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The six social media channels marketers can’t afford to ignore

Q: What do cricket and social media have in common? A: When it comes to winning, six sells. And while the Aussies on the current Ashes tour are learning this the hard way, there’s no need for marketers to do the same, because we’ve listed the top six channels for selling with social media right here.

As modern marketers know, social media is increasingly influencing the buyer’s journey. And this applies in financial services as much as anywhere else. In fact, collectively, social media channels can both reflect and guide the entire sales experience, from initial brand awareness, through to each step in the path to purchase and beyond, in the form of post-sale customer contact and service.

Not all social media channels are the same.

Each has unique characteristics that make it better suited to supporting certain content, marketing goals and audience types. Choose the wrong channel for the wrong purpose, and your efforts may be in vain.

This guide to the top six social media channels will help you boost – rather than bust – your next campaign.

We’ve chosen examples of each in action, where possible in a financial services context, including from our own experience. We hope this will bring each channel to life (unfortunately not something we were able to do for the Australian cricket team).

LinkedIn

A social networking site for professionals. It can be used not only to build professional connections, find and share business intelligence and for recruitment, but also to segment users by your own chosen criteria and to ‘sponsor’ posts on topics of interest. This sponsorship facility enables companies to extend their reach beyond their followers and serve up content to their target audiences.

LinkedIn in action: A financial services organisation used LinkedIn as part of a social media strategy to build awareness of and drive attendance at its annual conference. LinkedIn sponsored updates were used to promote content on the LinkedIn feed. Results included a 73% increase in company page followers, over 950 ‘clicks’ on conference updates and over 130.5k impressions on conference-related updates on the company page.

Twitter

Enables you to post, read and share ‘microblogs’ of maximum 140-characters – ideal for monitoring, gathering and sharing news and content. Start or join real-time, global conversations with other Twitter users (including cricketers should you so wish). Twitter gives you market intelligence and contacts that can help you create relevant campaigns to attract new business, upsell, cross sell and retain customers by respond quickly to customer service needs. You can ‘retweet’ others’ tweets, so they will be seen by your followers, as well as those who follow the original tweeter. You can also reach new audiences and increase your follower base via ‘promoted’ tweets. Particularly useful during events / conferences to generate relevant conversation and position your company as a leader in its field. Find likeminded and authoritative Twitter users by searching relevant ‘hashtags’ (e.g. #wealthmanagement, #budget2015, #portfolio construction #TheAshes and so on).

Twitter in action: A financial services industry body used Twitter to boost engagement with conference delegates. The event hashtag was used by attendees to ask questions of various panel members. The organisation scored 171 retweets, 930 ‘clicks’ and 541,000 ‘impressions’. The organisation’s Twitter account now has almost 2,000 followers – all of whom are engaged individuals squarely within its target audience.

Facebook

A social networking site that can be used for entertainment, keeping in touch with your personal networks and sharing content. For businesses, Facebook is a channel with a consumer voice. Similar to LinkedIn, organisations can segment audiences, serving up content and advertisements to particular groups. It also offers insights into how your content / advertisements are performing so you can improve them for even more impact.

Facebook in action: A leading financial association used Facebook and Outbrain (a content recommendation platform that, based on users’ reading habits, identifies what sort of content is likely to interest them) to drive niche content to selected demographics to boost traffic to its blog and member forum. The result was a 1056% increase in hits to the blog 127.5% increase in hits to the forum with unique visitors making up 90% of visitors to the forum.

YouTube

A video-sharing website used primarily for entertainment and sharing thought leadership. This platform is the most elusive for marketers in terms of success however those who have succeeded are those who consistently and frequently publish refreshing content that has inherent value. For financial services businesses, it is a useful platform for publishing short clips that can later be embedded on their website and other owned channels.

YouTube in action (disclosure – this was not our client…) AOL, a multinational mass media corporation, used YouTube to promote its content, using the measuring tools on YouTube to tailor the content they were posting based on what was receiving the most engagement. This resulted in a 10% increase in video views and more than 30,000 Twitter conversations about its YouTube videos.

Google+

A social networking site that enables sharing of video and written content. It provides a social layer across all of Google’s services. Publishing content on the platform and including backlinks and cross-references to other websites can boost your organisation’s Google search ranking.

Google+ in action: The Financial Times used Google+ to share content with different readers based on what they had told the publication they were interested in. The combination of rich, unique and personalised content resulted in the publication achieving over one million followers.

Instagram

A visual medium that enables you to share your brand’s story and key events, Instagram is predominantly targeted at the millennial female population and allows organisations to post photos or short videos.

Instagram in action: Chinese-based broadcaster CCTVNEWS wanted to reach millennials in the United States to increase brand awareness. It created two 15-second video content pieces highlighting memorable moments from its documentaries and international stories. The campaign reached over 3.5 million people from the target audience and achieved a six-point lift in audience recall.

The upshot is – and much as we don’t want to mention the Ashes – that in social media marketing, as in cricket, selection counts. Lose the toss, get the batting order wrong, opt for swing when spin is called for … and you have the makings of a collapsed campaign. But get it right – and the rewards are there for the taking.

For more about making social media work in financial services, download BlueChip’s latest e-book.

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