Are you still in the experimentation phase with social media? Tell us about it.

One company that is finding social media incredibly useful is Intuit, makers of popular financial software like TurboTax, QuickBooks, and Quicken. Seth Greenberg, Director of National Media Buying and Digital Marketing for Intuit’s consumer group answered some of our questions about how effective the company’s efforts are in social media.

Intuit actively participates on Twitter and Facebook daily, as well as YouTube, and some advertising with MySpace and LinkedIn. When asked if they focus on any network more than others, Greenberg says, "Currently, Twitter and Facebook are the focus because more than 50% of customers use it. Twitter offers a transparent, real-time engagement with customers and prospects on questions, issues or general comments they may have.  Through both networks we are able to provide relevant, timely and valuable information to consumers."

We asked what ways the company participates. Intuit has employees all across the company that have a hand in the social media strategy, as it relates to their own roles. This covers everything from communications to marketing, and product people.

"TurboTax is very involved in social, as are other business units in the company," he says. "We recently launched @TeamTurboTax where taxpayers on Twitter can tweet questions to @TeamTurboTax and get fast, free answers from a team of tax, tech and product experts providing help and advice to make tax time easier. The account is managed by a cross-functional team of employees including those from PR, product management, marketing and support."

"In addition, there is a TurboTax Twitter account to also engage with consumers, but also provide tax tips, information, contests, etc," he adds. "We do have a Facebook page as you know and an interactive TurboTax Tax Break Blog, that includes the latest tax information, surveys and tips. Also, three years ago, TurboTax launched its Live Community, now used by more than 11 million people, to provide free instant answers from TurboTax users and tax experts online."

We asked how Intuit is integrating its on-site (proprietary domains and products) and off-site social marketing activities. "The in-product experience with Facebook Share gives customers the option to share to their Facebook news feed, creating a network effect when they share a comment or post a review. We know that fifty percent of TurboTax customers are on Facebook," says Greenberg. "The Friends Like You campaign (which Gigya is a partner with) allows customers not only to post a review, but for anyone looking for 3rd party recommendations about what product to use and their experience, to see and sort through reviews from friends (in their network) or from people like them (based on similar tax situations). Also, our national advertising with NBC highlights the Friends Like You campaign and drives people online for a total integration from offline to online to product."

When asked what technologies the company has implemented to help it maximize word of mouth traffic, he says, "The work we do with Gigya, is an example of applying technology to connect to Facebook and Bazaarvoice with our customer reviews. Live Community is an in-house technology that leverages community, where TurboTax users and experts ask and answer questions.  It is free in all products, but also to anyone that has tax questions through our website.  These are some of the ways that also lead to great SEO results."

Intuit uses metrics like click-throughs, network effect of "pass alongs" (consider that average Facebook user has 150 friends), engagement and conversion (both of new versus existing customers). When asked how Intuit’s social media efforts have contributed to the company’s sales, brand loyalty, and web traffic, Greenberg says they’re learning that social can be a "very potent avenue to driving revenue, and even be more influential than other channels when applied the right way."

"We have very active and passionate customers. We see that with the Live Community, with our Inner Circle (an opt-in community where customers provide feedback, beta testing, etc) and the incredible amount of customer reviews we receive with an average of 4.5star rating," he says. "Social is a tactic to help drive traffic and is built in to many of the initiatives we employ (drive traffic to a specific link, like the blog or to TurboTax.com)."

Of course mobile factors into the strategy, even for a software company like Intuit. "Mobile is a key strategy for Intuit and figuring out where/when it is relevant for consumers.  We do have social tax apps, like TaxCaster (an app to help estimate your tax refund) and SnapTax (an app that allows CA taxpayers with simple returns to file a federal/state tax return from their iPhone)."

"We’re fortunate to have the passionate customers that want to express themselves and give us their feedback…Given the right tools/technology, our customers can be our best sales force (help to spread WOM).  Overall, we look at engaging with people in a way that adds value to them, providing them with the information they need to make the right decisions."

What do you think of Intuit’s social media strategy based on Greenberg’s description? Do you see ways that the company is using  social media that you could apply to your own business? Share your thoughts here.

Intel did just that today, announcing that its hardware partners will be able to take advantage of Google AdWords as part of a central marketing platform.

Intel is introducing a virtual marketing storefront for its thousands of channel and reseller licensees that will provide a single online site for planning and creating ad campaigns such as placing print ads, ordering merchandise and services and customizing items with their company logo. Google is providing a suite of tools within that storefront that will help the users create and manage AdWords campaigns using things like pre-approved ad templates. The storefront and Google program will go into effect April 29.

Google’s getting very creative with its partnership deals. By striking partnerships with companies that have thousands of their own customers – such as the Intuit deal – Google gets in front of potential advertisers before they get in front of Yahoo or Microsoft.

It’s no coincidence that Intel’s CEO is on Google’s board of directors and with Eric Schmidt now on the board of Apple, we may well see a similar deal there too.

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SES: Your Video Wants A Meta Tag

It’s a cold morning in a lot of places, Chicago among them as Chris assured us. Inside the SES Chicago conference, the agenda is heating up quickly, starting with a look at the hot video space and how to optimize one’s video content for search.

Specialized engines like AOL’s Truveo scour the web for interesting video content. Unlike plaintext search engines, the context of a video resides in its images and audio. That presents a challenge for the crawler and the content creator, because unless the search engine can “read” the audio content, it will be hard to index the video without quality meta data in place.

Jon Leicht of Intuit commented on the aspects of meta data some may miss when prepping a video for the Internet. The file name itself is critical, he noted, saying poor names equal poor indexing.

The content of the page containing the video should obey the two-word mantra repeated frequently at SES sessions: quality content. Videos need pages that will attract search crawlers when they arrive.

During the encoding process, meta information needs to be added, and if the video is encoded from one format to another, the meta data also needs to be reencoded too.

Even though broadband has increased and continues to grow, producers should be aware of how to properly optimize their videos. Compress to suit the audience, not just for the sake of compression.

For some uploading sites, compression doesn’t pose as much of a concern. YouTube and Google Video convert what they receive to Flash, making it available to some 98 percent of the global web-using audience.

That still leaves the challenge of finding the video to the whims of search, and by making better meta data available with the video, the chance of it being found increases. The flood of content to YouTube in particular makes quality meta data a necessity for video creators.

Performics’ Eric Papczun noted how a roadblock to effective indexing of video comes from the dependence on associated text content. The quality of the web page containing the video can make or break its ability to be found.

He recommended using a sitemap for videos, as in a regular sitemap and not an XML sitemap for crawlers, to make content easier to find. Using good keywords in text links to a video can help overcome search engine blindness to video content.

Infuse Creative’s Greg Markel echoed the themes of encoding meta data for each file type being used for the video, and ensuring web page titles and descriptions accurately reflect the creator’s desired audience.

Markel suggested thinking of keywords that are relevant, but similar ,to very popular video content to grab query traffic. Videos should be “branded” with a watermark, and should end with a prompt like YouTube’s “share” button to encourage sending it to others.

As always, emulating successful operators in the space can help. Look at videos that have managed to grab attention, and creators whose sites draw traffic, and learn what has worked for them. Especially with meta data, if it works for some people, it might work for others who create quality video content.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

Google’s announcement of the deal with Intuit looks like a very smart play by the search advertising company. As the drive for the multi-billion dollar local search market continues to draw the attentions of major Internet players, Google has scored an impressive win here.

QuickBooks has been a popular program for small business owners who need an accounting package for their enterprises. One could almost call an accounting suite part of the foundation of a business. Google’s arrangement to place some of its services in that foundation might at least elicit curiosity, if not immediate participation, in the company.

It’s all about finding customers for AdWords, a big component of Google’s massive revenue stream. Recently, Borrell Associates predicted local online advertising spends would increase to $7.7 billion in 2007. That would be an increase of nearly 32 percent from 2006 according to their research.

“By adding key Google services into the world’s most popular accounting product, we’re making it easier than ever for small businesses to find and use all of the tools available to them,” Google CEO Eric Schmidt said in the deal’s announcement.

Those services include the following:

Intuit will use technology it acquired in the deal for StepUp Commerce to allow small business owners to automatically transfer inventory information to Google Base as it is updated.

Google Desktop will also be available with some of Intuit’s product line for US customers. Google said that for security, the new tool can search QuickBooks data only when it is accessed from within QuickBooks and is tied to QuickBooks user permissions so search results are limited by the searcher’s authorization level.

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David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business.

The guest authors are very well known individuals in the Search Engine Marketing and Web Analytics Industry. Each of them will be contributing with a post on Web Analytics World regarding a topic of their choice.

I’d like to introduce you to our celebrity writers:

Tuesday: Avinash Kaushik – Avinash is the Director of Web Research & Analytics at Intuit Inc. He is responsible for the business, technical and strategic elements of the research & analytics platform that supports decision making for Intuit’s 60+ ecommerce and non-ecommerce websites. Avinash’s offers people a wealth of knowledge through his very popular blog: Occam’s Razor.

Wednesday: Jennifer Laycock – Jennifer is the chief editor of SearchEngineGuide. She has been involved with Internet marketing since 1995 and is regularly featured at the Search Engine Strategies Conference. Her writing has been featured on well known sites such as Search Engine Watch and About.com.

Thursday: Gord Hotchkiss – Gord is currently the chair of SEMPO and is the President/CEO of the SEM firm: Enquiro Search Solutions. You can find Gord speaking at major shows such as: Search Engine Strategies and Webmaster World. Over the last 10 years Gord has established himself as one of the industry leaders in terms organic research and search strategies.

Friday: Rand Fishkin – Rand is the Owner and operator of SEOmoz, the tools, blog, articles and resources therein. He is also the CEO of a Seattle-based SEO company and a frequent speaker at the Search Engine Strategies conferences.

Avinash will kick start things on Tuesday with his thoughts on why Web Analytics is suddenly so hot.

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Manoj has been working in the search engine marketing industry since 2002. He started out as a software developer but now provides in-depth web site analysis using web analytics.

http://www.enquiro.com

Manoj is also the author of Web Analytics World. Web Analytics is an essential component in developing a successful
online campaign. Help convert visitors into customers by understanding
them.

Intuit Inc., the software company that distributes popular accounting and business management programs like QuickBooks, Quicken, and TurboTax, announced a new service called QuickBooks Merchant Service for Web Stores, aimed at streamlining online sales, credit card payment processing, and sales reporting.

The company says it has worked with leading online store providers to become “QuickBooks-ready” like Affinity Internet, Prostores (eBay), GoDaddy.com, Homestead Technologies and WebSite Pros to develop the service and ensure compatibility.

“Intuit has a long tradition of making products and services that help small businesses be successful,” said Dan Wernikoff, director of product management for Intuit’s QuickBooks Merchant Service. “By working with these trusted e-commerce companies, we’ve extended the power of QuickBooks to help small business leverage the Web.”

The QuickBooks Merchant Service is tooled to help small businesses create a Web store, sell online, accept credit card payments and exchange business and sales data directly with QuickBooks. Business owners can also reconcile debit and credit card sales made via QuickBooks Merchant Service with the software.

Intuit says this compatibility can save business owners time by eliminating the need to manually reenter data. This enables quicker sales tracking, credit card payments, invoice and payment data and real-time financial reports in a central program.

“QuickBooks Merchant Service for Web Stores has made it easier for me to handle the back-end operations of our business,” said Chris Bruce, who manages the Web store for The Sleeter Group, a QuickBooks resource provider for accountants, bookkeepers and small business owners. “Integration with QuickBooks has been a big time-saving element for our business, which grossed $20,000 in online sales in less than four months.”

The new technology will benefit wholesale distributors by extending their reach to customers and vendors via a secure, online channel, enabling them to automatically process more inter-company transactions and improve customer satisfaction and partner relations.

Unique from existing interchange technologies such as electronic data interchange (EDI) value-added network (VAN) and portal solutions, Eclipse Business Connect XML offers a toll-free, real-time option for Web communications and commerce. As a result, Eclipse users can save money by eliminating EDI VAN and portal charges typical of other wholesale distribution management solutions.

“I’ve seen more customer interest in XML-based electronic trading over the past year than I’ve seen in the last five years combined. When one of our biggest customers decided to trade electronically, we immediately turned to IDMS because of the depth of industry experience the company offers and our successful track record working together,” said Dave Cahill, vice president of Information Technology at Van Meter Industrial, a 70-year-old industrial distribution firm in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

“By using Eclipse Business Connect XML and eliminating costly VAN charges, we estimate we could save as much as $3000 per customer. Also, it could improve the quality of our service by enabling us to respond more quickly and provide real-time information on pricing and availability,” added Cahill.

How it Works

Eclipse Business Connect XML is based on the extensible markup language, or XML, a flexible way to create standard information formats and share both the format and the data via the Web. XML lets disparate business systems share data and interact electronically. Eclipse Business Connect XML acts as a secure, electronic interchange from the Eclipse platform to and from vendors, customers, partners and e-marketplaces.

Extending and Improving Customer Reach

Eclipse Business Connect XML allows distributors a convenient, low-cost way to connect to customers. With the new technology, they can offer 24/7 ordering and purchasing capabilities to customers and suppliers. By receiving orders automatically and in real-time, distributors can process and deliver orders more rapidly than phone orders that must be keyed in and processed manually.

“Eclipse Business Connect XML exemplifies Intuit’s customer-driven innovation approach by using customer feedback in the product development process to deliver significant advantages to distributors,” said Sasan Goodarzi, Intuit vice president of Industry-Specific Businesses and president of Intuit Distribution Management Solutions. “Besides improving distributors’ relationships and service to current customers, it also extends their reach, allowing them to compete on a worldwide scale.”

Flexible Design to Fit Distributors’ Needs

With Eclipse Business Connect XML distributors choose the type of interactions and configuration they prefer. Distributors can choose to trade via VAN, through an industry or private portal, or create direct trading partner connections without a portal or any associated fees. Also, using Eclipse Business Connect XML, distributors can seamlessly connect with the growing number of e-marketplaces through pre-built, pre-configured interfaces.

Availability

Eclipse Business Connect XML is available in September 2004.

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