The Social Media landscape is growing and changing constantly. What’s popular today may be outdated next week. Most people don’t remember, but before Facebook everybody used MySpace… and before that, Friendster and Six Degrees. There are now currently over 100 Social Media Channels and it’s growing! Does your financial institution need to be involved with all these?
Your account holders are active online. They communicate with friends and family. They shop. And they follow brands and companies that interest them. Financial institutions obviously want to be where their account holders are. Social media is a logical choice. Establishing a Facebook page, LinkedIn presence, Twitter account, etc. is commonplace for financial marketers.
As a provider of Facebook design and marketing services, one question we are asked quite often is “how do we get started?” With more and more financial institutions now turning to Facebook as a means of reaching and engaging their current and future account holders, I wanted to address this question and share the following 5 suggestions for getting started.
If you are not leading the online conversation about your institution, or in some way active in it, then you’re leaving it to others to do so on your behalf… and that can be scary! Using social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, to engage both new and current account holders has the potential to generate a lot of value for financial institutions!
Social media is truly amazing. On a personal level, I keep track of everything my friends eat (well at least some of them), where they go on vacation, what their kids are up to, and a bit more about their political and/or religious beliefs than I ever expected. On a professional level, I’ve followed what’s happening with our customers and prospects and continue to make new contacts.
I found Facebook’s ad technology to be truly amazing. I was able to target people by age with specific interests relating to the conference who lived within the target area. As I set the criteria for each ad (I ran four different ads for testing purposes), Facebook showed how many individuals met the criteria — they gave me an accurate count of prospects.
Facebook is far from a fad. It is changing how people connect with friends and family. It is changing how people learn about what’s happening around them. It is changing how people form their opinions. And it is changing how people interact with the companies they like. There are thousands of banks and credit unions with Facebook pages. Some “get it” and remain social, while some don’t.
