in social media and community management, as well as marcom landing pages, as a member of Dell’s Global SMB Marketing, Brand and Creative team. When she was part of Dell’s Global Online group, Laura provided internal consulting that integrated online and social media opportunities with a focus on Corporate Communications and Investor Relations. She managed the home page of Dell.com, one of the top 500 global web sites in Alexa traffic rank, and first brought web feeds and podcasts to the ecommerce site. In her spare time she led Dell into the metaverse with the creation of Dell Island in the virtual world Second Life. Laura has earned the designation of Accredited Business Communicator from the International Association of Business Communicators, and received her Bachelor of Arts in Journalism from Louisiana State University. Before joining Dell Financial Services in 2000, she worked at the Texas Workforce Commission and PepsiCo Food Systems Worldwide.