Whitepaper: Social media in the Irish financial services industry 2013

The Financial Services community in Ireland has been taking its first real steps into social media in the last year.

Bank of Ireland has a Facebook page offering information on Bank of Ireland products and services, the ability to share experiences, get tips for managing money and to ask questions about day to day banking. It has 3,500+ followers and features competitions for tickets to events and exhibitions the bank is involved in.

AIB has an AIB GAA Club page with 10,000+ followers and announcements about sporting events and match reports.

Irish Life has a blog offering occasional posts and a Twitter account with 700+ followers and a Google+ account as well.

In the US the financial services community has taken social media to its heart, indicating the most likely direction of social media in the industry worldwide.

While many Irish financial sector firms are proceeding slowly and cautiously into social media, US based licensed financial professionals and their customers are adopting social media with haste.

In fact, an Accenture report notes that so many financial advisors are using social media that many are "likely flouting their firms’ current policies against this type of activity."

Our recommendations for financial services use of social media in Ireland are:

1. To develop a training program for key staff segments

2. To develop a social media audit & planning process

3. To develop social media guidelines

4. To focus social media on achieving organisational objectives

To read the remainder of the whitepaper this post is extracted from please email lob@yourasms.com and it will be forwarded to you.

Guest post marketing, Gangnam style

I have just posted my 28th guest post on my writing blog www.lpobryan.com.

The post was from a romance writer in San Diego. I only accept posts from writers, to ensure that my followers on that site don't get a lot of spammy ads for things they didn't sign up for.

But they will get a bit of Gangnam style.

How? I plan to ask all guest posters, when my new novel comes out in October, will they put a guest post of mine up on their sites.

I hope to have at least 50 guest posters by then and I hope that about half will be able to host my guest post.

That means there should be 25 guest posts be me across the internet in October. Possibly more.

I was inspired to do this by a post I read about how PSY, the Gangnam style creator, had a series of blogs posted on friend's blogs - dance teachers, musicians and music industry people all around the world, on the day his famous YouTube video came out.

I don't expect to reach a billion views, like he did, but I hope the support of my guest posters will give my October social media campaign a lift.

If you would like to be a guest poster here - on social media - or on my writing blog and take part in this let me know.

OBryan Style!

5 real ways to build contacts through Twitter

Twitter is a great way to make contacts. Whether you are selling services, products or you're helping people in some way, Twitter allows you to reach people and develop real relationships.

Here are 5 real ways to build those contacts:

1. Follow them, retweet them and/or forward their tweets to people who might benefit from what they are saying.

2. Compliment or agree with a tweet or post they have put up.

3. Ask for an opinion in their area of expertise. Make the questions authentic and you will have a better chance of getting a response.

4. Share a content link with them, if it's appropriate, non spam, but useful content, either your own or another's.

5. Offer help of some kind. Make it genuine and appropriate to their possible needs and you will have a greater chance of getting a response.

These are the five main ways of building contacts through Twitter. If you can think of others please share them with us in the comments below.

35 Social Media Tools (many free)

A selection of the most popular tools for social media are listed below - with links. This is not a complete list, but hopefully it will help you and inspire you to look for more!

If you'd like to add to the list do so through the comments at the bottom.

Listening & monitoring:

Topsy - Real-time search for the social web Topsy.com allows you to search the global Twitter stream for mentions of names and phrases, as needed.

Twitter alerts via email by Twilert Twilert.com is a similar tool with options on searching in a geographic location.

Real Time Search - Social Mention allows you to search current mentions across many social media sites.

Addictomatic: Inhale the Web create a custom web page with the current mentions for your topic

Facebook Search – Inside Facebook searches Facebook

Icerocket blog search – search for blogs and more

Klout The Standard for Influence – the key influencer score

Creation:

WordPress.com A key blog creation tool, free for most uses

Tumblr – Free short picture and graphic posting uber-cool blog creation

LinkedIn – The business to business social media site

Blogger – Free Google blogging creation

Twitter – the gold standard in short blogging

Checkthis – create a web site in a few clicks

Facebook -  the number one social media site world wide

YouTube – the number one video sharing site worldwide

Flickr – the number one picture sharing site worldwide

Pinterest – the number one picture/style/fashion sharing site

Google+ - Google’s answer to social media

SoundCloud - Record and share your sounds for free – audio social media

Management of multiple social media sites:

Buffer – schedule Twitter & Facebook posts & track click through’s

TweetDeck by Twitter – schedule, monitor and manage Twitter feeds

Social Media Management | Sprout Social – schedule. monitor and manage

Social Media Management - HootSuite – schedule, monitor and manage

XeeMe – create a single identity for all your social media identities

Insight & analytics:

GoogleAnalytics – a lot of new analytics coming through here

How Far Did Your Tweet Travel? | TweetReach – does what it says

bitly | shorten, share and track your links – shorten links, then see how many use them

Twitter Stats by Twitter Counter – track your Twitter growth

Crowdbooster Dashboard - Your Network – analyse your Twitter network

Socialbakers (Facebook, Twitter…) marketing, stats – more stats

Viralheat | Social media analytics – serious social media analytics

Miscellaneous

FollowFriday Helper - FFHelper – picks out your best followers

Flush & Follow Twitter users: Tweepi – follows & flushes people 20/40 at a time

Social Media is Dynamite – my social media blog – lots of posts!

Who Unfollowed Me on Twitter: Twitter Unfollowers – see who stopped following.

Over to you!