Banks Fail to Use Facebook and Twitter Effectively

A survey recently conducted uncovered that 50 of the nation’s leading private banks hadn’t effectively utilized social media to reach customers. In fact, if any efforts had been placed into social media at all, it was amateurish at best. Many banks set up token social media profiles that contained no updated content or value for their fans.

Assetinum, a marketing firm, tested many of these banks to ascertain whether banks were active in responding to Facebook messages. Only half of the banks surveyed responded – clearly indicating a low rate of bank/user interaction.
Banks using Twitter fared much worse in surveys. Out of the 50 banks with active Twitter accounts, only 26 responded to follower postings. Additionally, only 13 tweeted about relevant financial subject matter.

Social Media and Online Presence Integration is Lacking

Banks scored low on integrating social media with their websites. At least of half of the banks surveyed didn’t effectively integrate social media channels with their online presence.  Apparently 19 banks did have blogs, but only 6 of those banks made an attempt to address reader comments or interact with users.

Survey results are surprising. Most major banks have adequate resources and personnel to exploit social media channels to their advantage. Banks are simply choosing not to pursue this option. Of course, since 50% of the higher-net-worth customers younger than 50 view social media channels as a vital resource in communicating with their banks, it’s obvious that most banks are missing the mark.

Banks Fear Testing Social Media Waters

Reputational Risks and Social Media

Banks stand to lose more clout and reputation by being absent from social media than from making social blunders. Any risks in using social media can be mitigated by becoming more aware of banking consumer needs and expectations. Banks should concentrate on getting to know customers. Social media helps organizations with this effort.

Customers are talking about their banks via social media channels already. Banks have no choice but to enter the conversations in a meaningful way. Either way, the conversation will continue with or with bank participation.

Social Media is Serious Business

Big name companies have already entered the social media arena and proven that social media offers benefits to larger and smaller companies. There is no reason this shouldn’t be applicable to banks, as well. Banks must interact with customers and win their hearts and minds in order to secure their business. Social media marketing strategies can make this easier for businesses and banks.

Customers Respond Positively When Engaged Via Social Media

Banks who have implemented social media marketing strategies have discovered that once an online presence is developed, customers take advantage of opportunity for easy communication. Banks are learning that all customers, including higher-net-worth individuals want to interact with banks via social media networks. Establishing a social media presence seems to engage customers better and inspire banking brand evangelism.

It’s time for Banks, both large and small to get serious about Social Media or get left behind.

Over the past year we have seen the dark underbelly of online social opportunity, as corporations like Go Daddy and Nestle have had to fight for their lives with full blown crisis in the social arena.  Thankfully, these situations are still extreme examples, but they reinforce the importance of a well thought out intervention process and response plan. After all, all it takes is one comment from a community member to turn the conversation.

If you organization does not have a well thought out plan, you should advocate for one. So what are some of the things to think about, when it comes to a response plan?

Be proactive: Don’t wait for a situation to occur before you think about your response strategy.

Wrap that Achilles heel! Make sure you know your own vulnerability. Identify some of the issues or events that could generate negative posts and write responses that illustrate how you intend to address these situations if they arise.  Share your ideas, and get input or approval within the organization as needed, so you will have these approved, prewritten responses available and ready to go.

Establish Criteria for Intervention: Many times, the best response is no response at all!  When a community self-polices itself, it is truly a beautiful thing! Sometimes one comment from a community member in your defense can quelch the uprising and restore peace to the village.  But if that doesn’t happen, know your hot points that will indicate when it is time to post a response or a re-establishing positioning statement.

Develop a Contact List: Weekends often seem to be prime time for social media issues. Make sure you have identified who you need to contact in your organization, if you require extra support or guidance, and how to best reach them during off hours.

Avoid hand-to-hand combat: Keep in mind that heated discussion means that people are passionate.  Passion means that they care and are invested -  isn’t that usually the goal?  Make sure to keep your emotions in check, and do not fall into debating points with individual community members.  As the voice of the community, or the face of your organization it is important to rise above the static and your position as diplomatically as possible.

Know when to call in reinforcement: If a negative conversation is starting to snowball, ask yourself if you need to alert senior management or get your organizations Corporate Communications team involved.

Keep Your Ears Open:  Of course, listening is one of the most important things that you can do.  Monitoring for emerging community sentiments, as well as keeping your finger on the pulse of your issues and industry. What are other people saying about you?

Do you feel that your organization has equipped you with a clear, well thought out response plan?   Got any other suggestions or experiences to share?

Full disclosure: before coming to Woodhouse, I did my time at a top ten US bank, driving business through the usual bank marketing channel—Direct Marketing. Mainly, MAIL—and lots of it! I’m sure that this comes as no surprise to any of you who fill recycling bins with countless checking account and credit card offers on a daily basis.

There was a lot of talk and spinning of the wheels about what customer centricity is and how to move the direct marketing program from one of broad-based targeting—age, assets and other standard demographics—to a program based on customer value, true customer needs and behavioral and attitudinal traits. The problem is, since traditional direct marketing is only a one-way channel, how do you really determine customer needs and wants? What usually ends up happening is that you fall back on those same broad demographics, with slightly refined targeting based on what little information you know about your customers, e.g. presence of children—send them a college savings offer.  Bought a new house (we know this because we just sold you a mortgage—brilliant)? Please enjoy our wonderful home equity rates!

So, what’s the difference with Social Media and customer centricity? Starting with the obvious, it’s a true two-way channel, allowing for direct interaction for your brand with your customers. You know what your customers want, because you are both listening and talking to them. Questions, polls, contests and the like help to further define offers, products and positioning. You also get immediate reaction and feedback to the content you post. This helps with determining what the customer wants from both an entertainment/engagement standpoint (videos, interactive content) and needs from a how-to and problem resolution standpoint.

Perhaps most importantly, Social Media marketing gives real-time insight into how your customers want to interact with you. Are they heavy Facebook users that want rich content and to actively comment and engage with others? Is Twitter their thing, looking for 140 character quick tips and a channel to contact you while on the go? Or are they looking to share or view check-ins, photos and videos as a way to relate with your brand? Social Media lets you connect with your customers how they want, where they want and when they want. Try doing this with a letter, self-mailer or bulk email.

To have success with any marketing program, you still need to be strategic with the channel, tools and targeting information that you have at your disposal. While Social Media allows for true customer centricity vs. traditional direct marketing tactics, your efforts will only pay off if you have a sound strategy that leverages the power of customer engagement for your brand.

Thoughts, likes and rants welcomed…

Social Media has revolutionized the way companies connect with customers and prospects by enabling two-way, online public conversations between brands and customers.   Brands are quickly transforming from big, nameless institutions to approachable, valuable and trusted sources of information, content and connections.

So where is Pharma in this revolution?  For the most part, they are still on the sidelines.  Given the uncertainty of the rules and regulations related to social media in pharmacuticals, many companies have decided to wait.  That’s a mistake.

Given proper preparation and planning, it is possible for Pharma companies to conduct open, public two way conversations that can go a long way to rebuilding trust and brand favorability with their target audience.  Here are some steps to consider:

1. Clearly define your process for both proactive and reactive conversations.  Make sure to consider the nature of the social media platform and understand the type of control you have over comments.
2. Define your terms and conditions for each social media platform and make sure people can easily find them and reference them.  When Woodhouse first launched a campaign for one of our Pharma companies and industry blogger picked it up and examined the terms and conditions in detail.  You can see her post here.
3. Create a cross functional team from legal, marketing (or corp comm.), medical and safety.  Train them on the process and the social media platforms so they know their role and have the proper knowledge to make decisions.
4. Beg, plead and beg again for legal to commit to turning around approvals within a day.  This is crucial for reactive conversations.  Things like commenting on a wall post from one of your Facebook “Likes” become irrelevant when they are posted a week later.
5. Plan content and updates well ahead of time.  Develop an editorial calendar and submit blog posts, Facebook updates and Tweets weeks ahead for approval to ensure you have a library of approved content to be posted each day (we recommend multiple times a day).  Content should reflect the interests of the community and not the interests of the company.  Think of yourself as a magazine publisher planning a new magazine targeted at your niche community.
6. Hire a community manager that is an expert in both online conversations and the dos and don’ts of the Pharma regulatory environment.  In most cases you will need to look to outside resources for this hire.
7. Allow for open commenting across all social media platforms. Monitor each platform 2 to 3 times a day and quickly remove and post or comment that violates the defined terms and conditions.   This one scares most Pharma companies with concerns of Adverse Events and improper mention of drug names.  Woodhouse is lucky enough to work with a progressive Pharma company and we have allowed open commenting for over a year now.  There has been zero Adverse Events to report and rarely any mentions of drug names.  When a community member breaks the terms and conditions (by mentioning a drug name or using foul language) we quickly remove the post and send the community member a message of why we removed the post and ask them to repost.
8. Buy a Social Marketing Platform tool.  These new breed of tools sit on top of all your social media accounts and enable resources to approve content and comments easily before it can get posted.  Some also offer the ability to create a “Black List” of words and then work with Facebook, blogs and the like to automatically restrict users from posting if they use a word on the “Black List”.  We have done an extensive analysis of the tools in the space and highly recommend Shoutlet.
9. Be proactive.  The community manager should be actively reviewing the blogs in the disease area relevant to your product and comment on others blogs.  This establishes trust and relationships.  A relatively new development is the ability of the admin for a Facebook page to use Facebook as the page.  Community managers now have the ability to go to another page and comment as the brand (or name of the Facebook page you created).
10. Know your influencers.  Do the research at the beginning of the project to find the bloggers who write about the disease that is relevant.  The community manager should reach out to them individually and introduce themselves.  If you have done something interesting, point it out and ask them to write about it.