When did social media become a marketing issue? The marketing department needs to realize Facebook and Twitter is a way to create conversation with a client, not a resource to create social spamming. Most people already receive enough spam through their emails. We’ve found that among Erado’s social media clients, 67% use LinkedIn, 24% use Facebook, 8% use Twitter, and 1% use a blog.
A recent study by Ledermark, a financial marketing and communications firm, showed that for business purposes, professionals used social media as a platform to reconnect with clients, introduce themselves to new ones, create referrals, and provide answers to frequently asked questions. The convenience of virtually meeting, engaging, and connecting with current and future clients is staggering. Businesses are gradually seeing social media as a useful tool to help bring in business, increase brand awareness, performance, and expansion in market research.
An organization’s marketing department uses social media for brand management and controlling the corporate message. They see it as a tool to reach the mass audience because of the high volume of users amongst these networks. Generally, advisors are allowed to create business profiles used to distribute these messages concerning products and services. Within these profiles, advisors are only allowed to post pre-approved messages. We found an insightful comment from a blog post on ted360[dot]com pertaining to how social media should be used. We applied their comments to social media as a whole.
Social is the interaction of individuals or groups in a social manner, ie, talking, engagement and communication. Media is communication through text, image, video, devices and the Internet. To put it simply, [social media] is a communication tool used to create dialogues. A dialogue or an engagement with your audience and, most importantly, with your potential future audience.
A dialogue goes two ways. It doesn’t involve a single wavelength of broadcasting which doesn’t get a response. [Social media] is about engagement, the communication and the interaction. So why do certain businesses and organizations seem to be on a mission to alienate their audience by getting them to plug in to a constant stream of marketing material?
Marketing sees these outlets as an opportunity to “strategically” plan messages that every advisor could use. These messages in other words, are generic messages. Let’s say Company A has 75 pre-approved messages that can be sent to Facebook and Twitter. What if Company A has hundreds of advisors? Does this mean they’ll be cycling through the pre-approved messages over and over again? With so many advisors using social media, these messages are going to look like spam, and who likes spam?
An organization’s compliance department requires the best solution for capturing, monitoring and archiving all electronic communications. Compliance manages risk for the organization by reviewing, supervising, and preserving client communications. FINRA registered organizations have to regularly review their representative’s electronic messages, document these visual inspections, and note any actions that result. As with any type of preventative action, this manages the organization’s risk in litigation, and with a solution like Erado, social spamming would never occur because we don’t pre-approve messages.
There is no “social” in social media if you allow marketing the ability to manage content. Marketing fails to see that pre-approved messages create zero conversation in social media. Isn’t it supposed to be “social?” An informal survey by Dwight Silverman, tech blog editor at the Houston Chronicle, found the top five reasons for deletion, unfriending, and unfollows of people and companies on social media. These were spamming and self promotion, excessive repetition of messages, high volume of posts, zero conversation, and lack of content. No one wants to be sent information that they didn’t request or doesn’t cater to their needs. Social media is meant to be used as another form of communication. There is no communication when there is no one listening to the message.
Social media started as a compliance, archiving, and monitoring issue. Until recently, organizations started favoring content management instead of compliance. It’s been hijacked by the marketing and advertising departments looking to manage content, and the compliance department ends up receiving an inferior product that doesn’t cover regulatory needs. To all industries that use social media, think about what end result you’re trying to accomplish, and remember, no ones likes spam.
