FT features Dell in a piece on Social Media… good read. Folks often ask me about the ROI of social media, this starts to get at it. Bottom-line, making customers happier through better access to information reduces costs and boosts sales.

This is a two-fold opportunity for tech vendors. By adopting a greater quotient of Web 2.0 marketing techniques, marketing executives can rise to the demands of what buyers want for information that adds to their purchase intelligence. At the same time, executives can demonstrate that they can take money off the table, by deploying less expensive marketing techniques. And every marketer’s chief operating officer or chief executive would applaud initiatives to reduce versus expand budget.

One of the biggest trends in marketing is using social media and social networking both to increase customer response time, authenticity, and to leverage communications. Many technology vendors are leading that charge and taking slightly different tacks to do so but all are seeing increases in positive brand association and customer engagement while decreasing both relative and total costs.