Social Media | Christian Prada on Strategy

Against common knowledge, one of the most common ways people use Twitter is as a social information filter and link distributor. In many cases, Twitter is also replacing people’s RSS readers (which is also my experience).

The case of TechCrunch is very interesting: One of the ways TC uses Twitter is to Tweet out links to their stories, which then spread virally as followers retweet those links. TC is a big believer in retweets (in fact, there is now a retweet button at the bottom of every post)

Over the past few months, TC has experienced the power of Twitter firsthand as the percentage of traffic has grown to the point that it is now their second largest source of outside traffic after Google. In the past 30 days, Twitter accounted for 9.7 percent of all traffic to Techcrunch.com, up from 1.8 percent six months ago. This is out of millions of visits.

Summary: TechCrunch is not typical of most Websites, but this data certainly shows the potential of Twitter to generate traffic.

By limiting its online community to diehard users, the software maker has marshaled a volunteer army of expert customer service reps.

Unlike many other companies, however, Intuit seems to have figured out a way to benefit from social media. Its insight: Rather than inviting the whole world, the accounting software maker funnels only diehard users of QuickBooks to a site where they can exchange truly helpful information. For customers, that means quicker answers to problems. For the company, this volunteer army means less need for paid technicians.

Customers were not only asking technical questions, they were often outshining Intuit’s own tech support staff by answering 40% of the queries themselves.

Since the latest edition of QuickBooks went on sale last October, traffic on its channel has tripled. At any time, 70% of customer service questions are answered by other QuickBooks owners.

Summary: The social aspect of the program seems to have helped sales. The company has sold 1 million units of QuickBooks at $200 apiece, boosting the software’s market share by 4 points, to 94%. All that free tech support is saving Intuit money as well.