Finance Firms are Going to Twitter and Social Media With Mixed Results
August 30, 2011 by admin
Filed under Latest Lingerie News
Corporate Insight, which tracks financial services firms, says 67 percent are now using Twitter and 59 percent are on Facebook.
“Facebook is more of a relationship-driven community whereas Twitter is more content-driven,” said Alan Maginn, senior analyst at Corporate Insight, a competitive intelligence firm covering finance. “Facebook is a more challenging environment for businesses because, in order to be successful, they must foster a relationship with their fans. With Twitter, they can concentrate more on the value of the content they produce.”
Right on time too.
Somini Sengupta at The New York Timesreported last week that a Pew Research Center survey showed that half of all adults in the United States said they use a social networking site. Six years ago, when Pew first conducted a similar survey, only 5 percent of all adults said they used social sites, like Facebook, LinkedIn or MySpace.
As they gain experience in social media, financial firms are becoming more sophisticated in the ways they use it, Maginn added. Leaders in social media have separated customer service from marketing, for example. In some cases they have created multiple marketing channels aimed at specific client groups.
Why would someone want to follow a company like American Express on Facebook?
Maginn said one reason is that the companies provide value to the people who follow them.
“They offer deals and specials. In the early spring American Express had a deal tied to iTunes; if you signed up to link iTunes to Amex they bought your first five songs, a deal they did through Facebook.” It’s a win for the Amex cardholder, who got the free tunes, and a deal for Amex which can expect most of their customers to continue using their card with iTunes.
Large firms often have multiple channels on both Facebook and Twitter. For example, on Facebook, American Express has American Express OPEN for small business owners.
“They have a proprietary community Open Forum, for small business users, and a Twitter profile and Facebook page to support that online community,” said Maginn. “They have a segment of the population that are Amex cardholders and they are smart enough to realize the small business owners have a shared experience. If you have a small business, there are issues that will be relevant to a print shop or a flower shop. So if Amex gets them into an Internet room and share what they have learned form certain experience.” The community has grown to more than 16,000 members, he added. American Express also has a Members Project to connect volunteers and donors to worthwhile projects, and AskAmex on Twitter for customer service. On its AskAmex Twitter account, American Express typically responds to specific issues by taking the electronic conversation private, like here:
@seattlesong ‘Social Media Inq’ for Subject ‘Twitter’ for Category addr your email to me – Beth – I will respond directly to u.
American Express appears to have devoted much more in the way of resources to Twitter than to its other channels.
