Month: July 2011

10 Commandments of Social Media for Financial Services

Financial Services National Regulatory Authority (FINRA), “the largest independent regulator for all securities firms doing business in the United States,” issued Regulatory Notice 10-06, a set of ten social media guidelines for financial firms and their registered representatives, in Question and Answer form, recognizing that “Americans are increasingly using social media.”
More recently, on June 28, 2011, at the IRI Government, Legal and Regulatory Conference, in Washington, D.C., Richard G. Ketchum, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of FINRA, issued a statement that FINRA’s “goal is to provide further guidance on these issues in a Notice to be published later this year.”

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12 Most Important Ways to Build Relationships and Get ROR

If you want to continue to reach your market in this social media age, the marketing focus needs to be on building relationships, and metrics need to expand beyond ROI (Return on Investment) to include ROR: Return on Relationship. So how do you build and strengthen relationships with your audience (as a whole, and as individuals) to increase your ROR? Here are 12 ways to do so:

1. Listen

If you want to be heard above the growing social media “noise,” you need to first listen to your consumers so when you do speak, you get it right.  What are they saying, what are they feeling, what are their pain points, what solutions do they need?

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Dead Man Blogging

“Here it is. I’m dead, and this is my last post to my blog.”

I’ve been haunted since I read those words a few weeks ago.

Jenn Whinnem had hosted a discussion on {grow} about our digital footprint and the implications when we die. Johnny Russo, added a link to a post by Derek K. Miller, who wrote his farewell to his blog community and family in anticipation of his death from a terminal disease.  It is a stunning, poignant, post and it ends perfectly.  “I loved you, I loved you, I loved you.”

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How Do You Handle Social Media While on Vacation?

I was going to talk to you today about goals. After all, we’re now in the second half of the year (can you believe it?!) and it’s a good time to see if you’re on track and consider any adjustments that need to be made.

But, I decided that no one wants to talk about goals when we’re headed into a long weekend. I know I don’t.So, instead we’re going to talk about something far more fun – VACATION! 

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@ is the Universal Sign of Engagement

For decades, companies were very good at pushing messages into markets and talking at people rather than with them. Now companies are embracing the idea of two-way interaction. Monitoring conversations is becoming standard procedure as small and enterprise businesses alike make substantial investments in tools such as Radian6, Sprial16 and Brandtology. And, not only are companies monitoring conversations, they’re adopting social media management systems (SMMS) such as Seesmic and CoTweet to operationalize conversations and platforms such as Objective Marketer, PeopleBrowsr and Buddy Media to automate engagement campaigns.

There’s a difference between monitoring and listening and there’s certainly a difference between conversations and engagement. How social media is employed today promotes monitoring as a reporting function and conversations as a symptom of reaction. In many ways, the state of social media is eerily reminiscent of traditional marketing. We’re fooled into a sense of collaboration and co-creation because people can respond. But programs are not measured by functionality, they are valued by the value customers take away from the experience. It begs the question, is social media in actuality anti-social?

New media philosophies, while rich with good intentions, are confined by the culture of the organization they’re designed to help. Corporate culture is pervasive and planted. It is not anything that will change suddenly because of the popularity of Twitter and Facebook no matter how strong your case. Culture shock takes place because a business is subjected to the harsh reality that customers no longer support the way business is conducted.

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Don’t overlook the Baby Boomers!

If you think that the place to reach Baby Boomers (born between 1946 – 1964) is anywhere that does not include technology, think again!  Boomers in the U.S. are technology-savvy enough to comprise 1/3 of all TV viewers, online users, social media users and Twitter users.

If that’s not enough to make you think twice about where you’re putting your social media marketing dollars, consider that there are 78 million Boomers in the U.S., many who have “shown a willingness to try new brands and products.” In fact, they spend 38.5% of CPG dollars! (source: Nielsen).  You can’t afford to overlook them!

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