2012: No Predictions, Just Actions

Filed under Application, Discussion, Soap Box by Allan Schoenberg on 21 December 2011 at 08:20 {7 comments}

Everyone seems to have dusted off their crystal balls the past few weeks as the predictions for social media in 2012 are plentiful. I  stopped reading them. There are only a handful of people who are making predictions that I would trust, and after seeing so many most are not taking into account the current economic climate and the themes are too repetitive.

Instead of adding to the overcrowded space of predictions I want to focus on actions. The path for next year is clearly lined with more questions than answers. So, what am I looking at in 2012, a year clouded with economic uncertainty and promises for social media nirvana? Here’s a rundown of what’s on my agenda and questions you may need to ask yourself:

What's ahead for you in 2012?

  • Digital Content: We’re doing a lot more with digital content on our website and that will continue. What we’ve learned from the past few years of doing social media is that we have become our own media aggregator with original content that cannot be captured anywhere else. Whether it’s our blog, our online magazine, our media room or our education center, various stakeholders look to us for content and we will continue to drive more of that next year. What are your plans for digital content in 2012? Have you developed an editorial calendar? Do you have an editorial team?
  • Mobile: This was a great year for us and using mobile devices as we expanded our iPhone/iPad offering to the Android and Blackberry. In addition, we introduced an app specifically for our annual Global Financial Leadership event. Our research continues to show that users are moving more and more toward accessing our site from mobile devices and we know that consumers in general are digesting more information via their mobile devices. We will continue to enhance our mobile strategy in 2012 not only for distributing content through social platforms but also for giving people access to our information. How are you integrating mobile into your marketing strategy? What type of research do you have on people accessing your content from mobile devices?
  • Real-time matters: We’ve been using Twitter since 2008 and are one of the few verified brands. In our line of business, real-time news and information matters and for the markets and finance this won’t change. David Meerman Scott’s latest book on real-time marketing captures exactly how we approach this world of instant news. Where we’ll be looking at improving on what we’ve already accomplished is with our partnership with StockTwits. Messages about our products and services in the past year surged from 15,000 a month a year ago to more than 40,000 a month last year on their platform. Does real-time matter to you and your business? Are you targeting the right people on Twitter? Do you have a plan for how you can leverage StockTwits and the messages about your company?
  • Social networks: Facebook will still be a part of our plan and remains a great way to connect with customers in a more static environment. We can create very topical conversations around news and events on our page and that won’t change. We do know that Facebook fans are passionate about topics and the stream has changed our approach to this platform and has helped in creating more awareness about our offerings. We can’t ignore either of those facts. The challenge for 2012 will be to figure out how to use our Google+ page, but first I think Google needs to figure out Google+ for brands. I don’t see a lot of focus there yet from Google so do not plan to spend much time there. At the best right now it’s an experiment in SEO. How are you going to handle new technologies that come out in 2012? Do you have an assessment plan or team in place?
  • LinkedIn: I am a long-time fan of LinkedIn for the B2B market and am very excited about 2012. The company has made some great changes to the corporate pages managed by companies and added a much needed dashboard for group managers. Both of these additions have been much needed and further enhance LinkedIn as a social business platform. We continue to leverage the groups and the private feature has allowed us to create a 24/7 virtual focus group environment where we talk with our customers. We will putting more emphasis on LinkedIn in the coming year and finding ways to better improve what we do for the benefit of our customers. How do you leverage the groups on LinkedIn? Is your company page a place where potential employees view you as a thought leader? How do you get others in your organization involved in LinkedIn?
  • Video: We do have a YouTube presence, but our video strategy continues to focus on bringing people to our location. Our website continues to be populated with video content in a number of places and videos allow us to visually tell our story through our spokespeople, customers and thought leaders. We’ll continue to build content that includes video as a key component and through our social platforms bring this content to our followers. How are you leveraging videos? What is your distribution plan? Do you use video to complement content?
  • Metrics: I’ve always believed that in order to manage content you have to know what is happening. So metrics and measurement continue to play a very active part of what we do and this will continue to be the trend for us in 2012. We have a number of tools that we use that include both qualitative and quantitative metrics for us to better understand what we are doing. Are you measuring the right information? How are you making decisions based on your data?
  • Experiment: We did a lot in 2011 to try new things and apply new technologies. For example, we integrated Facebook comments onto our digital magazine, started using Google+ brand pages, launched our Weibo account in China, and made several changes to our LinkedIn company profile. In the coming year we will continue to do the same and experiment where it makes sense. New technologies and enhancements are now the norm and finding ways to leverage them will be a challenge. How do you stay on top of the latest information? Do you have a social team to review and plan for new initiatives? How do you prioritize what to implement and where to hold off?
  • A Social Business: In 2011, we continued to integrate our social media with our business. One of the best posts I’ve read on this topic is from David Armano and Demystifying Social Business. When I started using social media at the company in 2007 it very much was a silo channel for us, but in the past year we have made great strides as an organization to integrate it throughout the company. That will continue in 2012 with our sales force, marketing activities and with our employees. How do you communicate your social initiatives internally? Have you implemented any training or education programs? Do you have social guidelines for employees and if so when was the last time you reviewed it?

The coming year promises to be another exciting year for communicators. We will not only face a global economy that has numerous challenges for our businesses, but we are being inundated with new and various tools to communicate with our stakeholders. Finding the balance between those two will help determine success for each of our enterprises and I wish you all the best of luck.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

Finally, a comprehensive B2B social media study

World-Class social practices for B2B companies

Are you ready for a real-time B2B world?

Using social networking sites in B2B businesses?

B2B Creativity is Not an Oxymoron

Filed under Discussion, Resources, Soap Box by Allan Schoenberg on 28 November 2011 at 07:39 {2 comments}

One of the myths around B2B communications is that the industry lacks creativity – or the drive to be creative. I can’t think of anything that’s farther from the truth. And while it’s true that B2B companies don’t buy the flashy Super Bowl ads or use various mascots to win over customers, we are challenged day in and day out to think differently.

Another Lego creation at home.

Just like with B2C companies, creativity can be driven by a company’s culture. We’ve always been focused as an organization on innovation, which is why we’ve been so successful at trying new things, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and mobile devices. Ben Parr over at Mashable posted last year how B2B companies will be using social media as part of their creative campaigns. And Aaron Pearson just posted here on B2B Voices a post on world-class B2B social practices that’s a must read.

But there are some rules and guidelines to follow.

  1. Your ideas should always be in line with the brand you are trying to convey. Don’t be creative just for the sake of being creative. While this can work more in the B2C space, it rarely works with B2B companies. We have fewer opportunities to sell our products and services and every opportunity counts. In addition, B2B purchases are usually long-term investments by companies and they want to trust you. Any creativity — whether its very smart and interesting or immature and insulting — will reflect back on your organization.
  2. Study the competition — and be better — don’t copy or instigate them. Your competitors can always give you new ideas and thoughts, but I’ve seen B2B companies try to take on their competition head to head in ads and direct mail. That’s hard to pull off successfully (it can be done) and I always feel it’s better to focus on your strengths than your competitors weaknesses in paid campaigns. Save your competitive arguments for non-paid mediums such as your website and the media.
  3. Always be thinking about driving sales for the organization — this means being fully integrated. We know in B2B the sales process and cycle is much longer than in most B2C decisions, so you will need to think long-term for your campaign. If you are thinking of a new creative campaign it needs to play out online, at trades shows, through direct mail and in person. “One hit wonders”, like a weekend sale, are simply not the norm for B2B campaigns.
  4. Take risks, but know your limits. Good creativity helps you to stand out, but as you think about how creative you should be and how you will use the ideas read points 1 – 3 above.

Here are some other ideas from Marketo on being creative in B2B communications. It’s worth a read if you are looking to learn more about this topic.

I’ve been lucky to work on both national and international B2B and B2C campaigns in my career and personally I’m glad I’ve gravitated into strictly B2B. The creative challenges are different. They are more demanding. They require more time to succeed. And they need more buy-in from the organization. Not to take anything away from B2C creativity, it’s still demanding, but I’ve always liked that challenges and pressure as a professional of being more creative in B2B communications.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

Finally, a comprehensive B2B social media study

World-Class social practices for B2B companies

Are you ready for a real-time B2B world?

Using social networking sites in B2B businesses?

LinkedIn Becomes More Relevant for B2B Communicators

Filed under Application, Discussion, Resources by Allan Schoenberg on 11 November 2011 at 06:20 {3 comments}

LinkedIn continues to be enhance its platform for B2B communicators. Last month the company announced that companies could stream news and information from its corporate page. That was a small change and a much needed addition. But a much bigger change has just happened.

When LinkedIn went public I wrote about some new things for the company to invest in and focus on, and one of those was a dashboard. Yesterday, the company announced that an analytics dashboard is now live within groups. This is a game changer for LinkedIn but also for all of us.

LinkedIn Dashboard

It’s no secret that I am a believer in the power of LinkedIn Groups. We use them extensively at our company. But the lack of data and information have made them a guessing game for marketers and human resource managers. LinkedIn says the dashboard for groups will be updated every day — something that would be expected and critical to the success of this tool.  The addition of data points about group members can help in two key ways:

  • Demographics. You can now see by title, demographics, industry and function who is in your group. For highly targeted product groups like we do, if you’re trying to reach senior managers in the Ukraine in the agriculture market you now can get a clear view. For larger groups that are more focused on a topic, the dashboard gives you an accurate display of who is interested in order to help better facilitate conversations and connections.
  • Discussions. Views on comments and discussions posted help show how active the group is and if you are facilitating conversations among the group. While this is a great view, this part of the dashboard still needs work in order to better drill down. I would like to see the dashboard to start to include information on who is most active at posting, commenting and sharing information. It would also be helpful to see which posts are most read by the group in order to focus further content.

One thing I also like is that you can see the data for any group. LinkedIn did not fence this data just for group managers. As a member of several groups on LinkedIn, I like that openness and transparency since I can now better determine which groups are worth my time and effort.

It was only a matter of time before this tool became available and there’s no doubt more changes will be coming. This initial launch was well done by LinkedIn and has already helped me get a better understanding of the groups we manage and how we can further achieve our sales and marketing goals.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

CME Group Builds Impact on LinkedIn Using Exclusive Groups

Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups

What the LinkedIn IPO Could Mean for B2B Communicatons

What’s your “I” in social media?

Why LinkedIn’s Company Pages Now Matter More

Why LinkedIn’s Company Pages Now Matter More

Filed under Case Study, Discussion, Resources by Allan Schoenberg on 10 October 2011 at 06:57 {5 comments}

With one small update, LinkedIn made the company pages more releevant and more competitive with other social platforms last week. The new company updates feature allows the administrator for a company’s page on LinkedIn to now add news and share links that feed into the page’s stream. In addition, the stream for company’s you like will now be udpated on your own LinkedIn home page. I’ve been a long-time supporter of the group’s feature on LinkedIn to promote our company, and we use LinkedIn group’s as internal focus groups.

CME Group on LinkedIn

Prior to this update, administrators for the page could only update company basic information and facts — addresses, blog URL, number of employees, etc. Not a very compelling reason to visit the page. If you have been following companies you like via the LinkedIn “follow” button you know there is value in connecting with a company and its people. However, there was little incentive to revisit a company page once you started to follow it. As an administrator of our page on LinkedIn we’ve already started using the new updates feature to post and share news and information about the company. The new updates now allow an administrator to play a more active role in promoting the company and brand and makes a company more visible.

Why does this matter?

  • You have a highly targeted audience that is looking for information about your company. You can now share relevant information that matters to you and them.
  • The analytics portion of the LinkedIn company pages continues to get better and adding this feature should help you correlate more data.
  • Using URL tracking and analytics, you should try to develop and track use of the page and how it correlates to your other communications activities.
  • Anyone who is following your company will now see these updates in their own home page stream, which makes your updates more visible to the people who follow it. This should make your company page a more active landing page.

As next steps, if you play a role in your company’s social media efforts you will want to connect with your company’s page administrator and gain access if you have not already. Also, follow other companies that are now using the new update and benchmark your efforts against them. Finally, figure out how you want to use your LinkedIn company page and the new stream — will it be a job posting venue, industry news source, or a platform to promote your product efforts.

You can also connect with me on LinkedIn here: Allan Schoenberg LinkedIn

If you enjoyed this post you may also want to read:

Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups

What the LinkedIn IPO Could Mean for B2B Communicatons

What’s your “I” in social media?


What the LinkedIn IPO could mean for B2B communicators

Filed under Discussion, Soap Box by Allan Schoenberg on 18 May 2011 at 07:03 {6 comments}

Tomorrow marks another milestone for social media with LinkedIn’s IPO. You can catch up on the latest news here: Forbes, Fortune, Deal Journal, TRB, Term Sheet, Mashable. But as this story in Bloomberg details, LinkedIn gets “70 percent of revenue from business subscriptions, a model that’s similar to Salesforce.com.” So perhaps instead of treating LinkedIn like social media perhaps its future is more like the CRM model. With that in mind I wanted to offer my thoughts on how it can make improvements as a better resource for marketing and sales.

For those of you who read this blog regularly and know me, I am a long-time supporter of LinkedIn. The network, more so than other online platform, is a transparent resource for businesses — I can see your work history, your real name and what people are saying about you through recommendations. With a reputation for catering to recruiters and job seekers for so long, the company has really made some great improvements in the last two years to become much more useful to communicators. And they will continue to build these services out post IPO.

With a fresh round of cash in its coffers expected tomorrow — estimated at $340 million — what’s next for the social med…er…CRM company? Here are a few things I hope they are considering:

Company Pages

The company pages section in my opinion seems to be the most lacking in functionality for LinkedIn. You are fairly limited as to what you can do on this page and I would like to see that expanded. For instance, having our Twitter feed on this page would seem like an easy add-on given their partnership. As much as I understand this is a career networking site, the profiles they feature are not very useful. What would be helpful is if they could show those people’s status updates, groups they’ve joined and other relevant information. The space these profiles are taking up is valuable real estate. I would also like to see the ability to add more RSS feeds. Finally, I would to have the ability to customize this page — let me choose which items I add and where to put them. The analytics they provide to this page are excellent and I hope they continue to build that out for the benefit of recruiters and marketers.

Group Pages

We use the Group Pages functionality in many ways and I’ve written here about not overlooking groups for B2B companies. One change they made for groups that I wish they would use in Company Page is the scrolling headline of posts. This is extremely useful to see who and what’s been posted. And similar to my thoughts on the Company page, I would like to have the ability for more customization. One thing that Facebook has done really well with the company pages is just this — the ability to add and delete tabs and features. Facebook makes me feel as if our company page is our company page. On LinkedIn I still feel that our pages are us on LinkedIn. LinkedIn also needs to look for more add-ons to the group pages. I honestly feel like we could do so much more with polls, events and even careers. Finally, where they really need to step up is in analytics for group managers. This option is simply non-existent and the company needs to figure our a better way for us to analyze, evaluate and measure our group pages. At this point it’s a guessing game with no historical evidence or info to measure against.

Build a Dashboard

The company clearly does a great job at connecting people, but they need to do a much better job at connecting information. What I mean is that I wish they would do a better job connecting all of the things I do on LinkedIn. Not only do I manage several of our group pages, but I’m also a member of other communication groups, formers employers’ groups and university groups. I would like LinkedIn to figure out what all of this means not only to me but to the people and groups I’m connected to. For the most part, I feel inundated with information from LinkedIn — from email notices by groups and posts, connection notices, the stream on the site, the addition of the news feature — forcing me to make sense of all of this does no one any good. In reality, the company should build a dashboard that I can customize (e.g. think MyLinkedIn as your home page) and view with real-time information.

Make Me Pay

Yes, that’s right. I’d pay. Similar to the model for recruiters who have to pay for services this model should be used for marketers as well. If the company goes down the path of integrating with Salesforce.com, provide deeper analytics and gives me useful options to add content I’d pay.

What did I miss? Let me know what you think.

We’ll see how well the market receives the listing in 24 hours. And of course, if we aren’t connected on LinkedIn let’s do so. You can find my profile here.

If you enjoyed this you may also want to read:

Don’t overlook the power of LinkedIn Groups

What’s your “I” in social media?

Using social networking sites in B2B businesses

Finally, a comprehensive B2B social media study

What’s on tap for the B2B Voices team in 2011?

Filed under Discussion by Allan Schoenberg on 25 January 2011 at 06:03 {no comments}

With a new year comes new priorities and objectives. Each of us at B2B Voices decided to share with you what we’re working on for 2011, and hopefully in December we can all say we’ve achieved our goals. Share with us in the comments what you hope to accomplish as well.

Allan Schoenberg

In January I relocated to London for CME Group to take on a new role and new challenges for the company heading up all of our international communication efforts. While I will still be managing our presence in the social media landscape, we obviously are looking to expand in that area overseas as well. As our business continues to grow throughout Europe and Asia, we have been aggressively pursuing more ways to communicate our brand attributes and strengths of our business. My expanded role at CME Group is an exciting time professionally and personally for me. So this year expect to see more regular media coverage of CME Group throughout Europe and Asia, including profile stories, product and service news, and having the company more woven into the fabric of the London business scene.

Aaron Pearson

In January, I shivered in the cold while watching with envy as Allan relocated to London. I have a couple big professional priorities for the year. First, I’m hoping not to bomb out teaching an executive education class on social media marketing at the University of St. Thomas with Weber Shandwick Digital Strategist and Vice President Andy Keith (builds on this course). That’s partly why I’ve been doing more social media book-reading – I need to make sure I have a good handle on perspectives and experiences beyond my own. Second, as the head of our vertical market segment, I’m trying to focus a great deal on growing our healthcare IT work.  It’s the hottest B2B vertical market out there and we have a good base of experience to tap. Finally, we’re trying to take more of our clients’ B2B social media efforts beyond pilots to full-fledged efforts that deliver measurable impact. Social media engagement really is perfect for connecting niche B2B audiences into global communities, and yet there’s a lot more experimentation and innovation today on the B2C side. I have a major client playing in a blurry space between B2B and B2C and that should be a great sweet spot for showcasing how this can really work – stay tuned.

Arik Hanson:

For me, in many ways, 2011 will be a building year. On the business side, I’ll be building on the first year of my new digital communications consulting business, ACH Communications. Year one exceeded almost every expectation I had–but in 2011, I’m looking to take that success to the next level. That doesn’t necessarily mean growing my business (although that appears to be happening whether I want it to or not). It means finding ways to work smarter. And stay ahead of the digital curve. And, finding ways to deliver outstanding value for my clients. Professionally, I’m hoping to build on a number of events I helped run or found in 2011. I’m working with PR leaders across the country to formalize the Help a PR Pro Out (HAPPO) organization a bit–we will have big news to share about a great Feb. event soon. I’m working with my colleague and friend Melissa Berggren to take the MN Blogger Conference event and build that out a bit with additional events in 2011. And, I’m hoping to play a key role in BlogWorld again this year (I helped organize the Social Media Business Summit last fall). Finally, personally, I’m hoping to build on our family successes (OK, so the metaphor doesn’t really work here :) . I’m planning to take more time with my daughter and son to help them discover their interests and passions. I’m hoping to spend more time with my wife as we continue to explore more restaurants and haunts in Minneapolis (we’re amateur foodies). And, I’m also looking to spend more time on myself as I seek to read more (trying to read 26 books in 2011) and get back in shape (working out 3 times a week–a big jump for me).

Kate Brodock

In January, I transitioned from full-time to part-time at the family business in Rome NY, a manufacturing plant, in order to focus entirely on my social media marketing and content production consulting firm, Other Side Group.  I’ll be reworking the formula I had from 2008 until now, and will be adding a focus on reputation management for high-profile individuals, in addition the existing social media marketing for organizations.  Luckily, my family still loves me, and I’ll be also taking their marketing to a new level.  I’m excited to “get back” into the space full-time, and look forward to working with B2B and B2C customers alike.  I also hope to renew my focus in Girls in Tech in my new role as CMO of Global, and in Meta-Activism Project.  Lastly, I’d like to increase my number of speaking and writing opportunities, as those are two things that really drive me. Oh, and have a ton of fun in life… of course.

You can also follow all of us on Twitter: Allan, Aaron, Arik, Kate or connect with us on LinkedIn: Allan, Aaron, Arik, Kate

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Thinking Beyond Products

Filed under Application, Discussion by Allan Schoenberg on 22 January 2010 at 16:25 {2 comments}

Every now and then I take time to think beyond our product offerings. It’s a nice exercise and usually leads to some unique and creative ways to think about positioning the exchange. One area that we like to pursue and where we have been successful is in the area of technology. I’m sure we’re not alone in this area, but we try to balance talking about technology as well as our people in technology. So what are some areas that go beyond just products in helping to promote your B2B brand? Here are some quick thoughts.

question mark

Technology:

I like talking about technology. I like talking with our technology team. I’m a tech geek like a lot of you. And I do believe that marketing IT matters – I wrote about it here and earlier this year on B2B Voices about the importance of partnership with information security here.

Human Resources:

Have you integrated recruiting into your social media campaigns yet? There are some simple and effective ways to do this, such as starting out with posting exisitng job openings. But you should also think about how to fully leverage LinkedIn for your recruiting efforts. By the way, have you looked at your company’s profile on LinkedIn yet? It may be in need of some help (another easy victory for you with HR).

R&D:

Positioning your research team members can help showcase some of the great minds at work within your company. These are probably the people that already have a blog or read blogs. Getting these people to post on popular blogs about innovation and technology can help position your organization as leader in either very broad or niche topics.

If you need ideas on how you can do this go back and read Aaron Pearson’s post on how to combine tradition and social media in B2B here and Arik Hanson looked at what to do if you hit a social media roadblock here. And of course share your ideas with us on how you look beyond products to promote your company or clients. What are some ideas that have worked? Or failed? And where do you get your inspiration?

Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups

Filed under Application, Discussion by Allan Schoenberg on 17 December 2009 at 01:18 {14 comments}

LinkedIn continues to win me over. While the buzz remains focused on Facebook and Twitter, I continue to see improvements with the LinkedIn Platform. Some of the changes in the past year alone have included the addition of applications (e.g. Tripit), better group management functionality, new LinkedIn Blackberry application, and the latest change is the in the look and feel (more like Facebook/Twitter).

linkedin

If you’re in B2B communication and you’re looking for a place to start in social media – or expand – then you need to go back to LinkedIn if you haven’t already. The main reason I like LinkedIn for social media is that it’s very transparent: I know who you are based on your profile and most people have a real photo (not an avatar of screen name). I am also a fan of their group functionality. We use mostly private LinkedIn groups at the exchange as a way to connect users (we become a networker) and as focus groups for topics, issues and news.

Here are some thoughts and ideas about why pursuing LinkedIn groups can be a win for you and your organization.

Privacy– One of the concerns of public streaming networks like FaceBook and LinkedIn to internal and external stakeholders is the issue of privacy. The “private” feature in LinkedIn helps ease those fears since messages can’t be picked up in Google or other search engines. As a side note, one thing we have noticed by keeping our groups private is that the the number of people remains a manageable size and we can control who joins. As these groups grow we likely will look at creating subgroups (another new feature). There are some good ideas on subgroups here via @CherylHarrison.

RSS Feeds — A nice feature is that you can aggregate RSS feeds into your group, which may or may not include feeds from your own company. And you absolutely should include feeds from relevant trade pulications and blogs to drive content without you having to search for it. We mostly use non-CME Group feeds in order to help foster discussions and provide us with more credibility since we bring in outside content.

Discussion– Part of the focus group feature of LinkedIn groups is the discussion section that allows you to have an open forum for whatever you need it. Do you want the group’s feedback on a new product you’ve launched? What about input on how to improve your web site? More important is you should encourage your audience to post topics and then you can take notes, learn and jump in when needed. Just don’t try to manage too much of the conversation or people will stop contributing.

Legal and Investor Relations- My guess is your corporate counsel is not on Twitter. They might be on Facebook. I blogged earlier about investor relations using StockTwits for to reach shareholders, but they likely aren’t there yet. Here is where LinkedIn can be a showcase for your social media efforts. There likely is more of a chance that they are on LinkedIn and you should be get them involved to show what social media can do and win their confidence.

Company Profile- While you’re at it you should take a quick look at your company’s profile on LinkedIn. There is an enormous amount of data people can find on this one page and someone needs to update it and validate it. Since people may want to learn more about your company before joining your group. I suggest you find your company now and make sure it’s accurate. As a bonus your recruiting department will appreciate the update.

This video from Kyle Flaherty is a nice overview on how to set up and start managing a group.

YouTube Preview Image

In addition, Mashable has some good tips here on how to manage your LinkedIn groups. Are you managing groups on LinkedIn now? If so, share some of your best practices with us. What’s worked well? What have you learned? And while you’re at it why don’t you connect to all of us here at B2B Voices on LinkedIn: Kate Brodock, Anna Barcelos, Arik Hanson, Aaron Pearson, Allan Schoenberg.

Building a Social Media Marketplace in Financial Services

Filed under Uncategorized by Allan Schoenberg on 10 July 2009 at 13:23 {2 comments}

I remember in my days working at Edelman during the ERP heyday that online B2B marketplaces, particularly for manufacturing, were the buzz and actually changed how many companies did business. Last month, I presented at the Ragan Corporate Communications Social Media conference (we also hosted the conference at the exchange) about what we are doing in the financial services industry (you can view my presentation here via Slideshare and a recap from Barbara Rozgonyi here).

In my opinion we are in the midst of developing a new marketplace at the exchange. In the past several years alone we have seen tremendous and rapid change in our industry. As a marketplace founded in 1848 (version 1.0) our model was unchanged for more than 150 years. Buyers and sellers came to our trading floors to hedge their risk and sell their products. They also used the markets to discover what the market would pay for a price. In 2002 that evolved (version 2.0) when the exchange went public (Nasdaq: CME) and we had new audiences to communicate with (investors, analysts) besides our members. When I came to the exchange in 2004 another shift occurred when for the first time ever electronic trading (version 3.0) surpassed floor trading. This shift in trading create even more opportunities for us as we now had customers in more than 85 countries directly connected to CME Group (as opposed to our trading floor). Today, more than 80 percent of our volume is now electronic. If you want to know more about how the exchange operates you can watch the video here.

So where are we now? I believe social media is profoundly changing financial markets once again (version 4.0). Social media, in particular Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, are having profound effects on the way our customers interact, communicate and research what is happening in the economy. If you want a great example of this just go to StockTwits and follow the conversations. We’ll see where all of this takes us but I think social media will continue to create a number of real business opportunities for traders and the financial markets in the coming years.

I’ll be talking more about this idea and concept at Blogwell and Ragan in the coming weeks. So how is social media changing your views about your industry? I welcome your thoughts, ideas and questions.

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