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Case Studies Fortune 100 Twitter

Twitter and Quicken Loans: Twarketing Case Study #2 (Audio)

 

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Twitter Address: @quickenloans

Subject: America’s #1 Online Lender, Quicken Loans

Marketing Challenge: Distinguish their brand name shared by major bookkeeping software manufacturer and continue to bolster their lead in the online mortgage business.

Favorite Follows: @zappos and @feedbackcentral

Check out the Podcast:[podcast]http://twarketing.com/podcast/twarketing_quicken_loans_2_0309.mp3[/podcast]

Download Twarketing Podcast #2 Quicken Loans (6) – 25.59 MB

When you think of Quicken, most immediately think of the best selling bookkeeping software by Intuit.  When I did the research for my blog post fortune_100_best_quicken_loansFortune 100 Best Companies to Work For I mistakenly assumed that Quicken Loans was a part of Intuit. I was then notified by Kelly LaVaute, Senior Copywriter and manage all of their social media that Quicken Loans was a totally separate company from Intuit.  The story of how Quicken Loans became the number one online mortgage broker is quite a marvel especially with how much of a crisis the mortgage industry is in right now.

Matt Cardwell, the Director of Web Marketing (@thefitnessnerd) made mention that the company was bought back from Intuit  by Dan Gilbert the original founded in July 2002. Gilbert led a small group of investors in purchasing the company back from Intuit, retaining the Quicken Loans name in perpetuity. The company has been privately held since that time.

Customer Service
Quicken Loans prides itself on customer service and has used Twitter as an intricate part of how to communicate with their prospects and customers. Kelly@ Quicken Loans @quickenloans can answer a wide variety of questions regarding mortgages as well as a great fish and chip place to eat in Detroit.  Here are a few of her most recent Tweets.

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Customer Feedback
Qwicken Loans just recently lunched another Twitter account specifically to get user and customer feedback. Cora @feedbackcentral is in charge of organizing live user feedback sessions. Users can share their feedback and get to see results of their suggestions on the quickenloansfeedbackcentral.com site and on Twitter. Check out some of the Tweets from @feedbackcentral

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Education
Quicken Loans is very conscious of the current state of the economy and looks to help in educating their customers on how to prepare themselves for managing a mortgage. They have setup the Quizzle.com website and @quizzle in order to assist the home buyer and seller with an array of financial tools. These tools include a home value report, a mortgage evaluator, a budgeting tool and a free credit report.

Customer Satisfaction
Quicken Loans has also created a Youtube Channel to capture the unscripted videos of their many satisfied customer experiences with Quicken Loans. Here is one of my favorites.


Bottom Line
Quicken Loans has truly embraced social media and gained a real presence on Twitter. Both Kelly and Matt agree that the key to being successful in communicating through these new forms of social marketing is having the support of their company when uncharted issues-both good and bad-arise.  In fact, this Quicken Loans team charged with innovatively building customer relationships is in the unique, empowered position to use social media to with little interference from its legal department. Kelly, Matt, Cora and the rest of the Quicken Loans social media crew are entrusted to be the voice of the company, working in tandem with one common company goal: “Making sure with every client, every time, they deliver on the promise to make it the best mortgage experience ever”.

Places to find Quicken Loans

1.       Quicken Loans on Twitter

2.       Quicken Loans on Facebook

3.       Quicken Loans on Yahoo! Answers

4.       Quicken Loans on YouTube

5.       Quicken Loans on MySpace

6.       Quicken Loans on Flickr

7.       Quicken Loans on Zillow

8.       Quicken Loans on LinkedIn


Quicken Loans also operates the following blogs:

1.       Quicken Loans What’s The DIFF? blog

2.       Quicken Loans Insider

3.       Quicken Loans Community DIFF

Quizzle has its own personality via the following:

1.       Quizzle on Twitter

2.       Quizzle on Yahoo! Answers

3.       Quizzle on Facebook

4.       Quizzle blog

Twitterholic Stats:

Kelly @ QuickenLoans is ranked 18,845th on twitterholic! (by followers)

Kelly @ QuickenLoans is ranked 26th in their location on twitterholic! (by followers in ‘Detroit, MI‘)

TweetStats:

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Kelly@quickenloans top five words from their TweetCloud: mortgage, rates, fixed, rate, 30yr.

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Here are the people Kelly@quickenloans Replies to the most. @jenwebmkt, @kauf, @rrcarter, @amurphy and @feedbackcentral are part of her top 5.

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Kelly@quickenloans gets a grade of  99.8 from Twitter Grader

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Twitter Twitter News

Twitter Has Gone Mainstream On The Daily Show (Video)

Twitter had better get prepared to see yet another serge in growth of its newly cool service. Now that Jon Stewart of the Daily Show has made Twitter one of his “Old Man Stewart Shakes His Fist At” segments. In this video you will see how much the media elite has embraced Twitter use. There is now a list of Media People Using Twitter.  I predict that by the end of 2009 someone’s Twitter account will have one million followers. This was funny.

Categories
Case Studies Twitter Twitter News

Twitter and ColdedICE: Twarketing Case Study Number One

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Twitter Address: @colderice

Subject: Ebay Platinum Power Seller John Lawson

Marketing Challenge: Market and promote new Social Media Blog ColderICE (Internet Commerce Education)

I met John Lawson about 5 years ago at a SCORE Atlanta conference. Back then John was steadily building his successful eBay business.  John is now a Platinum eBay Seller but he still longed for something more.  ColderICE was an idea that John shared with me while taping some interviews at his home last year.  The ColderICE idea has now become a concept and is fast becoming a full blown reality with the help of Twitter.

John or ColderICE (@colderice) has gone from a handful of followers to 1500+ in less than 6 months. He has also become a Twonster when it comes to tweeting about  his ColderICE concept.  The ColderICE concept is all about Internet Commerce Education. It started with commerce via eBay and has evolved to all aspects of marketing, selling products and services on the Internet.  John is also the host of the ColderICE podcast on his blog Colderice.com where he interviews some of the best in the business of when it comes to doing commerce on the Internet.

This was a fun first show with my good friend John Lawson.  John shares some great tips on what he does on a daily basis to promote his blog ColderICE.  John stresses that no one wants to be marketed too all day all the time.  John uses Twitter to make a difference in someones life by sharing quality content.  Creating a Buzz on Twitter is the key for those who want to be successful influencers.  John also shares his opinion on why creating value on twitter is not enough. The more you give the more you get back in life as well as on Twitter.  So please take a listen to our short conversation and give me your thoughts on how our first show made out.

[podcast]http://www.twarketing.com/podcast/1st_Twarketing_Call_John_Lawson_Complete.mp3[/podcast]

[download#1#size]

Twitterholic Stats:

Joined Twitter
on: 2008-04-26 00:07:50

John is ranked 4,424th on twitterholic! (by followers)

John is ranked 42nd in their location on twitterholic! (by followers in ‘Atlanta, Georgia‘)

TweetStats:

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John’s Top 3 Twitter apps are: Twhirl, TweetDeck and everyone’s favorite. The Web John also enjoys using TwitterBerry for his mobile Tweets.

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Here are the people John Replies to the most.  @andotherstuff, @rksmythe, @Scott_Pooler, @aswas and @brentleary are part of his top 5.

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This is John’s ReTweetability Index.The ReTweetability Index measures and ranks Twitter users based on the infectious power of their tweets. This number accounts for number of followers and Tweets overall, so it is a true indicator of infectiousness.

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John gets a grade of  99.8 from Twitter Grader

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How To Use Twitter As A Twool (VizEd Animation)

Here is part one of the Guy Kawasaki post “How To Use Twitter As A Twool” done as an animation thanks to the guys at vizedu.com

Categories
Politics Twitter Twitter News

Twitter’s New Election 2008: Twitter Branding At It’s Best

The launch of the New Election 2008 site customized by Twitter has come at the best time ever. It was launched on the eve of the first Presidential debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. This new site will be showcasing how Twitter can assist other major events and brands get real time brand recognition and market research.

Lets look at what Twitter’s new venture could do for sporting events like what just happened with the Beijing Olympics (Olympics.twitter.com) or for the those who are watching an event I am passionate about in baseball with the World Series (worldseries.twitter.com) Those who watched the last Olympics would have a place to discuss all the different meets, medals, victories and defeats. Major League Baseball could use Twitter to have their fans keep track of playoff scores and real time play by play for our favorite teams.

How about one of the most watched sporting events in the Superbowl (superbowl.twitter.com) The NFL could have real time forum of fans that who would love to get a chance to dialogue with their favorite teams, players and coaches.

Popular television shows like NBC’s Heroes (heroes.twitter.com) and new shows like CBS’s The Mentalist (thementalist.twitter.com) could build even more of a following for their fans who have a passion for talking about what happened and what will happen next on their favorite show.

Last but not least this new customized Twitter site could be used to launch a new product or service. Think of Twitter launching a product that you want to get out to the marketplace (yourproductname.twitter.com) All those who want to purchase your product could get instant access to satisfied customers already using it. You could also get automatic feedback from those who might be having a problem or have a suggestion on how to improve your product. You then get to monitor and then utilize some of the praise comments for future marketing efforts.

Twitter would finally then have a way to generate some decent revenue with each customization. They could even offer this to the same Fortune 500 companies (Walmart.twitter.com) that are currently missing out on what Twitter has to offer.

My only hope is that they also make this customization affordable for smaller businesses and not price it out of the stratosphere.

Let me know your thoughts on the matter at hand.

All the best

JB