Investing in social media

In an industry known more for conservatism than experimentation, social media has appeared as a minefield. But in the face of that risk, finance brands are making the leap - and winning, says Marcus Field.

When Harvard’s campus dwellers first conceived of Facebook they probably didn’t consider just how global and popular it would be — let alone the sort of marketing tool it would provide in the professional and business spheres.

But now, with Facebook catering for more than 400 million users and Twitter numbers increasing by a staggering 579 per cent since last year, it is no wonder the world of finance, specifically financial planners, is tapping into the market opportunities that social media offers.

As such, social media has moved beyond its genesis as a youth-orientated socialising device and become an excellent tool for financial planners’ marketing strategies and building deeper customer connections.

But this emerging technology offers even greater potential than meets the eye — it allows multiple forms of media and content to converge in a new and interactive environment, thereby giving businesses a platform to launch content or its message further afield to achieve a greater resonance with its audience.

Furthermore, by utilising social media technology, financial planning businesses can even tap into a traditionally unengaged market — the under 30s age group.

This trend has also shifted financial planning businesses' marketing strategies into a paradigm where the end-user has a much more powerful role, and created a situation where content can be created by anyone, anytime and anywhere.

While this offers business marketers more creative license; it also exposes some of the core challenges of Internet technology: content credibility and a lack of control.

Internet technology carries the well-known risk of content security, which is inevitably a problem for an industry like financial planning, where consumers and businesses’ personal and financial data can be manipulated and exploited.

But the risks of social media technology are actually more subversive than that. In fact, the stakes are very high for businesses seeking to maintain their public image via social media technology.

This is because the competition for visibility in a space as infinitely large as the Internet can increase the pressure for businesses.

The increasingly fragmented and discerning online audience also means that a business’ content can be interpreted in a range of unpredictable and undesired ways.

In other words, the sphere of influence is much broader, unpredictable and immeasurable — thereby presenting a reputational risk for many financial planning practices.

In fact, Aon’s 2009/10 Australasian Risk Management Benchmarking Survey found that while social media has proven itself as a powerful contributor to brand, reputational risk has also been identified as the single greatest concern for businesses across Australia.

This social media challenge is not unique to business marketing strategies. It has also posed a problem for news media.

Online newspapers and broadcasters struggle to ensure that their news remains credible and reliable, given the scope for unknown authorship and uncontrolled user-participation in the online, interactive space.

So while social media technology provides great potential for a financial planning business’ content to connect to a wide and diverse audience, there is also the risk that it won’t be picked up, or will connect in the wrong way.

But, there’s no question that getting it right in social media can generate great success. US President Barack Obama’s ‘Yes we can’ social media campaign for example was considered instrumental in his political success in 2008.

An example closer to home is H&R Block’s success in promoting tax products via social networking during the 2008 tax season.

Via several social networking accounts, the company started ‘honest’ conversations about tax with followers and fans and even developed its own network called getitright.hrblock.com.

According to Advertising Age and RocSearch, the campaign saw a 171 per cent increase in online awareness and a 52 per cent increase in brand awareness.

But generating success in social media, like any brand management challenge, requires a clear understanding of the fluctuating online environment, its diverse audience and a specific strategy to navigate it. This navigation ultimately relies on ensuring a business’ content actually connects with its desired audience.

Harnessing emerging and highly distributional technology is one thing, but it will reap very little benefit for a business if the content is not considered, strategic and ‘shareworthy’.

In fact, businesses need to think beyond the technology and realise that media convergence is more than just the culmination of diverse types of media — it is also about the quality and resonance of the dialogue imbedded in the content.

The real challenge is creating content that will stand out in a competitive and fluid online media space and then live on via other media forms. This is what makes the content shareworthy.

In fact, successful social media content creators actually capitalise on one of the medium’s most challenging features — the shift in power from the provider to the consumer.

Social media has changed financial planning practices’ traditional marketing strategies from a one-way, interruptive communication model into a two-way, interactive model — which means the user has more say and navigational power than ever before.

While this can present a ‘reputational risk’ for businesses, audience feedback also provides the content creator with more interesting and accurate ‘fodder’ to work with.

The content creator has a better understanding of what the audience is thinking and demanding and can adjust the dialogue accordingly — thereby generating more lucrative business prospects.

This sort of audience insight also offers greater scope for content creation, as it allows the business to tap into the end-user’s emotional intelligence (EQ), as well as their intellect, and create deeper and more shareworthy content connections.

Successful social media campaigns in financial services require thinking beyond the opportunities of converging media technology and harnessing the prospects available in the content and audience behind it.

Not only is this the key to mitigating the inherent risk of the online social media world, but it also ensures that a business’ brand achieves longevity and resonance.

Marcus Field is the managing director of evolution media group.