Category

Communications

Feb 24
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How the Financial Services Industry CAN use Social Media

By Communications

If you don’t already know this, I’ll tell you: people who work in investments or financial services aren’t “allowed” to use social media. The industry, as a whole, frowns upon it because of liability, security and privacy issues.

Not willing to be the one and only industry left completely out of the social loop, some of the companies offering these services have established some creative workarounds to enable their staff to use social networking sites to generate what amounts to cold calling lists.

I’ve seen the “social media policy” for one of these companies, and some of the tactics encouraged are counter to the culture of social media enough to make my hair stand on end. I had an encounter of this kind personally, and it left a bad taste in my mouth ever after.

But, fear not financial people — there’s a good solution to this conundrum, that follows the social media rules of engagement and can help you build your business. (And there’s also a good reason why there’s a picture of a pie in this post.)

The way to successfully use social media is to focus your content on you as a person — what is it about you that’s interesting? Are you all about lacrosse or running? Do you brew beer or (as I do) bake pie? What can you do to brand yourself in your community, to become the guy/gal who [fill in the blank] that also works for “Merrill Jones” (not a real investment firm; duh).

If you can use social networking to develop relationships in your community as a human being and a member of your community, the people with whom you develop those relationships can and will become clients and referral sources over time — without you ever mentioning anything about financial services or investments online.

I don’t have the same issues (at all) as financial folk, but still have benefited from people knowing me as “the pie lady” only to discover that there’s much more to me than that. Sometimes the people who come in through the “pie door” end up clients or valuable referral sources. They always become friends.

People have relationships with people — not the “Merrill Joneses” of the world. Just something to remember, no matter what industry you’re in.

Feb 18
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Social Media Assignment #7: Find Your LinkedIn Contacts on Twitter

By Communications

If you’ve been following the social media assignments, congratulations! You’ve made a lot of progress if you’ve knocked off each of these simple tasks.

This assignment makes a couple of assumptions. If you’re reading this blog, you most likely have a LinkedIn account and, I’m assuming that your LinkedIn profile is complete and that you have all of your contacts entered in to your business social network.  The second assumption is that you have an established Twitter account. If not, you might want to backtrack and hit this social media assignment.

Today’s Social Media Assignment

You may be making an assumption of your own; you might think that your contacts in LinkedIn aren’t using Twitter. Depending on your network, your community, your profession and a number of other factors, a higher percentage than you think may be there. (Statistics estimate between 11% and 20% of Internet users are frequent Twitter users. ) The point is, if your business contacts are on LinkedIn, and you are on Twitter, you want to follow your business contacts on Twitter.

First, you will need to log in to LinkedIn and install the Tweets Application. You will be able to access the application by clicking on More in the top navigation menu.

The applications functions to integrate your Twitter account with your LinkedIn profile. I don’t recommend using Twitter solely through your LinkedIn account, however, it is useful to find and follow your connections.

As you can see from the screenshot above, I am following 1,076 people on Twitter. Let’s look at how many of those are my LinkedIn contacts and if I’m missing following any of them on Twitter.

There are not, in fact, many people I’m not following from the list of my business contacts using Twitter. This tool lets me review who they are and quickly and easily follow those I’m missing.

Feb 09
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Social Media Assignment #6: Listening to the Social Web

By Communications

Do you know what is being said about you, your brand or your company online?

Maybe you have been using Google Alerts to monitor for news about your organization, but do you know what people are saying on the social web?

What is the social web? Twitter, blog comments, bulletin boards, Facebook and blogs are some, but not all the elements of the social web.

Today’s Social Media Assignment

Take about half an hour to play with some of the tools displayed in this post. Try out Social Mention and IceRocket in particular — free tools that allow you to search the entirety of the social web.

With these tools you can subscribe to the search you create and continue to monitor mentions on an ongoing basis (recommended). You may find you have to tweak your search terms until you refine them to exactly the right keywords to find the results you seek.

Another approach to consider — search for your customers, clients or employees — do you know what they’re doing or saying online?

I recommend you spend some time listening — not just one day, or one half hour of one day. It takes time, and ongoing attention. And while you’re listening, take time to develop a plan for how you will respond to any mentions of your brand — positive or negative mentions.

Feb 08
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The 6 Reasons Social Media Immersion is the Right Choice for Executives

By Communications

Photo credit: Liam Dunn

For years, people have offered to pay me for my time to sit and walk them through social media and help them figure out a plan for growing and using their social networks.  Until I began Jaggers Communications I couldn’t devote time to share my expertise on that level, but the demand continued.

In response to that demand, I developed Social Media Immersion for the Executive. Here’s why it works:

  1. Clients at the executive level do not want to attend a workshop, seminar or class to get up to speed in social media; they want one-on-one attention and a focused one-shot time to cover the basics of what they need to know over a few hours’ time.
  2. In the Immersion session, any question, no matter how basic or advanced, can be asked and answered.
  3. Executives come away with a concrete plan of action to continue to work from, continuing on a path to greater understanding and benefits of social media engagement.
  4. Time is a huge factor; a full or half-day session will help make sure all social media engagement is efficient and meaningful.
  5. The Immersion session is confidential; a crash course in social media is not something all executives want shared.
  6. The results are immediate; before the session has ended, the client’s social profile and network will be upgraded, goals will be in place and direction will have clarity and purpose.

Is there a CEO, CFO or other executive you know who could benefit from an Immersion session? Are you interested in learning more?