Core Processor Gets Into Social - Five Tips to Banks

Fiserv, Inc., one of the major core processors in the banking industry, shared Five Steps to Social Media Marketing at the 2011 BAI Retail Delivery Conference on how financial institutions can add social media to their marketing mix.

Five Steps to Social Media Marketing

1) Strategy Development: Developing a social media marketing strategy includes assessing customers' current social activities, determining goals and objectives, planning for how relationships with customers will change and deciding which social technologies to use.

2) Listening and Monitoring the Conversation: To get started, financial institutions should simply listen to what consumers are saying about their brand, their competitors and the industry. This can be done by using a listening tool, such as socialmention.com or Google alerts. Listening will reveal where customers and prospects are participating online, which may guide the decision on what sites to start with and where to focus initial efforts.

3) Laying the Internal Groundwork: Be sure to establish and share social media guidelines, which can be done in the form of a policy book, education video, fact sheet or other form of internal communication. Also be sure to establish a brand voice, whether it is professional, casual, upbeat or reserved, and create a response matrix outlining how to respond in a variety of situations. Develop a content calendar outlining future content.

4) Integrating Marketing: Promote the financial institution's social presence in other marketing materials. Adding social icons and links to websites, emails, brochures and other materials lets consumers know the bank or credit union is active in social media and makes it easy for them to connect.

5) Metrics and Reporting: The metrics measured will depend on the goals and objectives initially identified. However, when starting out, financial institutions can measure social media impact by looking at how far messages are traveling, the gain in visitors to their website, the number of engaged discussions and the number of users who return to financial institution social media sites.