Dell Inc. generated tremendous buzz late last year in pulling off a Twitter first: selling $6.5 million worth of PCs, software and accessories via its corporate Twitter feed. Could other companies then “pull off a Dell,” the experts wondered, using the micro-blogging platform to keep customers informed and to get them to buy stuff?

Months later and there are still no clear answers. Turning Twitter into a direct sales channel is a no-brainer maybe for Dell’s direct-sales business model. But what about for big brands that rely on retailers to sell the product? Could they too transact with their Twitter followers without aggravating their business partners?

Sony’s European division wanted to find out. Recently Sony Europe’s PR team went to the Sony Style group with a sales offer that it could share with its 1,600 Twitter followers: an offer to custom-build your own Sony Vaio laptop and get 10 percent knocked off the final sale price. “It was incredibly successful,” says Nick Sharples, director of corporate communications for Sony Europe.

How successful?

Sony disclosed Twitter Vaio sales of over £1 million during the limited offer period. But it’s not the impact on the bottom line that excited Sony. It learned a bit more about how its customers would prefer to interact with the company via its social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, channels Sony fans traditionally go to for advice and tips, not for the hard sell.

As Sharples explains, Sony customers are, by their nature, social media savvy, but nobody within the organization knew for sure just how they might respond to the occasional sales offer on a channel that they chose to follow or friend. Would they be offended, for instance, or would they appreciate a chance to buy a custom-designed Vaio not available in shops? They were hardly offended, Sharples says.

Sony recognizes it’s taking a more conservative approach then Dell, and it likely always will.

Dell’s use of Twitter, Sony observes, is somewhat unique in that it can afford to use its social media channels to serve the primary functions of customer service and outreach plus direct sales. If it didn’t at least try a Twitter sales strategy you could imagine the heated questions the executive team would face at the next shareholders meeting. As Sharples says, “people would expect Dell to use these channels as another direct way into selling product to its customers, and people wouldn’t be offended by that.”

Sony has to be a bit more careful than Dell not to blur the sales-outreach line, however. “For us, there’s a balance to be established. Our whole perspective on social media is we’re in this for the longterm. We want to use it to engage with our customers. That’s very different, we realize, from how some companies perceive social media, as an add-on maybe for a new product launch or marketing campaign, and then leave it for dead when [the campaign or product launch] is over.”

He continues, the leave-for-dead philosophy “tends to be a marketing approach. Marketing tends to be campaign-driven whereas we [in corporate communications] are relationship driven. We want to establish a dialogue through social media, use it to better understand the consumer. We get a lot of valuable feedback through social media.”

Coming back to the Vaio offer, what then did Sony Europe learn from its customers? They are happy to endure sales offers on Twitter and Facebook as long as its for a specialized product, something unique enough that will get the community buzzing. From the way Sharples sees it, the conversation that results is as valuable as the sale.

That leaves just one question: will companies now be trying to “pull off a Sony” with their social media strategy?