The $887.9 million dollar Twitter campaign

 
In July 2009 Amazon.com bought online shoe retailer Zappos.com for $887.9 million from entrepreneur Tony Hsieh (shown). 

At the time, Amazon was selling all kinds of things online: books, consumer electronics, movies, toys, and tools. Why spend that money just to add shoes when Amazon could have easily added a shoe line of their own?

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, said he was motivated to buy because Zappos had a unique corporate culture and brand. But it was Hsieh's ability to communicate the essence of these using Twitter that captured a national audience and created a competitive selling advantage.
Hsieh opened his Twitter account in June 2007 and by 2009 had over 1.5 million followers, one of the top 100 followed accounts in the country.  

Surprising to many Hsieh, did NOT Tweet about: shoes, online retailing, or special shoe offers. No shoe Tweets? Nope. In fact, Hsieh only owned 10 pairs of shoes and was rumored not to know much about any of them.  

Here is what Hsieh did Tweet about: customer service.

Why was this content strategy so successful? Two reasons:
1. The people side of customer service is more interesting than shoes. Even if you are a shoe fanatic, there thousands of shoe websites to visit. One more Twitter account would not make a difference.   
2. Customer service is the key issue holding back potential shoe customers from buying online. Selling books online is easy because the book you buy in a store is as good as the same book you buy online. But a when buying a pair shoes, their fit is critical. In a store, you can try them on, and the fit is assured. But buying shoes online is a big risk unless the online retailer has a high enough level of customer service to overcome the “fitting” problem. Customers that bought into Hsieh's obsessive view of customer service were more likely to give online shoe shopping a try. That was the defining moment, after that, about 75% of Zappos sales came from repeat customers.   

Hsieh's content strategy was not to share a series of short and clever Tweets, rather to communicate a larger vision. Here is his explanation:

"Think of each tweet as a dot on a piece of paper. Any single tweet, just like any single dot, by itself can be insignificant and meaningless. But, if over time, you end up with a lot of tweets, it’s like having a lot of dots drawn on a piece of paper. Eventually there are enough dots for your followers to connect them together. And if you connect the dots, in the aggregate it paints a picture of you and/or your company, and it’s that total picture that is your brand.

Think of each tweet as a dot on a piece of paper. Any single tweet, just like any single dot, by itself can be insignificant and meaningless. But, if over time, you end up with a lot of tweets, it’s like having a lot of dots drawn on a piece of paper. Eventually there are enough dots for your followers to connect them together. And if you connect the dots, in the aggregate it paints a picture of you and/or your company, and it’s that total picture that is your brand."

What are your Tweets about? What happens when you connect the dots? 

Comments

[10k training]

Good day,

Wow, that's a great profit to earn on the twitter campaign. Maybe for annual income. I don't think so you can achieve that great amount of profit just for few months. Could you give me some specific details regarding on this kind of profit that you have post over here?

Thanks.

[TJ Walker]

Josh, thanks for the excellent example of how a great communicator talks about the needs of his audience,not himself.

[Get More Sales Training]

Interesting article, Ive been wanting to do more marketing with twitter!

[Nick Garcia, MBA]

GREAT strategy...caring about what people want to know about, stuff for THEM, not stuff for the company. Great post!

[Nataleigh]

Very interesting. What a great way to use technology and social media to build your company's reputation.
For most consumers, customer service is huge. Many businesses could learn a lesson from this.

[Diane Feller]

THis is so true - social media spreads like wildfire, and the only downside is so can negative remarks. Zappos is an incredible company by the way - I ordered from them after reading positive reviews online. So, I guess you can say I was sold :)

[Customer Foucused Sales Training]

Those who doubt the strength of Twitter have never used it well. Your piece makes the point well.

[Sellwithnate]

Great post. Customer service definitely is the key ingredient to creating repeat purchases.

[Ecommerce]

That is such a huge profit from just a Twitter campaign! Is that an annual income?

[Simon]

This is a great achievement, it just goes to show the power of social media at the moment.

[KAP Proposal Automation]

Thanks for this great post. very informative how you can build your business reputation by using latest technology, and social media.

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[Proposal Software]

I think social media is the most important source of CRM that companies can use. But i am afraid alot of companies are not utilizing this source of business as they should be. Great post..

[Hobby Articles]

No doubt twitter is a powerful social media site. Thanks for this nice post...

[maya]

thanks. good to know.

[emma@postcode finder]

I have always ignored Twitter until now Josh but you have given me some points to chew over here. I recently got new postcode finder software (that's for UK "zip" codes) and now I feel as though I need to reach out to more people as well.

[cameron f]

I have so many things going on for social and have just strat twitter and it is quite a thing to keep dedcated with! but you have made me think i should invest more time in it.
cheers