One of the highlights of SXSW this year for me was the hour or so I spent chatting with Lionel Menchaca, Dell's Chief Blogger and a one time aspiring archeology prof. Sitting crossed-legged on a bench in the back corner of the Austin Convention Center - it was, for me, one of those completely engrossing conversations, weaving from how corporations are using social media to what social policies say about corporate culture to CEOs on Twitter to keynotes and panels at SXSW to innovation to family to to to ...you get the picture. From the vast territory covered, my takeaways:

Social media stewardship comes from the top. Michael Dell, Chairman & CEO is on Twitter (@MichaelDell) listening as well as engaging in the conversation.

A company's approach to social media says a lot about its corporate culture (innovation, trust, openness, responsiveness)...or at least that's my explanation for Lionel's infectious enthusiasm for his career after 14 years with the same company!

The social media conversation is going on with or without you, and what you don't know could really hurt you.

Get out in front! Social media will magnify the good, the bad and the ugly - so be prepared to take the lead (and the shots) when the news is ugly.

Fortunately, Lionel was a guest on Mack Collier's blogchat (#blogchat 2-21 recap: Corp Blogging with Dell's Chief Blogger Lionel Menchaca!) on February 21, so you'll realize that I'm not the only one in awe of Lionel (his generosity of time as well as vast knowledge) - and with a list of takeaways as a result of talking with him. Here's Mack's list of favorites:

Initially, all comments on Dell's blogs were moderated. Now they go live, and are then screened.

Making it easy for customers to comment on your blog is key to driving engagement there
Dell got into social media in 2006 because customers were telling them they needed to improve their customer service, plus they realized that all these conversations were happening online that they had no say in.

Social media won't help improve perception of a crappy product, it will amplify perceptions, good and bad.

3 bottom line goals for a corp blog: Know your scope and objective, know the audience you want to connect with, and be ready for criticism because it IS coming!

Dell monitors blogs with tools such as Radian6 to discover support issues BEFORE customers come to them.

It's great to have a strategy driving your social media efforts, but there's no substitute for action.

Dell crafts its content to be product-specific, because they have learned from studying traffic to their blogs that this is the content Dell's customers want more of. But they also have content that's focused on the customers as well.

Lionel sees Dell's blogs and forums being more integrated in the future

Read the rest of Mack's blogchat with Lionel at: http://moblogsmoproblems.blogspot.com/2010/02/blogchat-2-21-recap-corp-blogging-with.html

Follow Lionel on Twitter: @LionelatDell

Check out Direct2Dell (Dell Community Blogs): http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/

Looking for more people to follow? Here are more of the Dell team on Twitter:
@RichardatDell, @jacquizhou, @ByJove, @BillatDell @BhaveshAtDell, @eerway, @Caroline3d, @KerryatDell, @Edu4u, FedericoatDell, @TallGamer, @LPT, @SarahatDell, @ChrisBatDell, @DellServerGeek