Don’t Overlook the Power of LinkedIn Groups

Filed under Application, Discussion by 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.

Leverage Partnerships in B2B Social Media Too

Filed under Application, Case Study by on 29 October 2009 at 02:13 {no comments}

It seems that partnerships in social media are an overlooked asset. We often rely in traditional strategies and tactics to partner with our customers for case studies, analysts for white papers and media for events. So why not take this approach to social media? This is in fact what we did at CME Group.

I blogged here two weeks ago about the value of using StockTwits for investor relations. Last week we officially announced via video from out trading floor in Chicago that we are going to work closely with StockTwits to partner in our social media efforts to reach traders. With approximately 100,000 users on its network discussing stocks, futures and forex, this partnership is a great social media match for us.

 

Initially we are focusing on some basic, traditional sponsorship activities, such as adding a CME Group logo to your Twitter avatar and placing banners within specific product streams. The real value of our partnership though is to connect the exchange with traders in order to further enhance relationships with our customers. In the coming weeks we are planning to work more closely with StockTwits on an event in Chicago with the goal that in person events will be replicated in other cities. Ultimately, our partnership allows us to build credibility with our customers since we are endorsed by a brand they trust — StockTwits. In addition, StockTwits, which is nine months old, can build its credibility through the endorsement by the exchange, a 150-year-old and trusted organization. I hope to report back on the success of our relationship in 2010.

So what about you? What partnerships — big or small –  have you launched? What other B2B partnerships in social media have you noticed?

Are you using StockTwits? If not, you need to give it a look

Filed under Application by on 19 October 2009 at 00:03 {5 comments}

I can’ t recall the exact date I went to StockTwits online — it was about this time one year ago — but I do remember that I was immediately captivated by it. What the site essentially offers is real-time commentary by traders who use Twitter to discuss what they are doing. The company was co-founded by Soren Macbeth and Howard Lindzon. You can see Soren on CNBC from April 2009 here talking about the company. Howard also is a co-founder of the fund SocialLeverage, which has invested in companies like TweetDeck and Bit.ly.

StockTwits - Real Investors. Real Ideas. Real time.

StockTwits - Real Investors. Real Ideas. Real time.

While the site is geared towards traders of stocks, futures, options and currencies, it also can act as a source of vital information for communicators doing or working with investor relations. As a publicly traded company (NASDAQ: CME), I can watch what shareholders are saying about our company — how they react to our news, discuss the company, discuss competitors and trade our stock. Rather than wait to read the latest analyst reports or view a Google/Yahoo chat board, I can now read in real-time what our shareholders are talking about.  In addition, the page adds a real-time news stream about our company and a daily/weekly/monthly chart on our stock. If you work for a publicly traded company, or your clients are publicly traded, you now have a new tool to listen to a key audience.

Monitoring the competition also has its advantages via StockTwits. As outlined above, you can replicate the same strategy that you have established for your own company and now expand this to all your competitors. I’ve set up my StockTwits porfolio to track other financial exchanges in order to stay on track of their shareholder streams, how they are communicating to shareholders, and then report back anything I see as important or timely.

StockTwits has also expanded beyond their web site. The company recently launched a desktop application that has a look and feel of TweetDeck but geared toward traders. Two features I particularly like about the desktop application include: The ability to create or join individual groups that are topic specific (very helpful for our exchange-listed products to follow customers), and the ability to create groups in order to send private messages directly to the entire group or to multiple groups that don’t appear in the public stream. The company has also launched its own web TV program at StockTwits.tv.  

While I’ve found StockTwits to a must-have site for me, the integration of investor relations and social media is still young. I read this post last week on Investor Relations and Web 2.0 very helpful, especially the spreadsheet at the very end. The spreadsheet alone is worth the read and to share with your investor relations team. 

This week in Chicago is our annual Futures Industry Association Exposition. I was fortunate enough to be asked to lead the first social media panel for any conference hosted by our key industry association. This panel would not be complete without the participation of Howard Lindzon and StockTwits and he graciously accepted my invitation. I plan to follow up this post later this week with an interview with Howard. If you have any thoughts on StockTwits, investor relations and social media, or questions you want me to ask Howard let me know.

Building a Social Media Marketplace in Financial Services

Filed under Uncategorized by 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.

Page 2 of 2«12

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