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!

7 mistakes you can make using social media

1.     Dabbling. If you only do a tiny amount you are going to get a tiny pay back. Unfortunately, like most things in life, you get back what you put in. This is why it’s so important to be involved in creating social media content that you find meaningful. If you write about or Tweet about something you have no interest in then you will find it difficult to sustain your effort over the months ahead.

2.      Ignoring it. If you ignore social media and hope it will go away what will happen is that intrepid individuals, your competition, will start doing it. Do you even know how many of your competition are tweeting or blogging or Facebooking? Social media is coming and you can't stop it. Get on board.

3.     Not aligning your social media goals with the goals of your business or your personal goals. The goal of social media is not to simply acquire more followers. Sure, there are plenty of people who want to just do that, but a business needs to align social media to its business goals and individuals need to align to whatever their personal goals are. Engaging with followers is key, focusing on quality, not just quantity.

4.    Thinking it's just a marketing and PR thing. Human resources, purchasing, the canteen, investment analysts and R&D and every other department can all benefit from the research, communications and feedback service that social media provides. Don't leave it all to the marketeers. Every division can use social media just like every division can use a telephone. Social Media can be everywhere.

5.     Copying others, not innovating. I can understand it when you start off, you look at what’s been done by other big players and you emulate, but eventually copying won’t be enough. You’ll need to come up with something new and innovative yourself. That will take real creativity and an environment where people can experiment, test, fail, and still survive. Innovation will draw on your best talents and allow you to leapfrog your competition, if you get it right. There are risks, but there are real rewards to innovation too.

6.     Being too serious. Sure, social media is serious at times, but it’s also light-hearted ;-). And don’t expect all of your messages to be super cool and super important. Sometimes you’ll put your foot in your mouth with social media. Don’t worry. It’s not the end of the world.  If you do make a mistake, don’t forget to smile! ::-)

7.     Not moving on. Social media is changing fast. Services are evolving too. Twitter is changing how it will support the software that links with it. LinkedIn is offering your contact details to anyone who is willing to spend enough to buy them. Facebook is asking for money to get all your followers to see your posts. The only constant in social media is change. Build an evolving cycle of review and test and implement into your plans and look at all emerging options on a regular basis. Keep up to date with social media blogs too and stay tuned for new developments.  

The most important services of the year 2020 are still only a developer’s dream, but if you stay in touch with what is going on you might be able to catch that dream.   

And follow this blog for regular updates and soon a list of social media resources.

Email will Evolve into Social Email

Recent McKinsey’s research indicates that some office based workers spend 28% of each day (13 hours a week) dealing with e-mails. (McKinsey Quarterly, Nov 12)

The email Inbox has served as a task list for the past two decades. Its folders can be used as a filing system.

In some cases huge amounts of company knowledge are locked up in emails and inaccessible to those who might benefit from that information.

Email is an inadequate repository, difficult to search and slow to cross reference. Online programs such as Evernote provide the option to extract, tag and annotate the contents of email, but it is personal solution with security issues for many businesses, as the snippets you extract are stored in the cloud.

But we do need something better than standard email. And why? Productivity increases due to technology in the workplace have slowed down in the past few years.

McKinsey estimates that 25 to 30 percent of time spent on email could be saved if the main channel for communication was moved to a social platform. Employees could locate knowledge faster and reduce unneeded email distribution and CCing.

Attachments could also be better managed and more accessible.

With a social network key questions can be easily accessed and commented on by all employees. 

Collaboration is easier when you are using a social media tool. Poor collaboration is responsible for poor project delivery and project failure.

One study published in the Academy of Management Journal (Subramanium and Youndt) indicated that companies with better collaborative management achieve superior financial performance.

Academic research also shows that innovation is generated more rapidly when collaboration is a central feature of the teams studied.

Email on its own isn’t good enough any more, particularly if an organisation is looking for competitive advantage. The Facebook generation is part of the workforce and a new style of collaborative working is on its way.

And for all those blue collar workers and frontline staff without an email account, a social network will provide access to company information and a way to contribute.

Gartner, stated in 2012 that; “Social networking services will replace email as the primary vehicle for interpersonal communications for 20% of businesses by 2014". 

What do you think? 

TV & radio are dying! And they are lashing out at Social Media.

Last week I listened to a radio news program interviewing a lawyer warning business people about the dangers of social media, how they could get sued if one of their employees said the wrong thing on Twitter.

There was no opposing view given, like how the words of any client facing staff can affect a company at any time. Or anything about the benefits of social media to business. At all.

It sounded like scare mongering. I suspect that TV and radio executives and journalists aren't even conscious of what they are doing. They feel the ground moving and they lash out. Their all powerful roles as arbiters of what is news and what should be popular is disappearing. Fast.

How do I know this? My thirteen year old daughter almost never watches TV. She uses YouTube and Facebook. And I rarely watch live TV too. And I don't like TV news any more. I don't like someone selecting what's important for me. Sure, I record an occasional TV program, but I could get that on Netflix, if they ever get their act together and deliver popular programs.

How long before it all vanishes? I mean the way it's currently structured. I want radio that's more like podcasts and TV that's more like YouTube. I want greater selection, control on when I watch or listen and the arbiters of taste to all retire. Their time is up. A change is coming.

My challenge to you is, can you spot the dinosaur riders of TV and radio as they try to stop social media taking over? If you do, or have ever heard this happen, please report it below in the comments.