There continues to be momentum in the use of social media in the financial services industry. Last week, I wrote about what is happening in the futures industry and the impact of social media, but a host of other changes have shown that the industry is becoming an industry that understands the transition. While the industry has often been branded as a laggard in social media, there is growing evidence that firms have the people and processes in place to integrate the right tools. Here are a few noteworthy items:
Two weeks ago we saw Goldman Sachs join Twitter, a long awaited launch;
StockTwits and PRN Newswire recently joined forces to integrate news into the social media stream;
Econsultancy last month wrote about the use of LinkedIn among financial services firms;
The Financial Times reported in April how more financial services firms are embracing social media; and,
I recently spoke on a panel discussion at Cognito PR on trends in B2B social media in financial services (you can download the PDF summary);
So what’s changed? First, social media has received broad acceptance among many retail and consumer brands already. We are seeing the financial industry study these habits and follow what has worked and what has not. Second, having the internal processes in place and compliance matters put into order have become more clear. It was only a matter of time that this would happen, and as more firms use social media we are seeing the result of common ground in this area. Third, as journalists use social media more they are effectively helping to pull communicators into the mix (if only to listen at first). Finally, communicators are becoming more comfortable with the social tools and understanding how they are used.
I believe we will continue to see growth in social media use among the financial services industry. In particular, I think the the area of evaluation will be of key importance as firms try to make sense of the qualitative and quantitative information online. I also believe there will be more emphasis put into CRM and social enterprise tools by financial firms as they try to build revenue streams from the social streams. No matter what direction financial firms head, the adoption of these tools will clearly benefit many industries as more investments in people and resources will be made.
