Social Media
By Carl G. Pry, CrCM
Not Just Compliance Concerns
MANY BANKS ARE STRUGGlING with whether to join the social media revolution or wait it out, for a variety of reasons:
■ “We don’t have the time, personnel, or funding to invest in social media right now.”
■ “We don’t see these media as a productive use of our customers’ or employees’ time.”
■ “There is no way to measure effectiveness.”
■ “We have too many compliance and legal concerns to risk it.”
■ “We just don’t know enough about social media to even know where to begin.”
It’s this last reason that plagues many of us. What is even out there? Can it benefit
our bank and our customer base? Maybe, the thinking goes, we’ll wait until it’s more
established and we can see what others are doing and learn from their mistakes. But
that time might already have passed.
Social media are not going away; if anything their use is becoming more pervasive. Dismissing social media communications incurs real risks—consider who
typically uses these channels: young (and increasingly, not-so-young), tech-savvy
consumers who expect efficiency and convenience in their dealings with financial
institutions. In other words, a desirable demographic.
Because static content reaches a large audience, it is phrased very broadly. In contrast,
interactive content is just what its name suggests: it is tailored to an individual respondent
or targeted audience and is based on specific needs.
Of course, interactive communication takes more work on the bank’s part. Whereas
static content needs approval only before being posted, interactive content must be
continuously supervised. Some banks have gone so far as to appoint social media officers or committees to do just that. Leveraging social media is thus about much more
than marketing (which we all do on our individual Web sites); it’s about interacting
with customers and prospects.
On the other hand, there are real risks to jumping too quickly into the social
media frenzy. As we’ll see, careful thought must be put into how your bank will
present itself in social media. Many of the compliance implications were addressed
in the September/October 2009 issue of this magazine, but there are other risks
that can be controlled or avoided altogether by formulating a comprehensive social
media policy and program.
