Social Media & Financial Services
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Discussion of the opportunities and challenges for using social media in financial services plus a few tips on how to get set up and get started. Presented and authored by Patrick Doherty and Sally Wells
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Social Media & Financial Services
- 1. Social Media – What Went Wrong? A two-time tweeter’s view…
- 3. Social media use distribution by level of maturity, representative industries Percentage of organisations 50% Financial services Manufacturing Pharmacuticals Utilities 25% Travel/ Hospitality Media Entertainment Consumer goods Retail Telecommunications High Technology 0% Discovery Experimentation Adoption “Normalcy” Maturity stage
- 4. Who’s having a go in the USA Calvert American Century Investments Vanguard Franklin Templeton Investments Putnam Investments E*Trade ING Funds Allianz MFS Investment Management 40% have a social media presence A further 20% intend to create a presence in the next 12 months 1/3 are on Facebook, Youtube or blog Less than 50% twitter 85% believe soc media will have a lasting impact Kasina Survey of 43 top US asset managers and financial services organisations, 2010
- 5. Can’t get your blog on? It’s a legal issue! I can’t get IT to make it a priority! Is it Facespace or LinkedBook? Who’s who in the zoo?
- 7. Can’t get your blog on? It’s a legal issue! I can’t get IT to make it a priority! Is it Facespace or LinkedBook? Who’s who in the zoo? Is there anybody out there?
- 8. Are financial advisers and investors really using social media to find out more about investing, superannuation and advice yet?
- 9. Getting social a) used Facebook b) say would find it useful or wouldn’t mind the communication* a) 84% b) 49% a) 48% b) 41% a) 27% b) 34% Investment Trends 2009 Investor/Member Communications and Retention Report *Of those who have used a social networking site within a month
- 10. Can’t get your blog on? It’s a legal issue! I can’t get IT to make it a priority! Is it Facespace or LinkedBook? Who’s who in the zoo? Is there anybody out there? Will we sell more?
- 11. What is the cost of doing nothing? Do you really want to take that risk?
- 12. “You can’t just say it you have to get people to say it to each other” CMO of Ford America James Farley “You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in social media. The old paradigm was pay to play. Now you get back what you authentically put. You’ve got to be willing to PLAY to PLAY.” Alex Bogusky Co Chair of CP&B Advertising
- 13. To do right now list Amplify your content Set up a Youtube channel Share your content via SlideShare & Sribd Let your site visitors share your content for you
- 14. To do right now list Amplify your content Track your content Monitor your social media brand Start to listen and learn
- 15. Start thinking about Your endgames Friendraise or fundraise? A better brand? Listen and learn? Better service?
- 16. Start thinking about Your endgames Where you want to be Facebook, Twitter etc Special interest blogs Create your own communities Integrate!
- 21. Start thinking about Your endgames Where you want to be Who’s who in the zoo Natural bloggers or tweeters? Support & maintenance
- 22. Start thinking about Your endgames Where you want to be Who’s who in the zoo Governance and supervision
- 23. Need new Linkedin group page - clicks
Editor's Notes
- When I first saw this video from the folks at Boxhill Institute I was not so much thinking – Social Media – What Went Wrong. But Social Media – What’s wrong with me? I have my Facebook page and LinkedIn profile. I have even tweeted once or twice about the latest lame bleating from our newly elected pollies. But am I blogging? Am I tweeting to my customers? Are we living and breathing the social media phenomenon in the investment, super and financial advice industry? Have we seen some cool use of social media in a few campaigns – for sure. But are our endgame clients hammering down the door looking for ways to use Facebook, Youtube or twitter in their marketing – well we have helped a few but it’s in no way the tsunami of activity that piece of viral video would have you think.But that’s my opinion – lets do a poll of the room. Hands upWho has a personal facebook page? Keep your hands up if you have a company facebook page?Who has a personal LinkedIn profile? (And no this is not a survey to see who is looking for a new job) Keep your hand up if you have an up-to-date corporate profile on LinkedInWho tweets on a regular basis as a social or personal activity? Anybody running a company or subject matter expert twitter account? Well don’t feel too bad if you are yet to get your social media mojo on inside your organisation. We’ve spent a bit of time talking to and researching who is doing what in the investment, pensions and financial advice space here and in the US – and you maybe relieved to know that pretty much everyone still has their twitter training wheels.
- Take a look a this graph from The Marketing Leadership Council – I think it nicely summarises where the broader business community and industries are with regard to social media. Almost half of all organizations are still in “Discovery” mode – like our buddies in Manufacturing, Pharmaceuticals and Utilities we are still pretty much trying to understand and work out what this thing called social media is. So don’t feel the pressure of not being out there yet – we are in the majority!
- Even in the USA social media adoption by investment managers and financial services firms is in the early stages. Kasina, a New York based Investment Management & Insurance Marketing & Distribution consultancy surveyed 43 top American Asset Managers on their social media status. They found that over 40% had some sort of social media presence with ¼ to a 1/3 having a facebook presence, blog or are on youtube. Most have a LinkedIn profile (that’s the easy one) and less than half have a twitter account. A further 20% intend to create some sort of social media presence in the next 12 months and more than 85% believe social media will have a lasting impact on the industry. We did a simple piece of research here in Australia and found that of the top 10 investment managers and industry super funds most had some sort of easy to find – but limited social media activity.About 8/10 investment managers and 1/10 industry super funds had at least started facebook pageAbout 5/10 investment managers and 1/10 industry super funds had a corporate twitter account.1/10 investments managers had a youtube presence.Most had some kind of corporate profile on linkedin. But overall it seems that the toe is being place very slightly into the social media tool. Regardless, there is little question we are in the midst of a major revolution in the way we communicate and do business with each other. Hands up those who believe like the majority our American friends that social media will have a lasting impact on the industry?Hand up those who have already started or think they will create some sort of social media presence in the next 12 months? And so the answer to the question “What went wrong?” is easy – nothing! We haven’t even started yet! I think most of you would agree that the numbers as described to us by the fine folks from Boxhill Institute are compelling and our own instincts tell us that it will most certainly impact the way we engage with our own customers in the not too distant future. And wether we as organisations are engaging and communicating about ourselves and important issues in the social media world – you can be sure your customers are already doing so or starting to. Its definitely time – if nothing else – we started to listen to what they are saying. Never before have we have such easy access to the minds of our clients and customers. So no matter wether we are baby boomers, gen xers or gen yers, social media savants or novices – as marketers – we cannot ignore it and must at least begin to explore it and how we can use it to do a better job of building strong authentic customer relationships. I think it’s exciting for our industry as the possibility for improving our conversations with clients is limitless. Social media thrives on content – and if that’s one thing we have an industry – its oodles of content – so if nothing more – let us be heard by our customers wherever they roam be it on LinkedIn or Facebook, in the bloggosphere or the twittersphere.
- But there certainly are a few hurdles that are making it tricky for investments, superannuation and financial advice firms to get their blog on and dive into social media headfirst. Compliance and legal issuesIf we start with the funnest one – there is not much clarity out there for marketers concerning the legal and compliance issues of blogging, user comments and other interactive content. As I understand it– ASIC has put out a discussion paper on Internet Discussion Sites (Consultation Paper 104) and the work is still on-going and thus we may not as yet have any firm guidelines. The chief regulator in US has only recently released its guidelines for investment and financial advice sites and has set some firm rules around the preservation, supervision and policy regrading the use of social media. So I am sure the same for us will not be far away. For social media issues there are a few important issues to cover off . For example, corporate policy surrounding who blogs or tweets, the treatment of user and customer comment and other third content as well as the overall supervision and archiving of interactive content. For those of us who have been around for a while– we can cast our minds back to when email and web sites were the newest kids on the block. There were plenty of issues about the dissemination of information, suitability and editorial controls. But the force of these as powerful communication tools demanded that workable solutions be found - we just needed to work with our legal and compliance friends to set the ground rules. Technology ownershipThe second issue is figuring out the right technology approach for using social media. With so many consumer platforms ready made for social media – we can bypass the old need to build internal systems and the technology can be managed by marketing. This can be scary for our IT brothers and sisters – who might be rightly concerned about protecting the corporate infrastructure. But the reality is that marketing and technology are becoming increasingly intertwined. - so much so that marketing departments need to have a greater say in the deployment and management of customer facing technologies. This means that as marketers we need to skill up on our technology understanding and particpate in the setting of enterprise wide technology strategy. Lack of understandingWhich brings me to the next hurdle we marketers need to overcome – ignorance! Like any new discipline – we need to get educated. It’s certainly hard to recommend any kind of sensible strategy if the only twitter we know is that annoying sparrow at our window at 5am. But the great thing about social media is that it’s right there – blinking out at us from our mac books, pc’s and mobile phones. It’s built to be easy to use – so it’s now time to spend some time and get to know this new world. Of course if you have the gurus nearby – don’t be afraid to use their passion to learn. Chances are there are one or two gen yers or gen xers floating around the marketing department who are facebook or twitter tragics and who would like nothing better than to be allowed to explore social media as part of their daily grind. The other great thing is that playing in social media is mostly free – or very inexpensive. It’s also easy to put things up and just as easy to take them down – a perfect environment for some experimentation! Ownership, Commitment, ResourcesThe next hurdle to standing in our way – is commitment and resources - how do we get the content out there frequently and rapidly enough to become a credible player. Blogs and tweets work best when they come direct from the subject matter expert – theses are personal mediums and people like to follow people. So the problem for those of us in the investment, superannuation and financial advice business is that the subject matter expert and the communications expert are not generally the same person. Two ends of the same problem can occur – how do you get a subject matter expert to blog or tweet regularly enough if its not their “thing” and equally how do you control the over zealot subject matter expert who has just discovered blogging and tweeting and will not be held back The culture of your business might a play big role in determining what route you choose to pursue – do you have any subject matter experts who are keen to commit to building a profile through blogging and tweeting or do you need to manage it through a corporate blog or twitter account that has a number of contributors to the one account.
- For some different approaches – check out Julie Lee from Bell Direct here in Australia who tweets under belldirect and has about 1200 followers. Vanguard in the USA has recently launched one corporate twitter account vanguard_group but has six key investment and customer service executives who contribute regularly. Vanguard estimates that about 60% to 70% of the messages shared by the six key executives will be their thoughts or commentary on their respective competencies, with the balance being links to content on the main Vanguard site. Putnam also has a twitter account for its CEO as well as the corporate account of putnam today. What’s true about them all is a high level of commitment to the art of twittering – with multiple tweets everyday as a rule. So a consideration for your business as you step into the space – is how committed will the people in your business who you rely on to provide the content be? And how do you manage the workflow to make sure that your content is posted, tweeted and shared in all the right places? – Can you commit the resources to manage the extra compliance cycles and re-writing content to fit or promote on different media. Having a well thought out work-flow strategy is going to be critical. So too is involving the right people who share a commitment to producing for the mediums. Remember the great thing about social media is that allows you to reach a huge audience for a fraction of the cost of traditional media. But what you have to do is commit to regularly providing useful and engaging information and content that people will want to follow.
- Is there anybody out here?While the social media bloggers and gurus will tell you that this is the biggest cultural change since the invention of the training wheel and you need to get your social media strategy firing now before your company is engulfed by a tsunami of competitor blogs, videos and tweets – I think we might all agree that financial services and investing are probably not uppermost in most of the 500 million minds on FaceBook.
- So –with due kudos to Carrie Bradshaw - Are financial advisers and investors really using social media to find out more about investing, superannuation and advice yet? Well what we do know other than the mind blowing stats we showed up front is that according to a recent Nielson survey “Nearly nine in ten Australian Internet users (86%) are looking to their fellow Internet users for opinions and information about products, services and brands.
- We also know that according to the Investment Trends 2009 Investor/Member Communications and Retention Report that two thirds of baby boomers say “no” to financial companies using social website to communicate with them. Compared to the 40% of Gen Xs and 50% of Gen Y’s who say “yes that would be useful” or “I don’t mind”. So is there anyone out there? I guess the answer is - it depends. These numbers would suggest that – no surprises here – if you are after the gen xs and gen ys – they are certainly there and ok with having a conversation with you. The older baby boomers? Maybe not so much – And traditionally our clients – be they advisors or individuals have pretty much come from this group – the pre-retiree and retiree sweet spot as one might say. But the older generations are moving online albeit at a slower pace than their younger counterparts. And the gen xers are quickly moving into our line of vision as they approach the pre-retiree cashed up years.ROI & OutcomesBut as all good things in business – it must finally come down ROI – be that sales or member driven – will this new channel make me sell more stuff?SOCIALNOMICS ROI VIDEO PLAYS 4:14m Lets ask the folks at Socialnomics….
- Well now that we are all feeling very inadequate about our marketing ROI’s - how do we measure the value of social media? I think ultimately sales, more members or customers is where we are trying to get to – but as its early days – do we know the best ways to get there with social media? I think even the huge results referenced in the Socialnomics video - were probably quite unexpected in the main. Marketing budgets in our world have always required us to be creative and get our messages out to our customers in cost effective and resource efficient ways. Well marketers – get excited - before you lies a plethora of ways to amplify your message, build your brand and listen to your customers without having to pay (too much) to play. And we can measure hits, downloads, response rates, comments and the like to help us learn about what works and what doesn’t – and we can adjust our message or delivery strategy as we learn. Which gives us way more flexibility that more traditional advertising or direct marketing medias. Not that I am in anyway saying that traditional medias are not worth our time anymore – they are – particularly given that our audiences are still very much subscribers to newspapers, industry publications and the like. But it is at least worth making a small allocation to experimenting with social media – at the very least to learn more about what might work – and who knows – you may do a Gary Vaynerchuik and increase your company revenues 10 times!
- As the video says “What is the cost of doing nothing? Do you really want to take that risk?
- But beyond the numbers and the fact that Dell made $3m in sales using twitter – consider what some of the gurus in the Socialnomics video had to say The CMO of Ford America James Farley - “You can’t just say it you have to get people to say it to each other”And from Alex Bogusky Co Chair of CP&B Advertising “You can’t buy attention anymore. Having a huge budget doesn’t mean anything in social media. The old paradigm was pay to play. Now you get back what you authentically put in. You’ve got to be willing to PLAY to PLAY.” I think these 2 quotes capture something really important about social media:The power of word of mouth and having others whom your customers know and trust endorse you; andThe possibility to have a very authentic interaction with your customer. By first being able to listen and learn from your customers directly and then being able to really provide them with valuable information that is relevant to them. Our industry is so content and information rich and we have always, I think, struggled to really leverage it effectively. Everyone in our industry strives to be the thought leader – and our ability to impart knowledge and understanding to our customers is seen as truly valuable. It’s at the centre of most of the marketing strategies – we employ. Now we really have the tools in our kitbag to amplify our content to those who are most interested.
- So where to start – what can you do when you get back to work to get the ball rolling? Amplify your contentThe first step is how to get the great information and content you are already creating and set it free! Your video is already out there on your website – why not create a channel for your business on Youtube – and repost it there? There are other content sharing sites you might like to try. SlideShare is the world's largest community for sharing business presentations and documents. It is a great way to market your business, find customers and collect leads. You can upload your presentations and whitepapers and then share them on your blog or website, or send a URL by email. What's more, the transcripts of your files will be indexed by Internet search engines and enhance the search engine ranking of your presentations & documents. Similar is Scribd, which is the largest social publishing and reading site in the world. You can easily turn any file—such as PDF, Word and PowerPoint—into a web document and immediately connect with passionate readers and information-seekers through connected sites such as Facebook or Twitter, LinkedIN and search engines such as Google. Also look into amplifying your content on your own web site though providing a share option where your site visitor can share your content through their own social networks such as – Technocrati, Digg, Delicious, Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Google and LinkedIn
- Make sure you use the available tool to track hits, views, downloads of your content in each of the new social media sites. Hopefully you will start to see some trends in what works and what doesn’t. Take a look at what is already out there about your company – what does your corporate profile say on LinkedIn? Do you have a wikipedia entry. Google your company Search for references in Youtube and Twitter. Dare perhaps to even Google – I hate or I love insert your company name and see what comes up. Do these searches regularly and if you come across user-generated comment – read it, keep a note of it and see if there are patterns. For most of us at this stage there may well not be many user-generated comments out there – so it’s probably any easy thing to keep track of. Hopefully as you post and share your content more broadly the feedback will grow Start now to listen to your customers and what they are saying in the bloggosphere and twittersphere. Spend a bit of time tracking down those who are already out their blogging and twittering on topics such as superannuation, investing and advice. Don’t only read the blogs – look at the user generated comments and see what they are saying. Plus knowing who these bloggers and tweeters are can be very useful. Communicating and building a relationship with them can be a great way to get them to blog about your company or share some of your content with their followers which will amplify your content further and hopefully provide that all important word of mouth endorsement.
- It’s important to not just think about social media as campaigning or short term promotional tools. These will be key platforms for your company client and customer communications – be it for marketing, sales or client service purpose. But it’s likely to start with you in the marketing department. So as you are barrelling through your to do right now list – start thinking about getting set for the long term. Think about your possible endgamesWhat are you trying to achieve: Are you friend raising or fund raising or both?Are you protecting and enhancing your brand?Are you wanting to listen and learn?Are you enhancing your service
- Once you’ve thought about your endgames – decide what social media you want to engage in and what suits your brand. Perhaps you might want to set up special interest blogs or sites or build online communities around particular topics.
- Putnam Investments in the US has created both of these - the retirmentsavingschallenge.com & absolutereturnblog.com and the rothirablog.com. These sites have a more arms length association with Putnam’s site but there is till good integrating and plenty of opportunity to share and comment on the content.
- And think about integration and how content is shared and amplified between different sites and social media’s Both Putnam and Vanguard are good examples of an investment companies starting to leverage their content and integrate well. Take some time to look at their facebook page, youtube channel, itunes podcasts, blog and twitter feed. They are leveraging their content on all the major sites and have integrated them to give a great seamless experience between them all. They also have let followers, fans and customers – comment on content and share it.
- In Australia take a look at kachingkaching – the site HostPLus Super has put together with the Jamie Oliver of financial services – Scott Pape – otherwise known as the barefoot investor. A unique way of engaging with the younger generations to think about their superannuation and financial needs.
- And don’t forget the FPA BlogStar Campaign which featured in last night’s marketing excellence awards.The objective was to Increase awareness of a career in financial planning and give university students genuine insight into the lives of financial planners. The FPA searched Australian universities for a student to become the first ever BlogStar to speak to Gen Y about a career in financial planning using digital and social media. The winning BlogStar interviewed planners, students and key personalities, providing insights into financial planning careers. After the first year 5,591 visits from 3618 unique visitors on www.iplan2.com.au - which represents approximately 40% penetration of the target audience in the 14 target universities. Over 22,600 page views and 4 min+ average time on site - a sign of an engaged and involved audience. An increase in FPA student membership of over 100% in the first year- a positive leading indicator of demand and interest for financial planning careers who most likely intend to pursue financial planning.
- It will be important to decide what kind of profile you want to give to blogging and tweeting talent. Do you have any naturals who you think will commit to the daily cycles of twitter and blogging. Of course a consideration is always managing whose profile gets raised the most – your company’s or the individuals. In some cases where there are no naturals around a more corporate voice might be appropriate. Perhaps even start to think beyond the subject matter expert. In what circumstances might sales people be able to use twitter to build closer relationships with their clients. Or what role can social media play in giving a better customer service experience? Mobile applications are already being provided particularly in retail banking in the USA and Australia and there even a few investment management organization such as Vanguard and Fidelity offering mobile account information and investment news and commentary. Of course managing the workflow and supporting your social media efforts as they grow is worth thinking about. What kind of skill sets will you need – more technology or media skills, producers, different types of communication specialists for example. Even as you start to implement your to do right now’s – managing the flow of content and keeping it regularly refreshed will need some close attention. Start talking too with you IT colleagues about how and where access to different social media and freely available software is used and integrated – best not to leave this until you are ready to launch and find you haven’t got the ground rule worked out.
- Finally start talking to your friends in compliance and legal if you haven’t already. Think about what your corporate policy will be for who is allowed to blog or tweet about what. Think about the rules surrounding what comments you will and won’t respond to for example. Take another look at some of the rules set out on the Putnam site as to how they deal with this. The good news is that there already plenty of end-to-end social media compliance solutions out there that enable firms to do everything from automatically enforce corporate policies, approve/reject social media messages, determine enabled features on social networking sites and provide storage, archiving and supervision.But if you do only but one thing now or down the track start learning. For those of building careers in marketing we have no choice but to become social media experts. So if you aren’t already – get a facebook account, update your linkedin profile and maybe start tweeting or at least following a few who do. You might also be surprised at the communities of interest that exist out there for you to not only learn from and engage with. LinkedIn has many professional groups that share information on marketing, branding and social media specifically with our industry. A new one that loos interesting is SocialTurns – which is aiming to bring together Financial Services professionals PR, Marketing, Compliance and Technology backgrounds to discuss social media issues, best practices and news.But at endgame – we would like to help foster the conversation for Australian professionals and as such we have set up a group on LinkedIn calls the Financial Services Marketers Forum to keep us all talking and learning. We have posted some of the content from today on their already to get the ball rolling as well as posing a couple of questions that we hope will get the conversation started. Look out for an email inviting you to join!