Note: this has been re-posted from the Inc. 5000 conference blog.

"We’ve finished chapter 1 and we’re just starting," Dell’s VP Bob Pearson told me, noting that 1.46 billion people are online today but only 1.6 million of them visit Dell’s site daily.

VP BP, as he’s called, is in charge of listening to the 10,000 conversations about Dell that take place every day online. With his team of 42, Dell enters about 100 of those conversations a day, Bob said. They do it by leaving Comments on blogs as well as using Twitter. Dell has 65 official Twitterers, including digital media team member@RichardatDELL, who has 1,779 followers.

I’m sitting in Bob’s session at the Inc. 5000 conference and he’s just outlined 10 recommendations for small business. Confess my attention wandered so I didn’t get them all down. Am trying to get slide deck from Bob and will post later. They were good.

Dell announces launch of new Facebook community, Social Media for Small Business

Seems Bob is everywhere today (Friday Sept. 19, 2008). Dell announced a few hours ago that it has launched a Facebook community called Social Media for Small Business. You’ll see Bob featured in the video on the home page.

This does look very cool. Lots to explore including a screencast intro to social media tools like Netvibes (Bob’s favorite, he told us), a discussion board, best practices… and (why not) deals on Dell products for SMB.

Listening to Bob now explain the new Facebook community and to Q & A from the audience.

Update: Below Bob talks about how tapping into Facebook’s community is like entering a new country.

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