• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 23, 2009

How do you create an online social community around a group that’s really only interested in your brand 16-weeks of the year?

That was the frank way Denise Sposato, director of communities at H&R Block, put the tax preparation brand’s online social networking strategy. It’s been a learning process, she added, noting that H&R Block initially was “a little too entertaining” in its social media approach, and that it’s taken it a while to find the right mix of education and entertainment.

Interestingly, the biggest driver of traffic isn’t anything H&R Block did itself, but something the federal government did: Three major changes in the tax law.

“That drove numbers. People were hungry for information,” she said.