Results 2.0: Social Media for Financial Institutions

Recently, a bank sent this request out over Twitter: "Help us figure out what our new blog should be about. Please send suggestions."

More often than not, when financial institutions deploy Web 2.0 tools, it feels like a tactic searching for an excuse/strategy. They assume they need online social media before they even know what for. What are the goals? How does it fit the business model? What does success look like? What are they saying? To whom?

This is why most social media experiments are duds. In fact, one expert with Gartner research says that 50% of all Fortune 1000 companies trying some kind of online social networking initiative will fail. And out of 16,000 financial institutions, there are only a handful of real success stories.

So why do social media gurus run around the country imploring financial institutions to adopt social media strategies? It seems like everywhere you turn, there’s someone preaching the gospel of blogs, Twitter and Facebook. Yeah okay, we get it…

But for all these recommendations to create "engagement," transparency" and "authenticity," you don’t often hear about the underlying business case supporting Web 2.0 tools, nor how to go about building an effective strategy.

This presentation — created by Jeffry Pilcher, publisher of The Financial Brand — that picks up where all those impassioned, touchy-feely recommendations to jump on the Web 2.0 bandwagon stop short. The presentation outlines what you need to know to implement Web 2.0 tools that accomplish real business objectives:

• The hardcore realities behind all the Web 2.0 hoopla
• The right- and wrong way to build a Web 2.0 strategy
• How to link Web 2.0 tools with your brand and products
• How to get your management team on board with a Web 2.0 initiative

The presentation tackles 9 myths of social media and includes 10 strategies for building an effective Web 2.0 program. There are a lot of examples included, but unfortunately you need to hear the presentation to know how they fit within the presentation’s overall context. The meat of the presentation is 62 slides.