October, 2009 Windows launched the latest version of Microsoft's PC operating system; Windows 7. Since then Windows 7 has become the fastest selling version of Windows in the companies history. This white paper outlines how the Windows Social Media team prepared, launched and measured the Windows 7 Social Media plan.

1. Creating communities of evangelists
Social media and Windows7 launch
The Windows Social Media team has learned invaluable lessons about marketing one of the biggest, most well-known
brands on the planet. Thanks in large part to the 16 months the team spent building and engaging social network
communities that were enthusiastic about Windows, the Windows7 launch had over 200 million brand im-pressions
in the first two weeks with an estimated CPM of $0.02. Windows7 also trended as high as 3rd on Twitter, was the
#1 sponsored channel on YouTube for several days during the first week of launch, and the number of fans on the
Windows Facebook page more than doubled.
Social media is a very powerful marketing tool that is best used to connect and engage with a brand’s fans and
enthusiasts. Used correctly, it can build huge advocate bases that will drive valuable peer-to-peer engagements over
time. Companies should be very clear on what their brand objectives are when creating a social media strategy. Social
media strategies should complement and partner with a brand’s advertising, digital media, and PR programs.
The key to social media is building programs for long-term investment. The Windows Social Media team doesn’t run
campaigns; we invest in ongoing conversations with consumers.
Our efforts are focused on:
• Awareness for new consumers
• Engaging existing consumers in communities
• Building advocacy and creating champions that will support Windows in peer-to-peer connections
Goals for the Windows Social Media team:
• Activate and engage with passionate Windows users
• Build strong communities Windows can deliver ongoing marketing messages/offers to
• Move consumers through the sales funnel
• Provide enthusiasts with tools to spread the love
Metrics to measure success by:
• Sentiment—How do consumers feel and talk about Windows?
• Volume—How many conversations is Windows driving week over week?
• Reach—How many consumers are being impacted by these outreach efforts?

2. Programs
The Window Social Media team has four main programs that make up our strategy: monitoring and reporting,
out-reach and engagement, community, and social networks. These are ongoing programs we run every day of the
year focusing on customer engagement rather than campaigns. In order to run programs like these, there needs
to be a team committed to managing these types of programs for a brand. Most brands have marketing teams
organized by campaign functions. The downfall of this organizational structure is it doesn’t allow for support of
programs af¬ter a campaign has ended. If a brand creates a Facebook page or YouTube channel for the purpose of
a campaign, once that campaign is over the Facebook page dies on the vine because there’s no more support for it.
Monitoring and reporting
Windows is one of the most talked about brands online. There are literally thousands and thousands of discussions
going on about Windows every day spanning conversations for developers, businesses, and consumers. The
Windows consumer marketing team wanted to find out how many of those conversations were geared towards
consum¬ers and what they were talking about, so we licensed a web tool to monitor social media chatter. By
tracking engage¬ment through a tool we were able to set benchmarks on volume and sentiment and measure the
impact of PR and advertising messages.
Outreach and engagement
Because Windows is constantly talked about on the web, there’s a big opportunity to engage with a lot of
consum¬ers who may have questions or concerns. Our engagement team has partnered with a small social media
agency in Seattle. This small agency has a team of four people that engage in conversations on behalf of Windows
and identify themselves as members of the Windows Outreach Team. In order to ramp up and down our efforts de-
pending on where in the product lifecycle we are, it made sense for us to partner with an agency. We’ve trained all
engagement leads and regularly provide guidance and product support to the team so they have the answers our
consumers need. Regardless of the customer’s question, the team always tries to help the customer move through
the purchase funnel. The Windows team does have a partnership with the Customer Support team and hands off
support questions using CoTweet.
Community
Windows has two communities: Clubhouse and MVP. MVP is a Microsoft-wide community program that leverages
the most engaged, technical enthusiasts who are passionate about particular Microsoft products and builds
ongo¬ing relationships, programs and feedback loops with this group. Clubhouse is a Windows consumer
marketing community. This community is made up of people who are passionate about Windows or Windows Live
and want to blog, microblog, vlog, or just create content about Windows. This community creates User Generated
Content (UGC) that’s featured on Windows.com. This UGC has a click-through rate 10 times that of regular
web content.
Social networks
Windows has created large communities on all major social networks in the U.S. Windows has brand pages on
YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, and multiple accounts on Twitter. Windows invests in keeping these communi-
ties vibrant, engaged, and growing. Because it’s easy to communicate and pass along content on social networks,
they’re ideal places to create and measure viral pass-along and connect with a brand’s most passionate customers.

3. What Windows didn’t do
There are a few tactics that didn’t make it into the plan because they don’t accomplish the goals we set for
the program. It’s important to stay focused on what the goals are so making decisions is easy when multiple
opportunities arise.
Buzz!
Buzz is a direct effect of a marketing effort. Whether a video is produced with the goal of ‘going viral’ or seeding
blogger engagement and hoping it goes viral, it’s practically impossible to create buzz. It happens or it doesn’t. If,
by chance, there’s buzz around a video or marketing campaign, the buzz is largely focused on the campaign and
not the product. Our goal is to keep the focus on Windows. We want people to talk about Windows, not a video
that someone sent them. Buzz doesn’t build customer relationships or move a potential customer to trial. Buzz is
great for building awareness, which was not one of the goals for the Windows 7 launch.
Blogger outreach
Connecting with influential bloggers can help move consumers through the funnel and provide enthusiasts with
tools to spread news. A blogger can accomplish these things because they serve as a distribution channel for
content that we want our consumers to receive. If someone is considering a PC purchase and they read a rave
review of the product on a blog, that’ll likely influence their decision and move them to trial. But the only way
the blogger’s post is authentic is if they give their own opinion honestly as an enthusiast who wants to share with
others. This is a very effective way to get a message to consumers but, in the Windows team, this responsibility is
owned by our PR team. Influential bloggers are so similar to traditional press that Windows treats them the same so
they’re all managed by our PR team.
Timeline
May June July August September October January February March April October
2008 2008 2008 2008 2008 2008 2009 2009 2009 2009 2009
4. Sept, 2008 rst ads appear on TV.
Began to use Social Media monitoring
8. March, 2009 – MySpace
page launches
1. Benchmark report 2. July, 2008 create the social media
team – Executive support
to understand how marketing
messages were being received.
6. Jan 2009 – Win7
Beta released
in May, 2008 to a. 1st party community – Clubhouse
understand b. 3rd party communities – Facebook
9. April, 2009 – Release
the landscape and YouTube
5. Sept, 2008 – engagement Candidate (RC) releases
team started
7. Jan, 2009 - @MSWindows
launches on Twitter October 22, 2009 –
3. Monitored conversations for 3 months 10. Windows7 launches.
Launch of Social
a. Identified key URL’s b. Created and trained outreach team Media hub
Windows7 launch
The objectives for the Windows7 launch complimented our social media initiatives. The objectives were:
• Engage the base.
• Leverage the huge Windows partner network.
• Make Windows7 the hero.
• Drive trials and let the product speak for itself while traditional marketing efforts drove awareness.

4. The cornerstone of our social media plan was
the Social Media Hub. The Social Media Hub
(www.Windows.com/Social) is a website that is
an aggregation of all the conversations about
Windows7 across the social web. By pulling
those conversations into one website consumers
can experience Windows through peer-to-peer
connections and participate themselves. Because
peer-to-peer conversations are the most impactful
form of marketing messages it made sense for
Windows to leverage the over three million beta
testers that were already talking about and loving it.
The user flow of the Hub drives consumers through
to a relevant place on Windows.com.
The Hub is built on a Microsoft technology called
LookingGlass. LookingGlass is a web application
that pulls in conversations from across the web and
can be organized by topic, sentiment, content type,
and many other features.
Since Windows spent a year building communities in Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and the Clubhouse Windows
had a base of 100,000’s of fans in the social networks ready to participate. Had Windows not laid the ground
work by investing in building communities there wouldn’t be a fan base to call upon and activate. This is one
of the key compo¬nents to social media: build the communities before you need them. A long-term vision and
commit¬ment will allow a brand to activate the community at product launches or other major points in a brand
life cycle.
Within the first two weeks of launch the Hub had over 300K visits, 50% coming from Facebook. The hub drove a
click-through rate of over 2.5% to Windows.com. End action analysis showed that active preference (likelihood
to purchase within 6 months) for users who visited the Hub were 5-10% higher than any other end action on
Windows.com.
The second program Windows launched was MeetUps. MeetUps is a generic term that refers to offline events
planned by enthusiasts online to get together and talk about a common interest. Windows was encouraging fans
to create MeetUps of their own. Windows created a tool kit to empower fans to plan their own MeetUps and
spread the word. The tool kit included blog badges, countdown clocks, invitation scripts, and product demos.

5. Post campaign the MeetUp platform generated over 352,619 impressions with
28, 930 sponsored members exposed to Windows 7. 282 Windows 7 sponsored
Meetup events were hosted and of the guests participating in the events when
asked “How likely are you to check out Windows 7 as a result of them supporting
your Meetup?” 68% responded they were More Likely.
In addition to engaging our existing networks, the Windows team also took
advantage of the launch momentum to acquire new fans. The cornerstone of this
effort was an Advertising Reach Block on Facebook. The reach block was a one day
media buy on Facebook pointing people to the Windows fan page.
The Facebook reach block resulted in a 45% increase in Windows fans and 8
million viral impressions for the two weeks following Windows 7 GA.
What’s Next?
1. Overcoming Barriers to Purchase
Following the launch, the Windows team engaged a web service tool to gain
a better understanding of how the Windows 7 conversation evolved over Average Percentage of General Positive vs
Speciific Positive
time. The tool’s methodology extracts meaning and emotion from blog/ 35%
32%
forum/and Twitter conversations. 30%
28%
26%
25%
Windows engagement teams expected to see conversation specific to product 22% 22%
attributes in the initial weeks following launch. But in fact general excitement 20% 19%
around getting Windows 7 dominated the conversation for the first 60 days. 15%
It wasn’t until the third month that conversation shifted to specific product 10%
attributes and value props. 5%
0%
Windows identified the top positive and negative conversation trends following October November December
General Positive Specific Positive
the launch. That data was integrated into the Windows engagement strategy
and windows.com content strategy in order to engage customers to help
overcome barriers to consideration or purchase.
2. Evolution of the Social Media Hub
Development continues on the moderator application for the Social Media Hub. The goal is to create
a platform that any Business Group across Microsoft can adopt to create the same type of aggregation
experience. By April 2010, a BETA version will be ready for broader adoption.
3. Deeper connections to customer support team
The vast amount of conversation today about Windows is pertaining to customer support questions.
Customer support is a different division of Microsoft so working out a cross-team program that streamlines
the conversation hand off in a way that supports both teams infrastructure will be a key to success.
4. International
Both emerging and developed markets across the globe are jumping into Social Media. Each culture
has individual characteristics and nuances that make a single Social Media plan impossible. Windows is
working with people in subsidiaries with the biggest business opportunity to understand the Social Network
opportunities and build culture specific plans that complement our programs in the US. One example of
how Windows brings international social media efforts together is through the Worldwide Windows tab on
www.Facebook.com/Windows.