Listening

The true value with social comes when a brand listens. If you aren’t online, how do you know what your customers are saying about you? How do you know the sentiment behind the conversations that your customers and potential customers are having if you aren’t actively engaged with social? A few weeks ago, I noticed a tweet from one of my followers that expressed his frustration with a previous employer of mine. Knowing that my previous employer wasn’t active on Twitter, I witnessed a simple issue/concern go unsolved. I eventually reached out to my follower and gave him some recommendations, but this was a massively missed opportunity.

Furthermore, I had been monitoring conversation around my previous employer and a simple hashtag search pulled up countless tweets – everything from simple questions to negative comments – that were unattended and getting no response. And this was only on one platform. If it’s happening on one, it’s probably happening on others.

In regards to the article I mentioned in the beginning, if you aren’t on social platforms and monitoring conversation around your brand, you might be missing important information about mobile banking, remote deposits, branch concerns. Maybe you create a discussion on Facebook asking your customers their thoughts on your website, maybe you ask about their interest in remote deposit. But again, without being online, you’ll never know.

Building Community

Maybe Facebook or Twitter aren’t for your bank or credit union, but social media is much more than those two platforms. What about blogging or video? Last time I looked, general sentiment around the financial sector wasn’t exactly positive. One of the biggest opportunities within the social space is education. Look at what Wells Fargo is doing with their blogs, and more importantly, look at what how they took to blogging during the Wachovia integration. By blogging, not only is Wells providing valuable information about their brand, but they are also providing human interaction to their customers. They’re focused on building their community.

We’re all aware of the state of the economy. Regardless of your position and thoughts on the recovery, a systematic change must occur for us to fully come out of the recession. Finance is an area that a lot of people don’t understand and aren’t interested in learning. The opportunity is ripe for financial institutions to focus on educating their customers. This education isn’t going to happen inside a branch, it’s going to happen online.

The Issue

The biggest reason social media either isn’t working or isn’t being implemented? An overall lack of understanding within financial institutions. Banks and credit unions are still stuck in the past where they are focused on fee income and selling. Most aren’t interested in getting to know their customers. A bank’s idea of ‘relationship’ is how many products a certain customer has. Until financial institutions get away from the cross-selling mentality and begin to focus on human interaction, social will never work.

As we stand now, executives and product managers are stuck in the old business model where brands would focus on the push and bringing customers into physical branch. This model is no longer viable. The new branch banking model? It’s online and it’s mobile. Yes, last time I checked profits came from selling. Yes, last time I checked, the ultimate goal with social should be to increase sales and profit. But the path and means to consumer’s dollars…that’s a path that hasn’t been mowed and it’s not paved.

The Solution

It’s simple. Take off the tie, put the tri-fold brochures away and spare us the sales pitch. Start focusing on building a platform that integrates social with your entire business strategy. Remember, social isn’t mean to be a replacement tool, it’s complimentary. It doesn’t stand alone, it’s a part of your entire business culture.

If you show interest in me, I’ll listen. If you provide value, I’ll buy. If you’re honest, I’ll be loyal. If you show that you truly care about me, I’ll promote the hell out your brand.

Don’t be afraid of social within the financial space. Quit making excuses of why you aren’t involved. If you are active, take a step back and rethink if you’re efforts truly hit on what social really is. Whatever your situation is, social NEEDS to be an important part of your bank’s or credit union’s overall brand.

Per their info tab:

Welcome to the Wells Fargo ‘With You When’ page. When you were a kid did you want to be an astronaut, a cowboy or maybe a ballerina? While your dreams may have changed since you were a wide-eyed youngster, you’re still thinking about your future. Wells Fargo is here to help you realize those dreams. We were with you when you opened your first savings account and wrote your first check, and we’re with you now as you continue to make the decisions that make your future a reality. We are the Wells Fargo team that will be posting updates on the page and responding to your comments, as well as letting you know about releases of cool new tools for smart money management.

When I was a kid, I didn’t have any financial obligations. When I was a kid, banking was the last thing on my mind. I assume Wells is trying to make finances more fun, and is attempting to help calm the frustration and stress that comes with banking. However, why create a separate Facebook account? In my opinion, it’d make more sense to create a separate tab within their existing account for this cute approach.

A quick 30-second search on Facebook pulls up multiple Facebook accounts, yet none have a significant following. By continuing to create separate accounts, you’re segmenting your audience. As a customer, I only want to ‘Like’ one account. These multiple accounts take away the potential effectiveness of said campaign. Additionally, the reach is significantly less as you continue to confuse more and more people.

When it comes to social media, generally less is more. There are certain instances where having two Twitter accounts might make sense, but I’ve yet to discover a need for multiple Facebook accounts. Give your customers one central location to visit and direct from there.

Discover has a pretty active online presence. Talk about the different strategy Discover has with Twitter & Facebook vs the Discover blog?

One of our goals is to build brand loyalty by engaging members in a dialogue through various social media channels. Facebook and Twitter are used to drive general awareness of Discover’s service, tools and promotions, whereas the Discover blog is intended to champion the customer’s stories about our rewards programs.

Clearly the most active platform is Facebook. Talk a little about how a brand like Discover can utilize this platform?

At Discover, we use social media as a way to listen and engage with our cardmembers. Facebook allows to us bring our brand to life by reacting to our fans and talking with them more conversationally about what they care about most.

Continuing with Facebook, talk about how Discover is utilizing a fun tab like Grafitti to engage customers?

This tab was created to support our Student Card Art Design contest. This contest enabled Discover Fans and visitors to share in the creation of a new student card art design in an easy, fun and interactive way. We received 6,700 entries and 200,000 votes.

Education is an area that a lot of financial brands aren’t utilizing very effectively. How does Discover approach financial education and what role does the Discover blog play in that?

We offer several tools (calculators, educational resources, financial resources like our CARD Act video on our site that we point to and reference through out Twitter feed and Facebook statuses. The Inside Discover.com blog is narrowly focused on site features and enhancements that may be of interest to our Discover.com users.

You seem to be using video and a lot of visuals – something I’ve found a lot of financial companies struggling with. Talk about the importance of these tools when it comes to an industry as important as financial services?

Visuals are important, because they help gain audience attention.  We plan to do more with video and work to ensure compelling visuals are a part of our updates when possible. However, we feel it’s the subject matter and conversation that’s most important in order to be as relevant as possible to our audience. Videos like “Straight Talk” are only the beginning.

How do create content that draws customers in? Financial services is something that affects everyone, but not a lot of people are interested. How do you overcome that?

We work to find the common pain points or points of interest like saving money, getting the best deal or avoiding fees and then introduce how some of our offerings can help provide solutions. We also invite others to share their ideas and opinions to keep the conversation going.

How has social media impacted the Discover brand? How do you use social media to educate the public that Discover is more than the piece of plastic in your wallet?

Social Media helps to enhance our online brand presence. We’re using social platforms like the I love Cashback Bonus blog to help cardmembers interact with our brand in a more personalized way. Knowing that you’re spending smarter is a rewarding experience that goes beyond being a piece of plastic.

How does Discover measure social media? How do you know it’s providing value and how do you relay that within the company?

We measure social metrics such as followship and engagement, as well as traffic and activity on our site. However, we feel the real investment is in understanding how to engage with consumers in social networks and manage user-generated content since it has such a growing impact on our online brand presence, from search results to brand affinity.
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Clearly, Discover has figured out the value of social media. Discover has always been a brand that focuses on engaging with their customers through giveaways and other promos. However, rather than simply holding contests and throwing money away, Discover actively seeks feedback and content from their community, as evident by their blog.

Overall, I think Discover is doing well with their social efforts. I think there’s some room for improvement with education, but from monitoring their activity online, they are on the right path. A great brand and a great example of how financial institutions should use emerging channels to reach their customers.

FiLife – a joint venture between IAC and Dow Jones – is a community that connects people with personal financial questions with experts who have the answer. Recently ranked as the #1 most innovative financial company and #27 overall by Fast Company, FiLife is providing a venue for people across a wide-array of spaces to get answers to all their financial questions – basic or complex.

In an industry that’s heavily regulated and typically conservative, FiLife offers a credible solution to the glaring absence of education and awareness within the financial industry.

“Essentially, we’re where healthcare was a few years ago. It was a taboo subject that you didn’t think about bringing up in a social setting,” Adam Wiener, general manager and executive editor, said. “There’s an obvious need for this resource, so we’re fishing where the fish are.”

Another key to FiLife’s success (they’ve gone from 14,000 monthly visitors in February 2009 to over 3 million) is the fact that they don’t necessarily have to play by the same rules and regulations that bound financial institutions. That’s not to say that FiLife houses fly by the night content. FiLife has managed to form a number of strategic relationships and the depth of their contributors provide credibility. It’s this vast array of resources that has allowed the site to become the number four personal-finance Web site according to com-Score.

“With the amount of content out there, we needed to form strategic relationships in order to give FiLife credibility,” Wiener said. “Large financial institutions have to deal with regulation and jump through hoops in order to get stuff online. We have the ability to respond quicker and to a broader range of topics.”

In a true testament to innovation, FiLife is continually looking to add value to its current community and potential participants. FiLife is committed to using their open API to allow other financial institutions and partners to utilize the incredible amount of content and resources currently on the FiLife site, and integrate into their own Web site. Additionally, FiLife is looking at creating the ability for financial institutions to pull content from FiLife and use those resources on outside destinations.

“Being interactive is why we’ve found the success we have,” Wiener said. “We’re committed to being social and utilizing the various platforms out there to continue to add value and expand our reach.”

As mentioned above, there’s a wealth of knowledge and resources out there when it comes to financial advice. Clearly, large financial institutions haven’t stepped up to the plate of financial education. FiLife is a space where people can gather and develop their own profile of personalize content. Who knows, maybe down the road talking about your finances will be as common and accepted as conversing about the weather!

The Financial Brand

Check out the article and let me know your thoughts.

Currently, the traditional way to receive alerts are via e-mail or text. That’s fine, that works for some. E-mail is how I receive most of my financial alerts. However, as technology continues to evolve; I wonder how financial institutions will respond? While the financial space has seen mixed results within the social sphere (you can see my “winners” here), one use of social media that’s of little risk is….wait for it…ALERTS!

I don’t expect social alerts to overtake text and e-mail due to the simple fact that those methods provide the greatest ease of use and accessibility. Like social media in general, I think social alerts can be a complimentary use; not a replacement. As the trend of checking e-mail via mobile devices continues to increase (and text alerts are obviously received via mobile), it’s clear that our lifeline is our mobile device. It only makes sense that the use of social networking usage continues to trend toward mobile.

Now, before you begin to scream about the security issues, I don’t feel social alerts provide any increased risk that’s not already present. Alerts aren’t meant for financial discussion. They’re meant to provide an “oh, yeah”. Implementing such alerts aren’t any more complex than what’s used to initiate current alerts. Provide a disclosure that the customer needs to read and agree to. Ensure proper communication is utilized informing the customer not to disclose any personal information. Use the tool to drive conversations to proper offline channels, if need be.

Personally, I would  sign up to receive alerts via a Twitter direct message. Yes, this would require financial institutions to become verified users – which I think is needed regardless. If Chris Brogan is verified, why isn’t Bank of America? The beauty of this method is that it would also allow the opportunity for brands to build their community base and form relationships.

So what do you think? Would you take advantage of such a resource, if made available? Please take a moment to conduct a brief, anonymous survey regarding social alerts. Click here for a 3 question survey.

As always, you’re welcome to leave your thoughts in the comments section, even if you do participate in the survey.

From the beginning, social media seemed like a natural fit for CME Group according to Schoenberg.

“It was essentially a crossing of two bridges. I was reading a lot and using Forrester’s research and I noticed a group of traders had created a group about CME Group,” Schoenberg said. “They were already talking about us – posting thoughts and connecting with us – so I felt it was natural for us to be a part of that conversation.”

In September of 2007, Schoenberg reached out to the administrator of the group and offered to help manage the group. Instead, the administrator was willing to give Schoenberg complete control of the group, thus creating CME Group’s  footprint in the social space. From there, the footprint continued to grow as CME Group launched their Twitter account in October of 2008 – the account has over 750,000 followers. Since then, they have developed a strong presence on LinkedIn, StumbleUpon and Delicious, among other social platforms.

A key to CME Group’s success is its diverse use of the various social tools, as evident by their LinkedIn groups. The lone public group serves as a career portal for those interested in careers in futures; while they created three private groups: two focusing on products (currency exchange and interest exchange) and one solely for reporters.

“LinkedIn has really been beneficial for us for a number of reasons,” Schoenberg said. “First, we’re able to connect with professionals and get feedback from all over the world. Second, our “reporters” group allows for transparency and we can have open conversations without worrying about them being picked up and turned into a story.”

Partnerships and Conversations

In a true sign of resourcefulness and strategic thinking – coincidentally, these two traits are what prevents most major brands from succeeding in the social space – CME Group partnered with StockTwits, who had created the concept of putting a $ in front of a ticker symbol in tweets, to form a a relationship that allowed CME Group to join a large conversation that was already taking place. This strategic partnership is a prime example of how, often times, the conversation is already taking place. This concept and thinking is key for brands – instead of trying to create your  own conversation, join the one that’s already taking place.

While this remains just a small snippet of CME Group’s adventure into social media – see previous post comment to get a better understanding of the variety of social resources – it’s clear that the key to success for CME Group and Schoenberg has been a combination of providing useful information, engaging with people and a consistent message across all channels (traditional and new media).

“The nice thing for us is there’s so much information out there. So many things apply to the overall economy,” Schoenberg said. However, at the same time, we have to be sure that we continue to create original content that our community finds valuable.”