Zappos CEO’s Personality Leads to Twitter Success

I’ve recently joined Twitter on behalf of one of our clients, Networks In Motion, so it’s no surprise that when reading a recent Mashable list of 10 of the smartest brands in social media, it was the Twitter outreach efforts of online shoe retailer Zappos that really stood out to me as a digital media success story worth studying.

As a microblogging platform, Twitter lends itself to pithy announcements and two-way customer engagement. Zappos, however, plays to the strength of the platform by interspersing some character into its Tweets. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is firmly aboard the Twitter bandwagon. It’s like reading the thoughts of a hilarious friend who happens to be in the shoe business, not like you’re getting pushed information from a corporate CEO. Hsieh has developed a following of more than 58,000 (not a typo) Twitter users. That sort of connection is something you can’t buy.

In his CEO blog, in fact, Hsieh posted an entire entry about how Twitter can make you a better, happier person. His reasoning?

• Transparency & Values: Twitter constantly reminds me of who I want to be, and what I want Zappos to stand for
• Reframing Reality: Twitter encourages me to search for ways to view reality in a funnier and/or more positive way
• Helping Others: Twitter makes me think about how to make a positive impact on other people’s lives
• Gratitude: Twitter helps me notice and appreciate the little things in life

As Tsieh puts it,

The great thing about all 4 of these things is that not only have they helped me grow as a person, but they’ve also led to me being generally happier in life. And the benefits aren’t just personal - they also spill over into what we want the Zappos brand and business to be about: Zappos is about delivering happiness, whether for customers (through customer service) or for employees (through company culture). It’s been interesting thinking about how all of my personal learnings about happiness can be applied to delivering happiness in the business world as well.

Hsieh gets it. Digital media is about so much more than selling a product – it’s about adding value happiness to the marketplace by offering a solution to real-life, everyday problems.

Whether you’re connecting with customers through Twitter or creating content for a corporate blog, remember that people like to see personality. They connect to people and to brands with character, not to faceless corporations.

Tags: blogging, branding, digital media, social media, transparency, twitter, zappos