Financial Twitter: A Positive Step or Open the Floodgates?

From banks to credit card companies, financial institutions have long held back from social media because their case is "special." They are a regulated industry and must tread lightly around disclosing financial information properly and personal infomation not at all. Meanwhile, the demand for "open brands" grows across categories. Consumers know their cable company will talk back to them via Twitter and even their car company will listen and drop them a response.

• 89% of respondents would feel more loyal to brands which invited them to participate in a feedback group
• 92%  of those who have a positive experience communicating with a brand will recommend purchasing a product from that brand to someone they know. ExpoTV2008

Wells Fargo Throws Caution To The Wind
Wells Fargo, long a trailblazer with their collection of blogs, now has a couple of Twitter accounts including one for customer service.

Ask Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo

Many consumer-facing financial institutions will hesitate to do this. I have heard more than one client say they are afraid of what would happen if their customers suddenly caught them listening. Most are unlike Wells Fargo with their bevy of blogs and have yet to get their feet wet in proactive social media listening and responding. They don't want to jump in until they have regulation and the whole operational thing figured out. Who is going to man the 24x7 Twitter channel? What happens when customers discover the brand responding? Will is trigger a flood of demand overwhelming and crushing the best intentions?

I am all for planning. I am also a total pragmatist about the hard and soft costs of engaging with social media:

• expect to have the Twitter feed with all the relevant Twitter searches ("brand," "#brand", "nickname for brand," etc....) open on your desktop or device 10 hours a day

• If you choose to blog, plan on 1.5 - 2 hours per post to inlcude some reading and commenting time each cycle (3 posts per week minimum)
• Blog comenting? Depends on your industry and business but you could easily spend 2 hours a day correcting the record and nurturing relationships

Planning is good so long as it doesn't paralyze you.

Jump In

Sometimes you just have to jump in. Wells Fargo had experience in social media. But what if they forever hesitated before launching that first blog. I guarantee they didn't have their "business case" around that completely sewn up. Someone in the organization felt they knew which way the wind was blowing.

For the  brands analyzing all the angles before you jump in, just remember one thing part of the change that has taken place is about living in what Ogilvy calls "perpetual beta." That's a place where the plan is never full baked and you engineer your organization to be nimble not to have all the answers. Basically, you just get busy.

Comments

[Allan Schoenberg]

John -- I think you realize from dealing with clients that a lot of this has to do with corporate culture. Working at the financial exchange we've embraced social media because we also believe customer service (listening, engaging) is core to our values. As the world's largest exchange operating CME, CBOT and NYMEX we can learn more from social media and promote our brand via Facebook groups and Twitter (@cmegroup). It becomes part of our customer service fabric. That being said, we also are in the B2B space and not a retail financial services company, but at the end of the day it's about communicating directly with people (customers, influencers, media) and opening up further the two-way dialogue.

[Term Papers]

It's great to see fresh, creative ideas that have never been done before.