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H&R BLOCK SOCIAL CONTENT STRATEGY

Building All-Year Relevance

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Seasonality

• A seasonal business that doesn’t want to be• About 75 days a year where

the majority of business happens

• In 2011, tax season saw 961 brand mentions/day vs 217 off season. Conversation was 343% greater in season.

• In 2011, we owned 2% of tax conversation

• Strategies to provide more all-year products and services are in infancy

April to May 2011 Drop-off

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Setting the Stage

After TS11, the social team set out to take back the off-season

• Develop a best in class blog with a unique brand

• Determine our calling: how can we be valuable and credible to our clients with content?

• Identifying our audience demographics and content to provide them

• Developing a distinct, personal voice for the blog

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Content as Year-round Value

How can social content extend tax relevance to the rest of the year?

• Tax filing happens during tax season, but life always happens

• Everyday life is filled with tax-relevant events

• Act as trusted partner within the universe of tax and finance: “one degree from tax”

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Content Strategy

Build long-term engagement, loyalty, sharing – and assist purchase

Entertain

EducateEngage

Educate: Tips from the experts that the reader can immediately put to use. Experts’ unique perspectives on topics dominating the online

conversation. Break down complicated tax & personal finance matters into

graspable, digestible pieces (colloquial language, conversational tone, simple structures)

Entertain: Make money and taxes highly interactive Infographics, data visualization, interactive graphics, clickable Online widgets (bloggers), charts and images Quality writing with conversational tone; useful material

Engage: Leverage network of third-party bloggers Facebook chats/Google+ Hangouts/Twitter parties; status

updates Customizable content (fill in your data) Q&A Posts…engage with clients based on their questions

Social Content Funnel

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BlockTalk is born!

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Casting a Wide Net

Provide a wide variety of media, bite-sized, interactive, and beyond

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Empower Our Field With Content

Empower our army of 100,000 associates in the field to be our voice• Policy and Guardrails• Easily reused content

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Winning Earned Media Exposure

Culture Jacking and Syndication • Achieve broad content exposure by

providing sharable content on popular trending topics

• “Culturejack” and find unique tax and finance angles

• Feature guest bloggers to reach new audiences and provide new perspectives

• Strategically elevate content through syndication partners

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Extending Reach with Paid Social

• Paid social helps us grow our database, engagement and relevance with customers and prospects

• Social ads reference trusted sources of information (friends, family)

• Become trusted referrals and seen as more credible

• Allows us to be there “in the moment” with contextual advertising.

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Extending Richer Discussion

Provide a home for personal discussion driven by content

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Blog and SOV Growth

• 1.1M unique visitors to BlockTalk January-July 2013, topping all of 2012

• Strong performance of posts in traditionally quiet months. 90,834 in July 2013

• From 2% of tax conversation in 2011 to equal share of voice

TT44%

JH13%

HRB44%

HRB31%

JH28%

TT 41%

2012 2013

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Conversation Growth

More chatter, less seasonal

• 1635 average social mentions/day during season vs 541 off-season

• 202% difference between season and off-season, vs 343% difference in 2011.

• Sustained strong channel growth: H&R Block is the most social tax brand

BLOCK TALK FACEBOOK TWITTER

1,110,601 VIEWS • 91% growth YOY

348,957 FANS• 191% TS13 growth• 240% fan growth YOY• Jumped from #3 to #1 in

number of fans

232,924 ENGAGEMENTS • 667% growth YOY

58MM TS13 REACH• 4,899% Growth

15,825 FOLLOWERS• 16% TS13 growth• Retained #1 spot

78,900 ENGAGEMENTS• 1,209% growth YOY