Crowd control

Policing employees' social media activity without bringing out the riot squad

By guest blogger Tamera Lang

In my last guest post, I mentioned that having a staff social media policy in place is one of the key ways to manage social media risk (if you haven't already, email us for a free copy of the BlueChip online reputation risk checklist, which sets out some of the essentials). Don't just take my word for it - lawyers are urging Australian businesses to get their social media policy in order to avoid legal action due to employee behaviour online. Last year, Fair Work Australia reinstated an employee who was dismissed for alleged inappropriate social media use because his employer did not have a social media policy in place and usual induction training on behaviour was "not sufficient". With more than 11 million Australian Facebook accounts, you would be hard pressed to find a mid- to large-sized company with no staff interacting online.

Gone are the days when only a few select employees are able to communicate about your company, brands or products in a controlled and disciplined manner. While it may be tempting to ask your staff not to communicate about their workplace at all, it's an unrealistic expectation. Social media discussions are like a cocktail party, people will talk regardless and it's better to put in place some guidelines to help your employees decide what is appropriate to say (and what is not).

Social media policies broadly need to deal with two types of social media use: personal and business. Personal social media use is the most common, where employees use their own channels to tweet, post  and blog about their own lives - lives that intersect with work. Business use of social media occurs when employees are authorised to use social media as part of their job function: for example, in the context of answering customer queries or promoting products.

At a bare minimum, the personal use of social media policy should:

• prohibit disclosure of confidential company information (including legally privileged information, market sensitive matters and private customer data);
• prohibit using social media to breach company policy and laws (for example, to harass, discriminate and/or defame);
• provide guidelines on when social media is acceptable (for example, is it banned during business hours or is a moderate amount of use acceptable?); and 
• provide guidelines on what is and is not appropriate to say about the employee's role and work environment.

The final point above is important. As I stated above, work is a part of life and it's natural that employees (particularly from younger generations) may feel entitled to pass comment on social media. It's better than an employee set the tone of what's acceptable, rather than imposing a downright prohibition. Empower and trust your employees to make acceptable comments. After all, an engaged and motivated employee is an excellent brand ambassador. Just make sure they know their boundaries: for example, they should not proclaim themselves official spokespeople and should not comment on legal matters or crisis situations. Try to keep your social media policy linked to your corporate values and/or identity, so that it resonates with your employees.

A great example of a company with a straight forward, yet comprehensive, social media policy in the financial services sector is NAB. Its policy simply requests that employees are to behave in three ways: to be transparent, to be responsible and to be respectful. And it all fits on to one page, so it's easy to refer to and remember.

While this is one example of a good social media policy, when devising your own, you should consider the special needs of your organisation and your employees. This is definitely a case of one size not fitting all. The best course of action is to get advice from your social media sign-off team (comprising of your key internal stakeholders) and external communication advisers to determine what will work for your organisation.

Tamera Lang is currently undertaking an internship with BlueChip Communication

Stay out and stay safe?

The best and worst ways to manage social media risk

By guest blogger Tamera Lang

There's no shortage of examples of social media misfortunes. Is there any wonder companies fear social media and what it could do to corporate reputation? CEOs, legal counsel and risk/compliance officers could arguably be forgiven for driving a "stay out and stay safe" agenda - but are they doing themselves a disservice?

The problem is, staying out of social media is not the answer to staying safe. If your customers, target markets, employees and competitors are on social media, what they do and say can affect you even if you're not there yet. It doesn't make sense to allow your key stakeholders (and competitors) to stake their claim in social media, while you sit back and get left behind.

I'm not advocating a head-first, whizz bang social media campaign - in fact, I think that's dangerous. What most companies and/or brands do without a social media presence or capability need is a measured, risk-management driven approach. The idea is to stay safe and be clean in the online environment.

The first step is to check the basic hygiene factors. Take the temperature of your online presence - what is already out there about your company, brand and products? Register the obvious user names on all major social media platforms, even those which you may not want to use: it's important to secure your presence to fend off imposters. Appoint your online sign-off team, drawing on departments which will potentially benefit from social media as well as those with risk management capabilities (we recommend, at a minimum legal/compliance, operations, PR/corporate affairs, marketing and customer service). Implement some basic social media monitoring and identify (then follow) your key digital influencers. Put in place a social media policy for your staff and train up the C-suite level on the social media basics.

Have you noticed that none of the hygiene factors involve actually posting or interacting on social media? It's deliberate, because this is not about converting your marketing spend, PR activity or customer service functions to social media (at least, not yet). The aim of the hygiene check is two-fold: to undertake a scoping to ascertain your online reputation, as well as to prepare your organisation in case a social media strategy should be (or needs to be) pursued. It's the risk management approach - be prepared and know your battleground. There's a lot of preparatory work that needs to be considered before leaping in to social media.

Using BlueChip's online reputation risk checklist (email us for a free copy), particularly the hygiene factors, is just the first step. Keeping the risks in check is good practice and could save your company a lot of pain.

Tamera Lang is currently undertaking an internship with BlueChip Communication

War of the worlds: how to win the social media turf tussle (and why corporate affairs should take the lead)

By guest blogger Holly Clark

There is a turf war breaking out and at the centre of the struggle is social media. The land grab for shrinking marketing budgets has resulted in marketing departments all wanting a piece of the social media action. That is at least, when things are going well. Which brings us to the question of who takes charge when things are going pear-shaped?

Last week Target became the latest social media casualty after a mother with a strong opinion aired her disapproval of some of the store's clothing options for young girls on its Facebook page. Within four days, she found herself starring in a half page article in the SMH. If Corporate Affairs didn't move in to own social media at this point, I'm sure they received a knock on the door from marketing shortly after.

Ultimately this highlights an issue that has been bubbling away since the advent of Facebook, and that is, who owns social media? And no, I'm not missing the point, we all know that the consumer is the true owner of social media, but where should social media sit within a business?

It's not a straightforward issue. The recent ruling by the Advertising Standards Board means companies are responsible for all their content on their Facebook pages, even user comments, as Facebook is deemed to be a marketing tool over which a company has control and which is designed to promote a product. Add to the mix the vexed issue of censorship and we have a virtual minefield.

I'm not going to suggest that every business needs a large social media communications function to verify every comment and carefully develop 'on brand' responses screened for every possible reputational risk. But surely Corporate Affairs departments, which are skilled in producing content, communicating with external audiences and safeguarding their companies' reputations are ideally positioned to take the lead? And training and developing guidelines to ensure there's consistency and leadership from internal teams is a great place to start.

Day to day, the owner of your organisation's social media channels should, ideally, be the person who is best placed to deliver the experience that users are looking for. So it may be that Corporate Affairs manages the Twitter presence where comments might be about the company as a whole, whereas Customer Services may be responsible for Facebook, where things can get more personal. These are of course sweeping generalisations that will vary from business to business. While requirements may vary, there is always a place fora clean plan describing how social media is addressed and resourced.

We know that in years to come, this debate will become redundant - or at least muted - as social media takes its inevitable place as an ingrained part of an organisation's daily operations. But in the meantime Corporate Affairs has a large role to play in safeguarding the reputation of a business as it enters the social media landscape.

Holly Clark is BlueChip Communication's Account Director

Gold, gold, gold for social media strategy? How the IOC blew the heats, missed the final

By guest blogger Valentina Ciampi

Dubbed the first 'social media Olympics', it appears that it was understood, at least in theory, that London 2012 would not be immune to the popularity of social media. Social media was seen as a whole new way to hard wire the world direct to the happenings on the court, field and pool.

In spite of this, I don't think anyone was prepared for the huge role social media would play during the Games. Least of all, the International Olympic Committee (IOC)!

It was evident within the first few days of the Games that the IOC had failed to 'get' social media, how it is used and its growing importance in feeding the conversation in both on- and off-line worlds.

From fantastic ... to fail

To put it frankly, the IOC did a terrible job of managing the Olympic brand in social media. As a result, the concept of combining the social media and the Olympics quickly turned from fantastic to fail.

The wave of complaints and uproar saturated the social sphere quicker than you could click a mouse. The repercussions were not just (immediately) evident for the 500 million people on Twitter but rapidly filtered through to traditional media, too.

The online disaster ensured that social media was still a significant feature of the Games, but in a way most brands / organisations would prefer to avoid.

From the restrictions made on the athletes that prevented them from promoting sponsors on their social media platforms to the blame game that was put on fans for jamming networks because of excessive tweeting and posting about the Games (Mark Adams of the IOC even suggested, "perhaps they [spectators] might consider only sending urgent updates [on Twitter]." Hmmm... ). It was painfully obvious the IOC had little-to-no understanding of social media platforms and how their audiences engage with them - and each other.

If we think of the Olympics as an organisation and the athletes and spectators as its brand ambassadors and advocates respectively, then you can start to see how the IOC actually did itself a disservice by trying to stifle their voices. Asking them to limit usage and placing restrictions on what they post about, is not only disenfranchising them from the brand / event (and making them irritated in the process). It's also saying no to exposure that is not only highly effective but also free.

Where did it all go wrong?

The IOC's lack of understanding about how social media works led to a failure to produce a workable social media strategy. Note here the operative word is 'workable', because the fact that the London 2012 social media guidelines and rules ran to a hefty number of pages has been widely publicised.

The lesson here is that creating a workable social media strategy requires a deeper understanding of social media than just applying rigid and 'old school' media and sponsorship conventions, which appears to be what the IOC did.

Whether you're thinking about dipping your toe or jumping head first into the big online universe, it pays to do some work upfront. Audit, test, look at case studies and consult with experts about what social media is, how the platforms differ and align and, importantly, feeds into conventional media. Ask for expert help in facilitating some training if you need it.

From there, you'll be well placed to develop a WORKABLE strategy. It doesn't have to be complicated. It's about understanding what you're trying to achieve (goals and objectives), who you're trying to talk to (audience) and how to reach them (channels / platforms). Not having a strategy means you are perpetually running in crisis management mode and can mean the difference between protecting and promoting your brand reputation and damaging it.

In short - between claiming the gold - or not even making it into the finals.

Valentina Ciampi is a Senior Account Executive for BlueChip Communication

What goes online, stays online. So how are you safeguarding your company's reputation?

By guest blogger Nicola Michel

The recent ruling by the Advertising Standards Board that advertisers are responsible for third party posts on their Facebook page has, not surprisingly, been labelled "a challenge" by the body that represents the $30 billion a year marketing industry. "Challenging" barely begins to address the ramifications of the decision, which goes to the heart of whether social media campaigns are even viable in a world where marketers are held responsible for the ill-judged comments of followers.

A number of examples ignited the fire under the ABS, but chief among them were some of the comments posted on the Facebook page of Carlton & United Breweries (CUB's) 'VB' beer brand, when followers were asked a supposedly innocuous question: "Besides VB, what's the next essential needed for a great Australia Day BBQ?"

Whether or not you consider the question innocuous (the phrase 'asking for trouble' springs to mind), the majority of the answers certainly weren't. Of those that actually made sense, they ranged from the vaguely moronic to the downright distasteful, spanning the gamut of sexist, racist and homophobic.

The North Korean Solution?

The basis of the ABS decision was that it deemed the Facebook page of an advertiser to be a marketing communication tool over which the advertiser 'has a reasonable degree of control'. As such, the Code that applies to all advertising also applies to the page in its entirety, including comments posted by third parties.

Outrage over the decision has been fast and furious, with some calling it the "North Korean version of social media" and others questioning whether, if brands are required to censor offensive or misleading comments, how long will it be before they censor negative comments about their brand (which is not to say that the latter has not already been happening...)

Most comments centred on the fact that the decision changes the very essence of social media as a two way conversation that reflects the rough and tumble of real-time, spontaneous social interaction itself.

Some of the comments on the CUB VB Facebook page were described as akin to those you might hear in a dodgy pub late on a Friday night. This may hardly make them what you yearn to hear, but does that also mean they shouldn't be posted online? If social media is an extension of the conversations we have in life, is there a place for censorship?

One essential difference between Facebook and the pub is, of course, that a hazy conversation on a Friday night is said and done, whereas what goes online, stays online. And in the case of the VB Facebook page it really did stay online, with some comments left posted for over a year. It's likely that the situation would have been very different if the comments were removed quickly.

Regulation: guaranteed to fail?

Although regulation seems to fly in the face of the nature of social media, this and numerous other examples lead some to the conclusion that some form of legislated (attempted at least) censorship or control is inevitable.

Many major social innovations have required evolving regulation. Few would argue that the laws covering driving, for example, after the advent of the car, should never have been enacted.

However, I would argue that increased and, in particular, blanket regulation usually ends in unintended consequences - which often defeat or make a mockery of the purpose of the regulation in the first place.

And even if you accept that most people would find at least some of the comments on the VB Facebook page offensive, (and that therefore some regulation is required) who decides which of the other comments are offensive and which aren't - or which move from the grey realm of offensive to discriminatory and inciting of hatred? And how on earth do you police it? Some brands get thousands of comments per week on their Facebook pages. Do they need to employ an army to monitor them?

An army of social media monitors?

The answer regarding monitoring is probably "yes". But you probably won't need an army.

So what is required to manage and moderate a company's social media activity?

The conventional wisdom has been that the essence of social media is that it comes straight from the horse's mouth, and that employing a PR company or other 'mouthpiece' to communicate for you on social media is somehow cheating and depriving the medium of its immediacy and relevance. That's absolutely fair enough. But equally, the evolution of social media has been so rapid that a company now demonstrably needs to address the issue of protection and reputation and, bottom line, staying out of court.

The good news is that there is middle ground: the space between having any social media so stage managed as to lose its meaning (think, London 2012), and stepping to the abyss and subjecting your brand and business to a damaging free-fall.

That middle ground involves a combination of using the new and evolving tools available, and having a solid, workable and well understood social media policy in place.

Facebook, for example, provides some ready-made tools. The recently updated Timeline for brands gives page administrators the ability to pre-moderate comments, to restrict access to underage Facebook users, to restrict the kinds of posts users can share and to set "page visibility", so administrators are required to approve all posts that appear. Critics say that not only does this pre-moderation substantially increase the workload for page administrators, it seriously affects the brand's ability to have the types of real-time conversations with followers that are what Facebook is all about. Nonetheless, it does exist and is an option.

Social media policy: the latest must-have accessory for corporates

When it comes to social media policy, a good start is to review the excellent McKinsey framework for companies engaged in social media. According to that framework, the very first step is to monitor. The next is to respond to consumers' comments. Few would believe, for example, that CUB really wanted to encourage racist and sexist comments or to have those comments associated with their brand. If they had been monitoring, they would have been able to respond, potentially by taking the comments down. So, while some marketing executives are screaming about the difficulties and costs associated with monitoring, surely monitoring is a necessary cost associated with using social media and needs to be weighed against the benefits it provides as well as, significantly, the risks of not engaging in the conversation at all?

The fact is, that if well done, it really isn't that hard. Not only are the tools already out there (and improving all the time), most brands using social media effectively are monitoring their social media presence already (and if they're not, they should be).

Ultimately, the whole debate over the ASB decision highlights the fact that companies need to engage with their social media presence in the way they hope consumers will engage with their brand in the offline world.

That means, just as a company has guidelines around what it says and does in real life, it needs guidelines around social media that, among other things, removes the doubt and grey areas around what's offensive or illegal (and should be removed) and what constitutes robust, vitriolic and hard-to-hear criticism of their brand - and should stay online and be responded to.

If you don't have the skills or the resources to effectively monitor your social media presence, or don't know where to start, seeking expert help to get set up and potentially monitor responses down the track can be a good move.

The latter seems to be the move that CUB has taken: it was 'managing' its Facebook page itself and has now given the responsibility to an external agency.

While it's easy to say in hindsight, it looks like CUB could have saved a lot of pain by getting some help setting up a policy that involved monitoring and response in the first instance - and in the absence of the in house resources or skills to continue to do so, engaging a social media partner to do it for them.

It really is Reputation Management 101.

Nicola Michel is a writer for BlueChip Communication

Stop the imposters!

By guest blogger, Tamera Lang

The Internet is full of scams and imposters - some obvious, others not so - and as social media booms, it's the next frontier for spoofers and cheats. So how can you be confident that the Twitter account you are following is legitimate? If you are a prominent person or business, how can you fend off impersonators and protect your reputation in social media?

There's plenty of tongue-in-cheek spoof accounts out there; @Queen_UK, @BPGlobalPR and @FakeQantasPR to name a few. However, in all seriousness, a fake account could be damaging for you or your business. It could result in your customers being deceived or spammed, or humiliation and ridicule.

Twitter has a verification program which proactively authenticates the identity of account holders, and identifies verified accounts with a blue badge. The program is focused on very high-profile Twitter users in the areas of "music, acting, fashion, government, religion, journalism, media, advertising, business and other key interest area", and that's the extent of the criteria. You can not request verification from Twitter, and verification has been known to fail.

Australian organisations and people who have verified accounts include NAB, Qantas, ATO, Julia Gillard and Joe Hockey. However, there are a number of high profile accounts that are not verified: Westpac, St George, AMP, ANZ, Financial Review and Tony Abbott. With some of the biggest brands in financial services remaining unverified, you can start to appreciate how high the "high-profile" bar has been set.

While you wait in hope that Twitter will seek you out for verification, what can you do to protect your online identity?

The best advice is to ensure your social media presence is strongly tied to the channels you control - your website, email communication, advertising and products. If your genuine social media presence is strong and prominent, there will be less opportunity for the spoofers to hijack it and leave you playing catch-up. Another way to be proactive is to register the Twitter handles that could most easily be used to impersonate you, and leave them dormant.

If you are subject to a spoof account, you can report it to Twitter (like Qantas did). Twitter will close accounts that impersonate others in a way that is intended to "mislead, confuse or deceive", violate copyright/trademarks or infringe any other Twitter rules. However, some spoof accounts are tolerated, so long as they skirt the rules by making their satirical nature obvious.

All in all, fighting the counterfeiters requires action by you - keep your social media presence strong, frequent and engaged, and the imposters will have less opportunity to take hold.

Tamera Lang is currently undertaking an internship with BlueChip Communication

Winds of change: are you prepared?

By guest blogger, Aideen McDonald

As BlueChip took its place at last week's FSC Conference, there was a feeling in the air that made me sit up and take notice. Something was markedly different. There was a freshness whipping through the rooms, circling attendees and entwining itself in the presentations. And, as quickly as a cold wind slaps you in the face, it hit me: the financial services industry is finally getting involved in the online conversation and embracing social media.

The twittersphere was the strongest, most consistent breeze. Personalities such as Conference MC Tracey Spicer (@spicertracey), Liberal member for Bradfield Paul Fletcher (@paulwfletcher) and media representatives including The @Australian's national affairs correspondent David Crowe (@CroweDM) and trade media Money Management (@moneymanage) exchanging thought-provoking comments throughout the three day event. Conversations were abuzz with even the FSC's own mascot @RegTheFSCMascot, christened by BlueChip's own Bruce Madden (@madd_23n), getting involved in the action.

The conference included not one, but two, sessions on social media - unheard of for an Australian financial services conference up until now. However, the appetite for such discussion was such that both sessions attracted big crowds.

The first, "Social media - fad or the future" had Bravura Solutions' (@BravuraFinTech) Roland Slee (@Rslee) and BlueChip Communication's (@bluechip_comm) own Carden Calder (@Carden) present practical ways #financialservices businesses can add social media to the marketing mix to reach an attentive and targeted audience.

The second #socialmedia event at #fscac took place centre stage with Rohan Lund (@Rohanlund) of Yahoo!7 highlighting the overall importance of financial services coming to meet the rest of the world in the digital world. Lund also focused intently on the real advantage wealth management businesses have in this space given their access to relevant data and customer bases.

The chatter on Twitter, discussions at the social media presentations and even the conversations that followed, highlighted that, while the financial services industry is still lagging behind most in Australia, interest is certainly building.

As noted by Financial Standard (@FinStd) via Twitter during the conference, people were not raising hands for social media a few years ago, but industry leaders now seem to understand that it is not a fad, but the future of your business. How could it not be? It's the fastest and surest way of connecting with your audiences whether they be advisers, HNW investors or consumers. And if the FSC conference is anything to go by, the social media storm is brewing fast and ready to hit. The question is: will you be ready?

Aideen McDonald is an Account Manager for BlueChip Communication

Social media for B2B? Why it's the content that counts

By guest blogger, Tamera Lang

In a recent article in the Australian Financial Review, Agnes King asks what a social media campaign could possibly offer to clients of an accounting firm. Her claim is that Facebook and Twitter are effective business-to-consumer (B2C) communication tools, but that they have no place in a business-to-business (B2B) strategy.

Reading the article, I was struck by Ms King's narrow view of social media. Sure, if you're using Twitter to distribute a press release to journalists - or reporting what you ate for breakfast - no one would deny that your presence has limited value. However, there is so much more to Twitter and other social media tools than distributing your own content.

B2B communication may be about business, but it's still an interaction between people. And in an ever more digitised world, people think, feel, talk, network and listen online and through social media. The fact is that accounting firms and other B2B providers often have well-established brand identities in the so-called offline world. So why not online - especially given its growing prevalence? For them, the social media space is about enhancing that existing brand and reputation in a new form of conversation.

Ms King is correct when she says that you need to have something interesting and relevant to say and that this can be a challenge for all businesses on social channels, not just those communicating B2B. However, from the point of view of their clients, accounting firms have a wealth of interesting business content to impart. In fact, many such businesses have a staggering volume of material on their websites. The question is: why wouldn't clients in search of information simply visit the website, or even Google?

True, a great deal of content is available using these channels. But finding it relies on active searches and knowing what to search for. When, to put it simply, you don't know what you don't know, how are you going to find it? And then you get to the question of which clients want to know what information? Because they have many different interests.

That's where social media can really come into its own.

It enables a business to reach out and understand audiences, and to direct them to in-depth material that interests them. It also has the added benefit of being a two-way conversation, with content responding to and, in some instances, even guiding the mood and needs of the audience. That is something that a website and Google certainly can't give you.

The upshot? The key to success for B2B communicators is delivering engaging content. Content needs to be timely, relevant, thought-provoking and straight to the point. Accounting firms (and their spokespeople) on Twitter are engaging right now in conversation about policy, regulatory reform and business strategy, in ways that enhance their brand and establish them as leaders in their field. They are not afraid to lead the pack and show some personality.

Then comes another big question. Even if your content is great, does social media really work to spread the brand, establish leadership and ultimately, to promote the business? For many businesses, even those that have embraced social media, the question of reach, impact and how they can tell if they are achieving their aims remains. 

It's a question that need no longer remain unanswered - or wildly stabbed at - thanks to the range of ever more sophisticated analytical tools available. Businesses can now actively monitor and evaluate, tweet-by-tweet if they like, the response to their social media initiatives.

Ultimately, what businesses say to other businesses through social media channels does matter. It can engage, build brands and relationships, establish businesses as leaders and experts: in short, add to business performance and reputation. But that will only ever happen if they remember that it's the content that counts.

Tamera Lang is currently undertaking an internship with BlueChip Communication

When worlds collide: word of mouth v. social media

By guest blogger Sophie Halls Anning

Did the headline of Monday's AFR, 'Word of mouth trumps social media' send marketing folk seeking out recommendations on the best word-of-mouth agency? Questioning whether Twitter might just be an ivory tower containing only a few of their most vocal target audience? Wondering whether the high production value of the clip on socionomics might have contributed to a misguided leap of blind faith? Or, did it have them doing as I did, Googling word-of-mouth (WOM) marketing and seeing what insights traditional, online and social media as well as wikis and websites could reveal about this underground speciality?

I recall WOM fighting for share of PR budget a few years ago, rather than being seen as a discipline in its own right. Social media, by contrast, could swallow up to 17.5% of total marketing spend over the next 5 years, up from the current 7.1% estimation, perhaps because, unlike WOM, it's quantifiable and its reach on numbers alone, is vastly superior.

Australian agencies emphasise that they don't pay the people on their database to spruik products to their networks. They just give them free stuff on the basis that these people possess a voice. Does their status as Citizen Smith rather than a media personality or celebrity neatly side step the classic 'cash for comment' accusations made famous years ago by Lawsy and more recently the SA Tourism Commission's Kangaroo Island campaign?

Andy Sernovitz's Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking, endorsed by Seth Godin offers some great tools to get started in word of mouth.Sernovitz suggests starting with the basics: "a clever product name, a special service, a choice of uniform, a well-worded email, or being a little bit nicer to your customers". The stand out here is that nowhere does he mention giving free stuff to people on a database in exchange for chat. By all means, share a good experience over a coffee or on your Facebook status. But talking up a wine sent to you by a company that's being paid to have you talk about it? I'm not so sure. Because once consumers find out that recommendations aren't entirely as independent as they thought, the danger lies in them quickly losing respect for your brand, product or service.

As the SA Tourism Commission discovered to its peril, conversation on social media has a pace which makes the Hush Puppies epidemic referenced in Malcolm Gladwell's seminal book The Tipping Point seem slow. And, as targeting and reach continue to improve day by day, if not minute by minute, it seems clear to me that social media wins.

Sophie Halls Anning is BlueChip Communication's General Manager

How to get social. Stat.

By guest blogger Michelle Ryan.

Social media. Sick of hearing about it? Well, you'd better get used to it, because it's not going anywhere but up.

In fact, regardless of what business you're in - whether in financial services, retail, manufacturing, FMCG etc - the influence of social media is growing, and its impact on your company shouldn't be ignored. Or if you do, you do so at your own peril.

That might sound dramatic. But you need only look at where most news is broken these days - via social media - to realise this is where consumers are living and playing. So to not be part of it would be to ignore your current and potential customers.

So how to get up to speed with social media quickly?

You may have heard us recommend using social learning to get yourself, your colleagues and, ultimately, your business comfortable with using social media ... for the benefit of your company.

In this post, I want to take a very quick look at 'why' you should explore social learning.

What's in it for you?

If we take the impact of social media as a given, then our next step is how to make social work FOR you - and not the other way around. And doing this involves one key element: training. When it comes to training, social learning is pretty much best practice. In short, it allows you to combine expert teachers, with your own home-grown 'experts', otherwise known as your staff, to teach and learn from each other. 

This great info-graphic goes through what such training might involve for different people in the business. Remember: not all employees are created equal. So in order to train them effectively it might be best to separate them into groups based on their web literacy i.e. the digital native vs. the digital contrarian.

Where to from here?

In terms of the benefits of social learning - don't just take my word for it, take that of some of the absolute global best practice in this space.

In this article, Dell, Intel and Constant Contact talk about building social media through this kind of training. In particular, Dell talks about its 'unconferences' which it has used to train more than 5,000 employees - using experts and employees to drive the session topics.

Meanwhile, PepsiCo call their training Social Media and Responsibility Training - or SMART U. Employees said they'd love to share their PepsiCo pride, but they wanted Pepsi to explain the social media policy first. So they did. And they also educated them on social media tools such as Twitter, giving them lots of examples to help them tell the story. Which they then did.

If these examples inspire - and you are keen to give your own internal social media conference a try - this post will give you some tips on how to get started.

Michelle Ryan is an Account Manager for BlueChip Communication.

Looking at social media? Then start with an internal media conference

By guest blogger Michelle Ryan

Recently my colleague, Carden Calder - BlueChip Communication founder and social media aficionado - posted a blog about social learning. It looked at the benefits of sharing knowledge and experiences in and out of social media, with a special focus on financial services firms.

Rather than give you the complete low-down on the post, you can read it for yourself here, but I did want to expand on one of the points it contained.

Top ways to kick off social learning...

In her blog, Carden listed three key suggestions to help financial service firms, that want to give social learning a try, get started. 

One of those suggestions was to hold an internal social media conference.

What is that, you ask? Allow me to explain ... in 140 characters or less. No, kidding, I will need a few more words than that, but here is a brief outline.

Get started on social learning by running your own internal social media conference...

An internal social media conference involves presenting relevant information about social media, stimulating ideas and inspiration among staff members. It's a safe, fun, social media training ground, that ideally should work as a springboard for lively discussion. It's also a great opportunity for staff to get their hands dirty and have a 'play' with various social media platforms before they launch into the 'real' virtual world on your company's behalf.

Five steps to hosting an internal social media conference

1. Decide on the topic and develop some guidelines for content
• Be very specific about topics you want covered. Choose, say, a social media channel, concept or service.
• Choose a topic that is directly relevant to your staff and your social media goals - if you're not going to use Facebook, don't go there, but if you are launching a Twitter handle at a conference, you need to get your staff across the who, what, when, why and how of this before you launch it.
• Invite staff to send questions ahead of time so speakers can tailor their presentations or run Q&A sessions if appropriate.
2. Find an external speaker and brief them
• A quick search online for social media buzz words will show you a number of people who purport to be, or in fact are, experts in social and digital communication. Ask around, check references and other bona fides to be sure you get the real deal.
• Use your conference topics as starting points in your search and look for an external speaker with direct capabilities or experience in this area.
3. Get staff involved and have them present
• Yes, engage the speaker, but don't overlook the capabilities of your own staff.
• Do you have someone already on staff who can share their knowledge and experience? If so, do what you can to encourage peer-to-peer, or social learning - for example, appoint that person as a champion or ambassador of your social media campaign. This is a great way to fast track results and keep the all-important conversation alive in the office once the internal conference has finished!
4. Review
• Ask your staff and any external speakers to rate the conference so you can improve or build on its lessons. A quick Survey Monkey questionnaire (incentivised if you are serious about getting a response) will allow you to get this information quickly and easily.
5. And rebook
• Once you have the feedback - use it! Book in another session (perhaps aim for one a quarter) to discuss a different topic and to hear from different 'experts'. With social and digital media changing constantly, you'd be unwise to believe you have heard or learnt it all before.

Michelle Ryan is an Account Manager for BlueChip Communication

Social: saving lives by building a better GP

And how far behind is financial services?

If anyone you know is still wondering about whether social media has commercial worth, here's one to shout from the rooftops. 

News from a medical study today is a huge signal to the medical establishment about social tools for Australian doctors and patients. And a harbinger of what's to come for our banks, insurers, wealth advisers, financial planners, credit card companies and financial services providers as they serve us on our own personal journeys towards better financial futures.

Listening to ABC Radio 702's breakfast show this morning I heard something everyone should know. 

The Medical Journal of Australia is going to develop a collaborative social tool (a wiki) to help General Practitioners (GPs) deliver the best possible care to patients. At least that's the summary version I've gleaned from news media and the MJA website. 

Why? 

Almost half of Australian patients don't get "recommended care"

Because a recent study suggests adult Australians are receiving "appropriate" (read 'good enough') GP care at 57%. That leaves a whopping 43% of GP care in the sample group of more than 1,000 who did not receive "appropriate care".

The potential extrapolation to the Australian population (think in particular regional or social-economically under-served communities) is frightening.

Now while there will be headlines in those stats, here are some realities:

- GPs are among some of the most overburdened in our health care system

- They have limited time and resources to diagnose (and often treat) thousands of diverse conditions

- No medical  professional is omnipotent...and we're unreasonable if we expect them to be...which we often do!

So how does a busy GP ensure (ie be certain or near enough) they're doing better than getting it right half  the time? Use a wiki that, overseen by experts, provides a "dynamic, centralised and inclusive platform — openly available to all to contribute to and use — that will help empower clinicians to deliver the best care."

It's a huge leap for practitioners, who for sometime have been complaining about "Google Doctor", but have, on occasion, been well behind the eight ball when faced with an intelligent, curious and well researched patient.

Personally I use healthy caution when it comes to Google Doctor. I have the words of my late grandfather, a specialist and pioneer in his field, that a little bit of knowledge is indeed a very dangerous thing. 

Personally? Google+ motivated parent > GP

But, and it's a huge but, I have used Google twice to identify and correctly diagnose rare conditions affecting my children.

After failing to arrive at answers to serious questions in several consults, I was forced to look for answers myself in the only medical database I have access to (imperfect as it is) - Google. 

After that, and with the germ of an idea I went to yet more doctors to be told (on occasion) I was wrong. And then, upon persisting, finding advice from more specialised doctors in particular fields, that I was right.

OK so that's probably an unusual example. Still, it suggests a worried parent with Google, some basic biological knowledge and the ability to use Boolean search terms beats 15-30 minutes with a busy GP or paediatrician any day. 

And that's just wrong. 

Simple access to information is putting medical professionals, and their patients (most of us!) at a huge disadvantage.

Why? Because many doctors, while great professionals with specialist diagnostician skills, don't have the time or tools (here's where the wiki comes in) to get the right answer. In some cases, they may also lack the humility or intellectual curiosity to get the right answer, but that's another, and thankfully, less common, story.

The God-complex revived: in a wiki

This signals a very real application of social tools to one of the most important ares of our lives - our health.

Here are a few key lines from the excerpt in today's MJA abstract covering the study, which was designed to measure how well we deliver “appropriate care” to patients in Australia (doi: 10.5694/mja12.10510). 

"The researchers were aiming to reproduce a landmark 2003 study that found that only 55% of patients in the United States received “recommended care”...findings are essentially the same — that almost half of patients are not receiving appropriate care....

"...challenge that practitioners regularly face — how to access reliable, updated and credible information about appropriate care, and how to make clinical decisions in the absence of this information.

"...Runciman et al suggest a way to achieve national agreement on clinical standards...we (the MJA) are already working with the Cancer Council Australia to deliver a “wiki” guideline tool on our website...a dynamic, centralised and inclusive platform — openly available to all to contribute to and use — that will help empower clinicians to deliver the best care."

We can't reasonably expect our GPs to be God, or even close to omnipotent, but we can expect that when such a tool exists, they can use it to improve their diagnoses.

Still wondering about social media in financial services?

Here we have a wiki - a social, collaborative tool - that may well lift the standard of GP care in Australia. Well used, that means savings lives, improving quality of life and lower health care costs as we improve prevention and treatment. 

How long before such a wiki helps financial planners, and their clients, arrive at better decision about long term financial planning? Or helps you make better decisions about the cheapest and best credit card? Or when to flick the mortgage provider and change banks? Choose a super fund? Or how to really cost the services the bank provides? 

Sooner than we think.

Hopefully such solutions will be made possible by joint industry efforts, collaborating with consumers, to develop social tools that give us all access to better financial decisions.

It would seem that whether we seek to be healthier, wealthier or wiser, the democratisation of information long predicted through social is reality. 

Social learning: buzzword bingo winner or simply better education?

Experiential, collaborative and common sense

Once upon a time, as a postgraduate research student, I learned a lot about research methodologies. One was "action learning". It was as it sounds like - learning through action. At the time I thought some flaky social science academic had made that up to justify a lack of empirical data in their thesis. And they may well have.

But as time (frighteningly some 20 years) as elapsed I've come to value "scar tissue". Things that can only be learned by doing. Actually by failing and re-doing until we learn painful lessons.

And decades on from the horror of the group assignment, it's clear to see why we (and generations since) were made to do them.

Because the process is sometimes as important, or more important, than the outcome.

And because in any organisation, big or small, collaboration is key to success. And through collaboration a whole new horizon opens up - the opportunity to learn from the experiences of others. It's an opportunity to learn from three, three million or three billion.

And finally action learning, particularly collaborative action learning, makes perfect sense.

Definition?

Tony Bingham, President and CEO of the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) defines social learning as "learning that happens outside a formal structure or classroom ... the way people have always learned from each other. Social learning centres on information sharing, collaboration and co-creation."

Social learning is learning with and from others. It happens at conferences, cafes or online - with or without social media tools.

Why is it important?

Maria Ogneva, Director of Community at Yammer, says, "If your goal is to increase customer satisfaction, perhaps the impact metric you are looking for is the increase of speed of a response to a customer, and how collaboration helps you do that. For any social effort to be successful, it has to tie to a business objective."

So in short the team who learns together, works better together.

And in social media or social business working (fast) across distance, division and medium is a basic survival skill.

Who is talking about it?

Mashable: http://mashable.com/2012/05/19/social-learning/

Who is doing it well?

Nokia

Using social media as a tool to learn about their products http://www.blinkx.com/watch-video/nokia-5800-xpress-music/debj4Te6N8GtUR5-UhXTRA

Developing mobile educational products (Nokia Education Delivery, Nokia Life Tools and Nokia mobile mathematics) Nokia reaches out to those who may not have had learning so accessible to them. http://www.nokia.com/global/about-nokia/people-and-planet/impact/social/social-investments/

Some useful links:

100 examples of using social media for learning http://c4lpt.co.uk/social-learning-handbook/100-examples-of-use-of-social-media-for-learning/

An info graphic ... not great resolution but some good facts on social and online learning http://interactyx.com/social-learning-blog/infographic-the-state-of-digital-education/

Top three ideas for financial services?

1. Try a social media internal conference

Use both staff and external speakers and share experiences - with careful content curation it will lift everyone's social expertise

2. Get the C-Suite into a "social sandpit"

Over breakfast or lunch, have every senior executive in front of a laptop or tablet with their own Twitter, a Facebook account and a Pinterest login. This is about safe, anonymous learnings by doing

3. Social superheroes

Everyone wants their five minutes of fame ... a quick employee survey can reveal untold social talent. Given guidelines, secret social superheroes can teach everyone else a lot, and feel rewarded along the way

What the "s" in social media really stands for

“Superfluous,” some argued just three years ago when we presented our first social media seminar to clients and colleagues. Some sceptics argued that Facebook, Twitter and even LinkedIn would never gain critical mass when it came to communication with investors, advisers or asset consultants.

“Scary,” and an unnecessary open door to public criticism, others said.

Some sceptics became converts as we ran those social media seminars, and they started on a journey that today sees them using content marketing and social channels successfully as part of their overall marketing and PR program.

I’d make a strong case that the “s” in social media stands for “same same but different.” 

As we work with clients developing social media capability, one truism has become a touchtone in our consulting practice.

The execution may be (very) different but the principles are the same.

The “same” is that great communication is still grounded in understanding the context, knowing the audiences and saying something worth listening to – in the audience’s judgement, rather than our own.

In reputation management, proactive positive PR, or in managing issues or a crisis, best practice offline is still best practice online. It just has to be executed fundamentally differently.

The “different” is usually faster, with greater transparency and more engagement. And of course messages are being delivered via very different channels. Yes, the medium does become the message. Or worse, the absence of the medium (let’s say you’re not using Twitter yet and everyone else is) becomes the message.

Once upon a time we were using faxes, lots of paper, telephones and briefings to reach audiences such as employees, journalists and government. Now we’re using Yammer, Twitter, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn and blogs. The channels are different, and yes, they’ve changed the messages but strategy, process and creative are still needed and largely similar.

Three years ago when we ran our first social media seminars we talked about whether there was a business case for social media. At the time I suggested it was like websites in financial services in the 90s – by the time we had a business case we’d be the only one in town without one.

Financial services is now well past the social media tipping point.

Not having a website now is inconceivable. So too is not managing your reputation in social media. 

This post was first published in PRognosis, the BlueChip client communique on 16 February 2012

Why financial services suddenly had a social media conversion

It's been a while since we first started the conversation. And last year suddenly the dialogue changed complexion.

Instead of saying:

"Really? No it's just another Gen Y fad" or

"Sure, that will work for Coke but not for our (insert financial services brand here) audiences" or

"I don't think we need twitter or facebook. Not really our audience"

...many senior executives started to ask...

"How do we get there?"

And what drove the change? Well there was carrot and stick I suspect - from above, below and outside.

Before I start sounding too much like a Dr Seuss book, let me explain.

Many times recently I have heard (forgive the paraphrasing if you recognise yourself):

1. The Board want to know what we are doing about social media
2. Our staff feel we really should be using social media / using social media more
3. We had this issue that started on twitter/facebook/on a blog/online but we couldn't deal with it properly because we're really not set up to.

And so now we have social media religion. Yes, it's a touch feverish but doubtless that will settle down after the first blush of conversion wears off and social becomes the 'new new new normal'.

We've had the "new normal", post GFC. We've had the "new new normal" of volatility and GFC Mark II threats. Now I'm calling a similar major shift - the new new new normal.

Okay it's kind of hokey jargon but long term, social media will fundamentally change how we communicate as people and organisations far more than a couple of bouts with liquidity issues, bank failures and sovereign debt issues.

Possibly it already has.

If so, most in financial services are playing catch up.

Qantas v Unions: Pot or Kettle blacker?

Regardless of the outcome, reputations will be damaged in the boxing match featuring "Qantas vs the unions".

It remains to be seen whether the pot, or kettle, emerges with their name more blackened.

Both the unions and Qantas are likely to suffer some tarnish to their reputation given actions by both mean they are failing to deliver on basic service, let alone the brand promise.

I'm not an aviation or union expert, but I'm fascinated by the public aspect of the battle. Here are some observations of how it's playing out and how the PR is being handled.

Qantas

Qantas is actually pretty good at PR. They've always seemed to be great at getting their message out - quickly, cleanly and with great execution discipline, and in keeping with community standards.

Which makes it all the more interesting (what really happened behind the scenes?) that today's shut down has drawn a proper bollocking from Government. Normally such a bold and big move would have been discussed with government, and the subject of much behind the scenes consultation - all designed to avoid exactly the reaction they got today.

Now that the Board and CEO have gone with what one online forum thread describes as "the nuclear option" it will be interesting to see how good they are at crisis communication while on the offensive. And whether they have a PR adviser or firm on board, or internal folk, with the ability to steer through this with the least damage.

Because damage there will be...more on that later.

Qantas has just moved from "victim" to "aggressor" in the public psyche - not only because they have "gone nuclear" but importantly because they've just stopped serving customers. When your customers are families trying to reunite, people with medical issues and travelling tweeters, what comes next will fill PR, crisis management and stakeholder theory text books for some time to come.

And I say "crisis communication" when talking about Qantas because it is, by definition, the communication needed (and often not employed properly) when the issues threaten the very continuity, or fundamental value and sustainability, of the organisation.

The Unions

The union movement is also great at PR - not necessarily the kissing babies style community PR but that great sport of intensely fought campaign style media designed to win both the war and the battle.

When industrial action stops flights it's harder for the unions to stay on the right side of public opinion.

Now, Qantas have handed the three unions representing baggage handlers, catering staff, engineers and long haul pilots, a huge advantage - the big group of people (passengers) who are now as cranky with Qantas as the unions are.

Its an advantage unlikely to be wasted if tonight's Fair Work Australia hearing doesn't produce at least a ceasefire to enable all parties to cool down - and flight service to resume.

News media

The Sydney Morning Herald is running a good mash-up style news feed here, with webcam from Qantas's currently empty check-in areas, regular news updates, images and comments from passengers via twitter and email.

The ABC's coverage is similar but with far greater weight to images and cool inclusions like twitter sentiment (62% negative on Alan Joyce when I saw it) through storify.

Analyst Tom Ballantyne says it was Qantas's only real option. Maybe so. But possibly it could have been executed with better behind-the-scenes stakeholder engagement - and they'd be coping less of a public blackening now.

Tony Abbott's line that it's a national repuation issue was echoed by commentator Greg Sheridan. Sadly, thanks to the newly installed paywall around The Australian's content you'll have to pay to read the full piece.

Online reputation management

It would appear the Qantas team is somewhat under resourced, with tweets outbound but, as one SMH reader notes, no staffers responding to stranded passengers via social media.

Not a great triumph for brand management online. All very well to offer smart-alec comments from the side line but if I were working with Qantas on this I'd have strongly suggested a social media desk staffed by (in this order of preference) management or customer service people who are social media savvy, their PR firm or an outsourced call centre used to dealing with investors or upscale customers - and yes they do exist and can be deployed quickly. It's really not that different to the media desk and elevated customer inbound call capacity that's a standard part of every crisis management team.

BlueChip has a crisis management desk wired and ready to go...it seats a dozen people in close (but not too close) proximity so that communication can be exchanged quickly, answers developed and signed off on the fly and the team acts as one. Why is Qantas's equivalent not given permission to go further than one-way - taking passengers at least on the return journey in social media?

All those sympathetic outbound passenger tweets by Qantas (had they happened) would have helped tip Alan Joyce's twitter sentiment (and more importantly Qantas's) back into the green.

I'm guessing that having bet the farm on this move Alan Joyce was more worried about other alligators in the swamp than his own customers.

And yet neglected, those cranky flyers could yet pay Qantas back horribly for failing to provide swift, helpful responses in the right medium ie the one customers are using to vent, ask for help or simply share their latest news.

That's the whole point of the democratisation of influence we've seen with the rise and rise of social media.

Too few senior people (Boards and leadership teams) in financial services don't yet appreciate just how far reaching the evolution of online communication is - and that yes, it does reach into the boardrooms and mahogany rows (or well-lit hot desks) of those formally in charge.

At least Qantas is tweeting...even if its only one way.

It's too early to call it for either party in terms of media and public sentiment.

If I had to guess I'd say media will call it as the online sentiment does, at least short term.

Events at Fair Work Australia may yet see Qantas hailed as a reluctant hero - fighting back only to secure their survival.

Either way it's a public example of how PR wars are now fought, and won or lost.

Financial services Boards, CEOs and senior management could learn a lot by watching it unfold online.

Social media breakout: PAICR 2011

Judging by the audience response in this session, most of us are using social media personally, but many are not there as financial services companies or institutions.

Pretty much the same as Australia. And pretty much, I'd suggest, a fleeting moment in time.

Deborah Well of Harbor Capital Advisors chaired the session that Vanguard's Eric Haberacker and I spoke at.

Newsflash...presentations by fund managers aren't watched a lot on YouTube but the eTrade baby is.

The Vanguard YouTube channel is a great one to learn from.

Here are a few things that make it work: videos are engaging, short and well produced.

Stay true to your brand, says Haberacker. Other guiding principles include being authentic, transparent and candid; one size does not fit all; keep in line with regulations; humanize Vanguard through content; be an investor advocate and "experiment-learn-evolve".

Three key considerations for Vanguard in making social media work are these:
1. Social media content impacts brand reputation - make PR a critical partner because they know and manage the company 'story'
2. Speed is critical - expedited turnarounds are the norm
3. Content classifications - static and interactive content can follow different approval processes

And today's inside tip: Do you have to spend $200k to get your own YouTube channel? No. AT least not if you're already doing business with Google.

I'm also tweeting (when coverage allows!) from the 2011 PAICR conference as 'Carden'.

"I have no idea what I'm doing": the marketers' quandry

Welcome to online marketing in financial services. While the industry, for the most part, hasn't been fast to adopt digital marketing or social media, it's still bewildering territory at times.

"No corporate function has evolved more than marketing" said Razorfish's Ryan Alderman, quoting McKinsey (McKinsey Quarterly 09.2009).

It's no wonder marketers in financial services feel lost.

To do justice to the presentation, which was the best I've seen this year on social media, I'd have to share every slide and my own observations ... and will do so over the next few weeks with many of you.

Here is a taste of the insights shared by Alderman in today's opening session.

Financial advisers
An estimated 46 per cent of financial advisers own iPads (which were launched 18 months ago).

What they expect from their interaction with financial institutions says Alderman, is:

• World class experiences regardless of channel (traditional or virtual)
• "Always on"
• Near real time relationships
• Multi-channel...everything. Communication, service, information. You name it.

Consumers
We are, according to a Harvard Business Review study, consuming 12 hours of media in a nine hour period - thanks to multi-channel simultaneous consumption.

The way our customers want to engage with us is different - and it's more likely to be about the conversation than the content on the website.

At the same time our norms around financial services are changing...consumers, says Alderman, are morel likely to share previously personal information about finance, including our choices, experiences and, critically, recommendations.

What does that really mean?

It means that thanks to our ownership of multiple devices, and the increasing availability of multiple media across devices we are splitting our attention across devices and using multiple technologies or devices at once. Maybe you're running a phone with email and browser at the same time as watching a webinar...and our customers are doing the same. Think here browsing the Internet or Twitter updates while watching TV.

The cost of attention just went up - massively.

Against this backdrop it's even more important for marketers to understand "context" as well as content.

Why "conversation" trumps broadcast...and paid
Some other numbers thrown out today spell the death, or at least decline, of paid media. I've yet to source these numbers so offer them with a health warning...

• 75 per cent of people believe companies lie in ads
• 77 per cent trust financial institutions less than they did last year
• 38 per cent believe companies will do what's right
• 15 per cent of people enjoy the ads as much as the program - guessing that's TV only

What hasn't changed?
All that is well and good. But the fundamental goals of marketing haven't changed. How we go about achieving the goals has changed. And will do so, ever faster. So get learning.

And remember this says Alderman: advertising in not marketing - stop confusing them.

Marketing is now about creating brand engagement across media. So find an audience (don't create another destination or website), bring creative and technology together, learn from integrated analytics. And from those who've been before us.

Ones to watch?
At least in the United States, Alderman cites American Express (particularly for their small business digital marketing), Fidelity, Vanguard and Pimco.

How did they get there? Trial and error.

BlueChip Communication , Australia's leading financial services communication firm, is attending the PAICR conference (twitter #PAICR2011)

Banking on social media at Rabo

Imagine my delight when I opened my inbox on Saturday morning to find... a wrap up from "Visible Banking" on Rabobank's first social media day. Now, I do have to declare an interest. BlueChip Communication, which is the firm I founded and run, does work with RaboDirect in Australia. Our conversations there range from traditional media to online and experiential. Social media is almost always a part of the discussion, and no wonder given what happened in Utrecht last week.


I'm waiting to hear more from some of the participants in the event, but here's what struck me about Christophe Langlois' most recent post.

1. How cool it was that Rabobank ran a social media day for over 300 staff... letting them get their hands on /  experience a very wide range of social media tools
2. The event had it's own hashtag on Twitter ... as well as a microsite
3. The day engaged employees and helped recruit them into social media advocates

And this last point I think is where the rub is with an initiative like this. It's an opportunity to educate a very broad range of employees. From those who may be responsible for creating or implementing a social media strategy, to those who, for example, might work in sign-off, an initiative like this is great to engage and excite internal stakeholders.


Visible Banking makes these very good points about what the bank will now need to do to roll out and implement a successful social media strategy regionally and internationally. 

• Training / coaching their workforce
• Designing a robust and engaged content strategy
• Implement a Know-Your-Followers/Fans (KYF) strategy

Read the full post here. Visible Banking have also posted pictures of the event. One of the things I love about Visible Banking is that Christophe maintains an up to date social media in financial services directory. It's the only one I'm aware of. I have to give Visible Banking full credit for providing the most comprehensive tracking of social media in financial services.