Social Media for Financial Communicators

Filed under Discussion by Allan Schoenberg on 22 June 2010 at 14:18 {no comments}

Last week the exchange co-sponsored the Ragan Communications Social Media for Financial Communicators event with our business partner NASDAQ OMX. You can review the entire event on the Facebook page created by Ragan. I was encouraged by the content of this event since it was so narrowly defined for financial communications – and I think a vertical industry focus is certainly the next big phase in social media. And even though the financial services industry is heavily regulated, there were many great examples of companies using various platforms. ragan conf

If you attended this event you came away thinking, “There really are few reasons to not be doing social media.” Kudos to Mark Ragan and his great staff for putting this event together. I wasn’t able to attend every session but here are my reactions from the panels I did watch.

Be the brand: I have always said that social media at the exchange was never a silver bullet. I think companies that take the approach that social media can “save” their brand are misguided. It must fit within your existing brand and support various initiatives.  Steve O’Halloran from ING Direct discussed this during his presentation. He used many real world examples of what ING Direct has done with social media to reemphasize all of the qualities that make the bank unique, fun and a leader in its category (NOTE: I am not currently an ING Direct customer). In particular, Steve showed how they are really helping customers online to learn more about saving money and promote financial advocacy. And even though ING Direct does not have bank branches they do have some of the best cafes to visit. What are you doing to reinforce your brand in social media?

Social media for investor relations is coming…are you ready?: I was pleased to hear from Phil Pearlman at StockTwits that they are soon launching an investor relations tool on their site. We’ve talked about StockTwits before on B2B Voices as an investor relations tool and this is positive news. While this isn’t live yet I’m sure given the focus of the team at StockTwits that this will be a great application and take their offering to another level. If you have yet to visit StockTwits you should check it out — especially if you work for a publicly traded company. What I like most about the potential of this tool is the ability for public relations and investor relations to collaborate more online using social media. Ironically, NIRI’s annual conference took place a few weeks ago and from people I know who attended the discussion around social media was a footnote. This could be a great opportunity for you to work with your finance team and play a key role in educating your C-suite about social media.

And now  word from the journalists. A panel of financial journalists — Felix Salmon, Reuters; Stacey-Marie Ismael, FT Alphaville; Connell McShane, FOX Business — answered questions about their use of social media. I was lucky enough to sit on the panel representing the interests of communicators. Felix blogged about the conference and his thoughts on why companies should be using Twitter. One of the key takeaways for me about the panel is that they are all connected to and use Twitter daily — not so much as a broadcast medium but for a way to monitor trends/issues and meet new people (potential sources). I commented, and I think the panel agreed, that Twitter really is not the platform to pitch reporters, but because of its simplicity and real-time information sharing it’s the place to build trust and relationships with reporters.

Enthusiasm. While I didn’t hear any breaking news from Demetrios Skalkotos of NASDAQ OMX about using social media what I did takeaway is that enthusiasm matters. That’s not to take any credibility away from him or NASDAQ OMX — he and the company know what they’re doing in social media. But it was the enthusiasm from Demetrios that really stood out to me and if you’ve ever seen him speak you know what I’m talking about. It’s this kind of passion for our work that makes a difference — whether it’s social media, advertising, writing, design or video production. His presentation was the perfect way to end the two-day event since he left all of us feeling as if we could go back to our job and make things happen. That’s just the type of leadership you need, especially when you are pursing something so new and rapidly changing as social media.

I was also fortunate to present about CME group with my colleague Michael Shore and a copy of our presentation can be found over on SlideShare. If you happened to attend the event what was your takeaway? Share your thoughts about the conference here or if you didn’t attend let us know your reaction to some of my thoughts above.

Enhanced by Zemanta

What B2B communicators can learn from the 2010 World Cup

Filed under Discussion, Soap Box by Allan Schoenberg on 14 June 2010 at 10:09 {one comment}

2010-FIFA-world-CupFor those of you who don’t know already I am a long time supporter/player of soccer (football).  I actually attended the first week of the 2006 World Cup in Germany and watching it so far has me wishing I was in South Africa. This year I am paying attention via the Internet and TV. The World Cup is by far the world’s most watched sporting event (about seven times larger than the Super Bowl) so there’s a lot at stake (this is a great report on the Economics of the World Cup). With the World Cup now fully upon us there already are some great lessons to be learned for communicators. Here are my thoughts.

  • Competition — In some cases rivalries in the World Cup can be extremely competitive based not only by the demands of the tournament but also for other reasons — think England v. Argentina; USA v. Mexico; Germany v. Netherlands; N. Korea v. S. Korea. How do you approach your competition? Do you study them with the passion of a world class manager? Do you understand and exploit their weaknesses? Sometimes the preparation for these matches is more important than the match itself.
  • Media — Yes, the press can be relentless. Ask Robert Green of England. But guess what? I bet it doesn’t phase Green or the England team at all. Why? Because they are used to that type of scrutiny day in and day out playing in Europe. Are you ready for that type of scrutiny by the media? How would your team react to a negative story? Do you bounce back because you know you have a winning strategy and coach your management team to look beyond the headline? Does it rally your employees? Or does it rattle you so much your team can’t perform?
  • Social media — Nike launched it’s World Cup commercial not via TV, but via social media. It now has more than 15 million views on YouTube alone. We’re also seeing Twitter struggle to keep up with all of the World Cup tweets (hopefully they will realize they need to build a world-class network). And there are numerous players now using Twitter to discuss what is happening in South Africa. How are you using social media to talk about your company? Are you just using tools to talk or are you looking at the right tools to listen and converse with your audiences?
YouTube Preview Image
  • Fans — If you are following the action on Twitter or watching it on TV (or lucky enough to be in South Africa), you already know that people are passionate about not just their team, but their country. Look at the Netherland supporters in their orange. The Brazilian supporters dancing and cheering. Watch closely at the other countries and how their fans sing, cheer and support their team for 90 minutes each match. There is a tremendous amount of pride that comes with supporting your team/country. How are you instilling this into your fan base/followers? Are you making them truly your fans or just treating them like customers?
  • Fatigue – Players in the major European leagues may not say it, but they have to be tired. Between league matches, cup matches and recent friendly/exhibition matches it will be interesting to see how players last. Fatigue will play a factor for communicators as well in our now 24/7 connected world. My suggestion — take a break from the marketing madness to recharge (my choice of relaxation is my kids). You’ll be a better person for it and a better communicator.
  • Technology – Adidas invests lot of resources to build the perfect ball for the World Cup. And this year there is a lot of criticism over how it was designed and how it reacts. It could be factor in games (or at least an excuse). How are you taking advantage of the technology your company has at its disposal? In addition, don’t forget to include your InfoSec team as we discussed here earlier.

Hopefully this makes you look at the World Cup in a slightly different view as you watch the games for the first time or if you’re an experienced World Cup fan. How else do you see this global competition changing the way you look at your job? Let us know.

Guest Post: How B2B Companies Can Use Video/Photos in Social Media

Filed under Guest Post by Allan Schoenberg on 9 June 2010 at 11:23 {2 comments}

By Leyla Arsan, Lotus Marketing Services

As a small business owner who utilizes Social Media for her own marketing efforts, I often think of how I can better assist my B2B clients more effectively manage their social media efforts.  I start by clarifying what social media means to me; social media is not just Facebook & Twitter, those are just two components. Social Media is an all-encompassing effort that stretches into blogging, photo sharing, slide sharing, video, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn – anything that helps you connect with your customers in a less traditional, or more social, way.  This particular post will detail a few ways in which B2B marketers can utilize visual imagery and rich media to assist in social media marketing efforts.

Flickr
While building my business as an event marketer, I started to use Flickr to host photos of client events. I would share these photos with clients post-event and reference the photos when pitching new clients or discussing my capabilities.  Flickr is an affordable service, easy to use, and well known, so it made great sense to use it for business.

After a short time, I noticed that the photos I posted, when properly tagged and titled, were being searched and found by Google & Yahoo (and sometimes other search engines like Bing and Ask.com).  I stumbled upon this inadvertently as I perused my Flickr analytics.

I produce B2B events – post tradeshow events, customer events, customer appreciation, etc. Eventually, I started to take photos at every event where a number of photos were specifically taken for the benefit of potential new clients. I post these photos to my Flickr stream in properly marked folders or sets.  I then use the Google keyword tool – http://www.google.com/sktool to find relevant keywords to tag my pictures. I search the keywords as a customer would when searching the web to find an agency that provides the services that I provide.  I can even search keywords used by my competitors.

The photos potentially show up in search results and individuals click and navigate to my Flickr stream. I say “potentially” because I don’t want to mislead, it is not a magic bullet, you don’t tag a photo and POOF your photo shows up at the top of the Google search.  In addition to tagging, I make certain that each photo has my company URL in the “description” of the photo.  Some people watermark their photos, I don’t and if you read on you will see why.

When possible, I allow my photos to be used by others in a non-commercial manner (check Flickr’s Creative Commons). This further exposes my photos when they’re added to other blogs and websites. According to the Creative Commons rules, when an individual uses my photo, they must link back to my Flickr stream or my website, this helps drive more traffic to my stream.

YouTube
I could make this portion about “video” as opposed to YouTube because there are other services out there like Vimeo.  I use both services, but for search purposes, YouTube is currently the best bet.

I personally do not use video much as I would like, so I reached out to colleagues for their personal best practices regarding marketing with video.  A former client who is a corporate communications manager of a leading flexible packaging company gave me some great insight on how he employs video for social media marketing.

The company has produced a couple of short videos that were rolled out on YouTube. The videos were produced in-house on a shoestring budget and each video was no more than five minutes long. The content was product driven – showcasing new products and providing added information on existing products. The videos were then shared the on Twitter, YouTube and the company website. The goal was to inform their Twitter followers (mainly customers, potential customers and journalists) about current products and any new products in development.

Though there was an initial jump traffic to the company website, this spike was temporary. Unfortunately, their marketing department is not equipped with the manpower to take on the task of defining and executing a strong social media marketing campaign.  They believe if they were able to dedicate the appropriate resources, the response would be more favorable.

The greatest obstacle the packaging company faced in regards to video was determining what content best suited their business objectives. With so many different product lines, determining what would generate the best results proved to be difficult.

In the first video, they promoted a new product in a way that unintentionally ghosted the deficiencies of another product line.  They ended up pulling the video. But with all marketing, not excluding social media marketing, testing is imperative.  The great advantage of social media is the simplicity of pulling a promotion.

The company found that the greatest benefit of the video campaign was that marketing did not have to rely on the sales team to visit a customer or to introduce new items.  Social media can be used as an extension of the sales team, particularly when one may be dealing with an older sales team that is slower at introducing new concepts and products to customers.  If your customer is following you on Twitter, they know what you are doing all the time.  It can significantly increase your speed to market with a product or service and can cut costs of doing mass mailings.

When asked if he felt social media were right for the packaging industry, the answer was simple. “If the staff and support were in place to plan a good social media campaign, it would add great benefit.” Many trade publications, journalists, editors of industry publications and packaging designers are on Twitter.  The individuals who work in the communications field of the packaging industry help the manufacturers get the word.

Research Firm Updates Business Technology Buyers Report: Social Media On the Rise

Filed under Discussion by Aaron Pearson on 3 June 2010 at 13:14 {one comment}

I’m a little slow on the uptake with this one but I wanted to flag Forrester’s report, “Social Technographics: Business Technology Buyers,” which came out about a month ago (April 28) and looks at the social media habits of business technology decision-makers. Good quantitative research into B2B social media usage is fairly thin. If you have access to the full report, it’s worth a review.  Also a summary from B2B Online here.

It shows, not surprisingly, that penetration of social media continues to increase. For instance, 46 percent of business technology decision-makers have joined a social networking site for business purposes, compared with 29 percent in last year’s study. Of those, a third are “Creators,” which means they engage in activities such as publishing a blog, uploading videos or writing and posting articles. Forty-five percent are “Critics,” posting reviews of products or services, commenting on others’ blogs, or contributing to forums or wikis. (Obviously, individuals could select more than one category.)

On the other hand, the report suggests that the sexy public social media services like Twitter or blogs may not be helping B2B tech companies much, compared to information sources like forums and wikis. Moreover, traditional sources of information – your website (note, I am using the new AP standard, people), sales person, tradeshows, etc. – rank higher in importance.

This is a pretty good study, as the group surveyed numbers more than 1,000 across four countries, although the weighting has shifted from a bit more than half the respondents representing IT vs. line of business to more than 70 percent coming from IT. On the other hand, as with all studies like this, you don’t want to over-read the conclusions.

For one thing, people are notoriously bad at evaluating their own behavior.  Evidence: The Economist recently reported on a UK study of television and video viewing habits and found the public badly understated the amount of time they watched live television and badly overstated their use of online video.

The other concern is that the wording of the question (“Which of the following sources of information impact your purchase decision-making process?”) will understate the impact of the earlier stages of the purchase process.

Flickr via LawsonComm

Flickr from LawsonComm

I mentioned in my last post the concept of an “Awareness-to-Advocate Process Path” – the journey people take from being aware of a need to ultimately becoming a customer and advocate for your product or service and the different information sources they use along the way.  It generally starts with awareness of need, advances to understanding of product category that meets that need, then to a consideration set (i.e. a short list), ultimately to a selection, and if the customer has a positive experience, he or she ultimately becomes a brand advocate.

So where does Twitter have the most impact? Where do blogs have the most impact?  Given that they are good at making you aware of new issues, help you identify new experts, and perhaps make you aware of new brands, I’d say they are heavily weighted towards the front half of the Path. As a result, their influence may be less obvious.

It’s also worth noting that word of mouth was the most influential information source, which is consistently what every report I ever see shows. Let’s keep in mind that word of mouth is social media community-building gone inline – it can happen via email, Twitter or around a campfire. Prepare for them all. (hmm, camping trip as trade show…) Moreover, the best way for you to arm those word of mouth advocates will likely come from an inline blend of in-person events like conferences and digital connections like social media, even if they themselves influence future customers via traditional channels like phone calls, face-to-face meetings and email.

Finally, it goes without saying that IT people are different creates from line-of-business decision-makers and habits also vary by industry. It’s best to do your own research on your own target audience.

Bad Behavior has blocked 776 access attempts in the last 7 days.