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. 
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.
