Like all consumers today, investors are searching for information online before they buy. With a simple search they can find blogs, videos, books, and live research data. Financial services companies who want to generate new leads and increase sales need to offer the content and answers that investors are looking for. High-quality content is part of the “service experience” that customers expect.

One successful lead generating strategy is a content-based conversion funnel like the one above. The financial services company offers prospects premium content through targeted display ads, search ads, and social media. The technique delivers qualified prospects by running demographically targeted online ads with call-to-action headlines like: “4 Ways to Avoid Running Out Of Money During Retirement,” and “Should You Be Buying Stocks Right Now?” Users can click-thru to a simple landing page to register for premium research reports. The company also offers links to the content on its website, and Education Center Pages. Links to research reports or video content should also be promoted with social media marketing on YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, and with comments on investment-themed blogs.

A ‘Freemium’ model is always an effective way to drive inbound marketing. Prospects can get “basic” content on the company’s web site and on the social networks for free [it is optimized to appear in both natural search and social media search results]. Or they can get “premium” content by registering on a landing page [promoted with online ads and with links on the company website and social media].

This approach is a good way for a company to build trust. The prospects have a choice for how, and when they get the information they want. They can decide to experience the content on their own time — with a download, on the website, by subscribing to the company newsletter, or by requesting a phone call for faster service.

Do you use social media to market financial services? What kind of content are investors looking for?
________________________

Social-smart offers professional consulting and production services for social media marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs. We specialize in creative strategies that integrate social media, location-marketing, and live events into the marketing mix. Adding new touchpoints makes brands and causes more relevant and accessible.

Creative experiences and content that’s entertaining, relevant, informative or useful is “magnetic.” It creates conversations and inspires sharing. Magnetic content can attract “Likes” that encourages others to Like and share as well. This is ‘earned media’.

Today’s marketers want to blend owned-media (content), paid-media (ads), and earned-media (brand fans) to grow an opt-in network for delivering messages in the future – for free.

Social-smart produces social media strategies for multi-channel integrated marketing. Now, it’s pioneering a unique new brand experience called Live Facebook Performances that use your Facebook News Feed to tell stories in real time. It’s an experience that is part book, part TV show, and part live-theatre.

Using Facebook for storytelling is a huge advance in how the Facebook platform is used. Instead of just using it to make announcements, live performances combine interactive Facebook features into FUN immersive experiences.

Here is a short video that explains the Live Facebook Performances strategy:

In total The Scrimms included 4 hours of live performance, 70 animated videos, 33 Facebook Pages, and 4 Twitter accounts. It was watched live around the world.

Here is a little bit about the project:

The 8-episode thriller uses Facebook social networking features and creative programming for an experience that is part book, part TV show, and part live-theatre.

The Scrimms is the provocative story of a Facebook family torn apart by greed, obsession, and loss of privacy. The series makes the audience complicit in the uncensored voyeurism of The Scrimms’ twisted lives. From the family’s own Facebook posts to police wiretaps and video surveillance, the plot reveals a secretive business deal to corner the Rare Earth Metals market.

The series was developed by Social-smart LLC, of Boston. Inspired by the Wall Street Journal’s “What They Know” series that exposes the rampant abuse of the public’s privacy online, The Scrimms dramatizes how our digital lifestyles are eroding our privacy — and pokes fun at how our own careless, dysfunctional “sharing” is causing much of the problem. According to Social-smart’s President Mark Rowntree, “The bigger question is “Whose data is it?” We all like to think our information is our own, but today’s billion-dollar online businesses depend on it being THEIRS.”

Social-smart gave The Scrimms an experimental media experience that combines a cast of 21 virtual misfits in a live Facebook feed of text, photography, video, and animation. Working with a low budget, the producers used amateur talent, and a home-made style popularized online to produce a funny, charming production. “The production is powered by a mash-up of many of today’s free open- source applications in the “online cloud!,” says Social-smart producer and manager Lindsay Nelson.

Some of the positive press we received was from Austin Gardner-Smith of BostonInnovation who wrote, “The Scrimms Turns Your Facebook Feed Into An Interactive TV Experience.” “The end result is a unit of content (or would you call it an experience) that uses your Facebook feed to create a rich, multimedia-enhanced narrative where the characters are interacting with each other through status updates and wall posts while also sharing finished animations, videos, and photos. It’s a very cool, very trippy experience that opens up all kinds of possibilities for using the Facebook platform in creative, immersive ways.”

The Scrimms premiered on Facebook Tuesday, March 8th – 15th, 2011 at 9:00pm (EST).

To watch, users needed to use the Facebook “Like” feature on “The Scrimms” Facebook Tab to like the Cast; then set their Facebook News Feed to “Most Recent.” The series is intended for “mature audiences” and uses Facebook’s age restriction feature to only allow access to an 18+ audience.

We’re planning on re-releasing The Scrimms again for the US and Europe in the future. Stay tuned to our Facebook page where we will announce the upcoming schedule.

In a recent article in Mashable entitled “Why Social Media is Vital to Corporate Social Responsibility” , Melissa Rowley highlighted the crux of what is happening in terms this new sense of accountability and the corporations’ necessary response to it. Rightly, she identifies that

“A cultural and corporate shift is taking place in the world. The result of things like the current economic climate and recognition of global climate change, society is starting to push past awareness and into action. As this transition takes hold, companies are evolving from their reactive states, and moving toward more pro-active approaches. Social media has begun to play a key role in how companies shape their corporate social responsibility (CSR) policies and present themselves as good corporate citizens.”

“Because the end goal for corporations has risen above simply selling a product or service, the standard for CSR is being redefined and is evolving as a driver of innovation.”

There is nothing like a story of a corporation doing something positive and good for the community for getting attention on the social networks. A Pennsylvannia University study even showed that people prefer to share good news rather than bad news – http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/09/science/09tier.html

Social media channels open to corporations and citizens are diversifying in both method and sophistication. Mobile marketing, location-based marketing, and social gaming have added to the ways in which information is received and shared. As social media has brought new methods of communicating ideas to targeted groups of people, especially the rise of the viral video, new and innovative ways are sought to get people’s attention. Live performance and guerilla marketing techniques have added to the mix, T-Mobile’s Liverpool Street Station dance routine being but one great example – one with 21.3 million views!

In a very interesting and timely article by Jon Goldman for Mashable – Why Social Experience is the Future of Online Content – he made the argument that no matter how good the content, it is the user’s shared social experience with that content that is key to growing and maintaining the loyalty of your audience.

“The balance of power within digital media is shifting again, this time to the experience that envelops the content. In the same way that musicians are now making money again by going on tour and entertaining their fans at real events, online content that is packaged as a social experience will be more in line with consumer web use trends than mass-market online content portals.”

That is very much what we are doing. Social-smart brings many disparate forms of communications together in a way that will maximize the social experience of the content of our client’s socially good programs. Using a blend of physical, online and mobile touch points we aim to integrate a company’s social media and location-marketing with daring creative arts and provocative live experiences that inspire participation, word of mouth publicity and viral sharing. Earned media, instead of buying media, whether it’s for Business to Consumer (B2C)  or a Business to Business (B2B), in the end is all about building communities – communities of people who care about what you are doing and want to advocate, participate or donate. In order to do that, you have to create events that have what we call ‘provocative creative “wow” experiences’ [http://www.social-smart.com/index.php/social_good], events that capture the senses and make the cause more relevant and proactive. If anything, this has been the single biggest addition to Social-smart’s services and we have been working with some great groups of artists and entertainers in and around Boston over the past few months.

Expect more examples to be posted on this blog in the coming months. With offices in Boston and Santa Fe we aim to service clients from East Coast to West coast. In the meantime feel free to browse our new website – let us know what you think – and feel free to share with any friends and networks that may be interested in a “wow” experience!

I’ve seen many expressions regarding how glad people are to see the back end of 2009. I can’t say I blame them – it has been a tough year for many of us. However, 2009 has not been without progress when it comes to social media. In following the conversation as I do, several themes have emerged and coalesced as the months have gone by. The 2009 trends were very much geared towards how social media was defined; what the barriers to adoption were; how, or even if, one could measure the results of such an investment; and who in a company should own their social media? Also, in early 2009 there were very few practical examples of social media in action in business. Much of the conversation was based around theory – at least until the latter part of the year.

There is no doubt that corporate events and meetings, both real and virtual, are starting to explore the benefits of social media technologies, particularly when it comes to audience participation and feedback – as I found out at the recent Social Media Arizona [#smaz] event. The Twitter #hashtag for the event tells its own story. Whether you could attend in person or not almost didn’t matter as you could follow proceedings pretty closely by searching for, and following the Twitter stream – even the main talking points of the presentations were Tweeted as they were given. In fact, people are still Tweeting about it long after the conference.

This is certainly the future of events. So Social-smart is starting to offer services and technologies to companies looking to gain the most from their conferences, trade shows, and meetings. Jeramiah Owyang wrote a great piece about the importance of social media for events back in August - How To Integrate Social Technologies with Virtual Events – I certainly can’t improve on that and I recommend you to read it to fully appreciate the dramatic changes that are happening in the industry, and for the services we facilitate. The key take-aways from that article are as follows:

The 3 key principles of a successful social media strategy for both real and virtual events are:

“

1. Events should integrate with existing communities and social networks where they exist.
2. Events should have a strategy that includes the before and after — not just during.
3. The audience can assert control over the event, so encourage audience participation and know when to get out of the way.      “

These are the core principles by which we offer the following Social media services and virtual event development and management.

We aim to increase the community-building and reach of traditional events. Promote registrations and participation, before, during, and after the event — with on-going engagement that continues the community experience long after the event ends. To help build deeper customer relationships, and increase conversions.

Our services include…

Pre-event:

•    Integrate with existing corporate communities and social networks.
•    Build communities and drive inbound traffic with brand pages and groups on public social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter); and with a private social network (Ning).
•    Promote attendance with email blasts (linked to social media) and online ads.
•    Build microsites and landing pages for driving registrations, conversions.
•    Build anticipation: blogs, forums, Twitter groups for attendees, vendors, speakers.

During-event:

•    Increase audience participation, and include larger virtual audiences, by integrating live Twitter features (and video-to-video chat) into the event.
•    Monitor and moderate social web and chat rooms to react in real time.
•    Do live online/mobile polling.
•    Generate reports on social participation, sentiment, and influence of social web.

Post-event:

•    Keep virtual events open for 90+ days.
•    Launch surveys for feedback.
•    Accept user-generated content.
•    Aggregate all content, and offer transcript retrieval.
•    Blog about top reactions.
•    Offer regular on-going webinars, scheduled discussions, eNewsletters.
•    Use email to ask about follow-on opportunities, and drive conversions..
•    Continue the conversation…

We are increasingly seeing  companies and marketing agencies looking at ways of leveraging social media for themselves or their clients. A lot of companies are looking at, and asking questions about:

• How to monitor the conversation
• How to measure results
• How to avoid bad publicity
• What tools to use (how, what, why, when, where).

There is also a lot of confusion out there. They all know they should be ‘doing something with social media’, a few dabble with it if it doesn’t cost them anything – like ‘being on Twitter’. But few are prepared to spend money on a properly planned out, strategically integrated social media presence – which of course is what they really need to do if they want to successfully engage with social media. I know – its the economy. That’s fine – we’re all in the same boat. In the meantime though, companies looking at social media need to understand one thing – every company’s social media requirement will be different – there are no ‘off-the-shelf’ answers – you are always going to need a solution that is customized to your own particular needs.

That said, there are five fundamentals of social media for business that will apply to almost any company, and of any size. Companies – if you focus your thoughts on these fundamentals as they apply to your own situation, when you are ready to seek the expertise of an outside expert, or hire one in-house, your customized solution will be all the more easy to implement.

1) You need to know who your ideal customer is

Who are they, what are the key aspects about your product or service are they interested in, what online media do they use to find out about it. I’ve talked about this before – David Meerman Scott is a useful source on understanding what he calls ‘buyer personas’. I have plugged his book, ‘World Wide Rave‘,   several times before and I make no apologies for doing so again here. This is such an important point that it deserves to be No. 1 in our list of 5 fundamentals to social engagement. You cannot even begin with social media until you understand this:

“By truly understanding the market problems that your products or services solve for your buyer personas, you transform your marketing from mere product-specific, egocentric gobbledygook that only you understand and care about into valuable information people are eager to consume and that they use to make the choice to do business with your organization.”

2) You need to open up – humanize your company

Letting your potential customers & clients get to know who you are, what you do, what motivates you, why they should come to you and not the other guy is another fundamental of any social media plan. It is likely that the two primary tools for achieving that goal are the company blog, and video (your YouTube channel).  If ever there were two tools that I would argue every company should use, it is these two. Here is one example of a very simple, easy to do, video introduction I came across just this week, which I think is very effective in putting a human face on a small company – http://www.youtube.com/user/MarComPros#play/all/uploads-all/0/guyVDY8qg4Q – very simple, under 2 minutes, but instantly makes them much more approachable.

People like to do business with people they know, or at least know something about and are comfortable with – they like to business with people, not companies, and especially not corporations.  For larger organizations and corporations, you don’t need to let people know all your staff, just introduce your bloggers and relevant personnel (see 4). “It’s about people, not logos”  as Jason Baer so rightly said in his post on ‘maximizing your company’s social reach‘ today. You don’t even have to give their full name if they are uncomfortable with being publicly profiled – just their first name will do, as long as it is done honestly. Which leads us to point

3) You need to be honest

Social media is about engagement – if you can’t do it openly and honestly then don’t do it at all – you will be caught out, ‘named and shamed’, (as us Brits say), and publicly so! Laura & Jim’s folksy blog called ‘Wal-Marting Across America,’ is a classic case of dishonest blogging being ‘outed’. Supposedly written by two ordinary ‘fans of Wal-mart’, the blog turned out to be funded by Wal-Mart. Needless to say, Wal-mart’s perceived dishonesty got far more attention than professional writer, Laura & professional photographer Jim’s gushings about how fabulous Wal-Mart is.

Another good example was also the huge backlash against 3M following the “3M Carjacks the Post-It Note Jaguar” story  (that David Meerman Scott also highlights in his book). You definitely do not want this happening to you. But it is not only about being authentic, it is  also about being responsive. You need to be monitoring what people are saying about you and your products and be prepared to answer any concerns people have quickly and honestly. It is your reputation – manage  it carefully – it can disappear very quickly if you don’t, or you try to ignore it. When it comes to social media ‘honesty’ is not only the ‘best’ policy – it is the only policy.

4) It is your story – it needs to come from you

There has been some debate as to whether a company’s social media should be done in-house or whether it can be done by an outside marketing agency or PR firm. Ultimately, it is YOUR story, it needs to come from YOU – that is to say someone who is a company employee and who knows the company and its products or services inside out. Who you chose to tell that story will be determined by what it is that your ideal customer is most interested in engaging with you about – that could be product developers, to customer service managers, to the company CEO – it depends on the particular situation. A good article to read on this subject is Jeramiah Owyang’s post – 3 Ways Companies Let Employees Participate in the Social Web.

However, that is not to say that a marketing agency or PR writer cannot write on the company’s behalf (they can certainly be vital contributors in terms of strategy). But, if you do go down that route, I would suggest that not only should this be made very clear to the audience (see 3, Honesty), but also that the writer him/herself, needs to physically engage with the necessary personnel at the company, at least on a weekly basis, if any element of authenticity in your company’s story is to reach your audience. It is still YOUR story – you need to own it – you are the one who will ultimately have to answer the feedback that arises from it.

5) Be service orientated, not sales orientated.

I think this fifth point really struck home to me after I saw Dell’s Digital Media Manager, Lionel Menchaca’s presentation at the recent BlogWell Conference.  There has been a lot of back and forth over the question of measurability and Return on Investment (ROI) over the last few months, but the fundamental paradigm behind social media is that people will come to you because they are interested in what you have to offer – what has been dubbed ‘inbound’ marketing. That is never going to happen if you use social media from a sales mindset. That sales mindset is the primary reason that the old methods of ‘push’ or ‘outbound’ marketing are being universally blocked and rejected, and why the trend in marketing is heading towards the alternatives of ‘inbound’ or ‘pull’ marketing to help companies reconnect to their customers. (Eg. ‘Gap dumps TV ads for Facebook campaign‘) ‘Pull’ marketing, I would argue, can only work from a customer service orientated mindset – it won’t work from a sales mindset. However, as Dell has been finding, if you engage people honestly and from a service-minded viewpoint, people will naturally want to do business with you. Just don’t make that extra business the sole benchmark by which you measure the success of your social media. Dell doesn’t even factor it into their thinking. As we have quoted before, Lionel Menchaca’s view is:

“I frankly don’t care that we’ve done $3 million in revenue through Twitter – but I do care that Stephanie Nelson is out there answering questions and engaging with customers.”

Obviously revenue is being generated through social media, and obviously it is measurable – even if it isn’t necessarily the focus. If it works for Dell it can work for you.

I hope this post helps those companies looking for answers for adopting social media successfully. I am sure others will have views on other aspects of social media they think equally fundamental, and I am more than happy to see them expressed in the comments section. To companies, I would say we  have the expertise to help you define the right solution for your particular needs, and have the tools that can help you plan and manage a successful social engagement. We are here to help – feel free to contact us today to discuss your needs.

A lot of interesting discussion has centered around the question of measuring Return on Investment (ROI) on social media in recent weeks.  The main themes are based around

a)  whether it is possible to measure ROI in social media and,
b)  how do you measure ROI in social media.

I would suggest a better question is “Should we be measuring ROI in social media?”

The question of whether it is even possible to measure social media becomes all the more interesting once you have the input of a few marketing professionals. In a recent discussion on one of the LinkedIn Groups, Jacob Morgan argued that

“Marketing across the board has always been understood to be a “black box,” meaning nobody could really ever justify the ROI (and oftentimes impact) of marketing spend … The issue at large is marketing accountability as a whole, and social media is just one component of that.”

(See also his blog post from MarketingProfs – Forget Social Media ROI, What About Marketing Accountability?)

By ‘marketing accountability’ Jacob is referring to to the need to understand all the factors involved in the marketing infrastructure before you can ‘measure’ anything – such as knowing the customer life cycle, the target audience, the average price per transaction, the acquisition and/or retention costs, and so on. Either that, he argues, or pick abstract objectives – ‘we want to be the leaders in X’,  and measuring impact , say as part of brand building.

Roger Kondrat added -

“Despite these marketing accountability deficiencies the vast majority of organisations don’t seek out any marketing research either bespoke or off-the-shelf to support their objectives. Without research asking your business partners to give you a plan with relevant ROI or even Impact metrics is a huge huge request, one could say an impossible one”.

In a separate blog post, ‘Defining Social Media ROI once and for all, and understanding the action-reactive-return narrative’, Olivier Blanchard  defines ‘ROI’ – in business terms, as -

‘R’ = $ investment > action > reaction > non-financial impact > financial impact (measure the ROI here).

With clear goals and ‘marketing accountability’ financial ROI should be readily measurable with today’s analytical tools. But financial returns don’t really give you the whole picture when it comes to the benefits of social media.

Alex Schultze of Social Media Academy points out that -

“On the surface social media is a marketing and sales gig. Under the hood it is a major cross functional engagement model. Using customer engagement models for product feedback, customer integrated support models, social network based product launch, social media sentiment analysis for procurement planning and of course sales and marketing.”

Social media is many things and whereas it is relatively easy to see how you could achieve a measurement at the non-financial impact stage, measuring financial impact, though possible, just may not give you the whole story.

Therefore, it begs the question should we even be trying? One of the most interesting – and telling – comments on the subject was from Lionel Menchaca, Digital Media Manager for Dell, in a recent presentation at BlogWell San Francisco. Menchaca gave the audience some important insights into the ongoing development of Dell’s social communities. Interestingly, right at the end of his talk, and in answer to a question from an audience member about ROI, Lionel said that driving sales was not part of what they are trying to do, even though their activities may result in sales – so they don’t worry about that or try to measure it “that’s not the goal on the enterprise side, or the consumer side either for that matter”, he stated.

“I frankly don’t care that we’ve done $3 million in revenue through Twitter – but I do care that Stephanie Nelson is out there answering questions and engaging with customers.”

Their social community building seems to be based on a much more customer service orientated approach than a sales approach.  Is there a lesson to be learned here? Is that the point when it comes to social media – as soon as you actively try to drive sales to a community you go back to the old methods of PUSH marketing and you just end up turning them all off. Dell still manages to integrate their Dell.com eCommerce operation with their community activities, but they don’t do it in an overt way – just in a ‘how can we better help the customer’ sort of way. Isn’t that how it should be? Although costs are always a consideration for any company, perhaps, in terms of measuring a ‘return’ on something as encompassing as social media, the non-financial impact of engaging the community of our customers is as far as we need to look. That is not to say there is no accounting.  Only today, Jeramiah Owyang emphasized the  “The Importance of Social Media Audits”.

“Just as brands conduct audits of inventory, employees, and budgets on an often annual basis, they should also survey the landscape to find out what customers, influencers, partners and employees are participating on the social web. Audits are key for identifying priorities, benchmarking previous efforts, and planning for future efforts; the same applies for social media.”

Such an audit would soon highlight whether you were getting ‘value for money’ or not and, in the end, isn’t that what you want to know?