Twitter Case Study: Zappos

Founded in 1999, online shoe and apparel retailer Zappos has over 1,500 employees and passed $1 billion in sales in 2008. Named one of Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work For in 2009,” Zappos prides itself on its friendly, supportive corporate culture and – most of all – its core focus on customer service. Indeed, its tagline is “Powered by Service.”

The company has fully embraced social media, with several blogs, videos on YouTube, active use of Twitter, and “share this” buttons on its posts and videos to encourage proliferation of content throughout the social web.

In particular, Zappos has one of the most high-profile corporate uses of Twitter. Several hundred employees have Twitter accounts, including CEO Tony Hsieh, who alone has 30,000 followers. The Zappos Twitter microsite provides a list of the employee accounts, aggregates all mentions of the company within anyone’s public Twitter stream into a single feed, and aggregates all employee tweets into a single stream.

Employees have used Twitter to respond to customer requests, give away free merchandise, promote press appearances and share the corporate culture with customers and prospective employees.