Words of Wisdom from Financial Services Social Media Experts
By: Julie Meredith
The Business Development Institute’s Financial Services Social Communications conference at the City University of New York on November 16 housed some excellent takeaways for financial services organizations looking to embark on social media. Here are my top words of wisdom from the conference.
Key Takeaways
The keynote case study, @YourService, presented by Frank Eliason, SVP of Social Media at Citibank, kicked off the conference with an encouraging bang. Eliason showed us how Citibank uses social media to connect the dots from customer service to PR and marketing. His presentation was full of social media soaked inspirational mandates to live and work by, from, “Trust is built with human interaction,” to, “Social media is the power of stories.”
Gregory Weiss, Assistant VP of Social Media at New York Life gave an informative presentation on how New York Life has emerged as a leader in the space amongst its peers. They’re promoting interaction and engagement around New York Life and the insurance industry through the use of social media. This insurance company takes a groundbreaking approach to customer service and marketing through their social media channels by leveraging its brand heritage, employees, and agents to achieve short-term wins with long-term benefits. And on the topic of compliance – according Weiss, “Social media is a gift for lawyers and compliance folks because it’s trackable [engagement].”
Sarah Carter, VP of Marketing for Actiance, discussed how Financial institutions are increasingly using enterprise unified communications and collaboration platforms, social software, and real-time tools despite the regulations of the finance industry. In her presentation, Enabling Social in Financial Services, Sarah gave a breakdown of the security and compliance issues financial services companies are facing, and how leading organizations are overcoming them. According to Carter, an important element for implementing a successful corporate social policy is to, “Understand and manage the fallibility of human beings.”
Wells Fargo’s SVP and Head of Social Strategy, Nathan Bricklin’s presentation, Internal Collaboration, provided examples of the various ways Wells Fargo has established internal collaboration on social communications. In an innovative manor, he used his tweets as PowerPoint slides. Bricklin discussed the importance of working hard on developing and maintaining social relationships, “Successful engagement is not about plugging in tools and expecting stuff to magically appear.”
Eric Rehl, VP of eBusiness at Robert W. Baird & Co., showed his experiences and findings from a social media pilot, which allows Financial Advisors at Baird to use Twitter and Facebook for business-related communications and marketing. Rehl explained his takeaways and lessons learned from the pilot, “You need a plan; education is key, training [your social media team] is critical for success, provide best practices, and content is king.”
Robert W. Baird and Co.’s Eric Rehl left us with an important statement and a thought-provoking question to consider: Social media is a, “means to an end.” You will only achieve your specific, measurable objectives if you have a plan. Where are you going?
Learn more about social media for the financial services industry here.
Tags: engagement, Financial Services, Marketing
