2020 Social: Because Business is Social

How are banks, financial services leveraging social media

Posted on 25. Jan, 2010 by Achintya in Case Studies

I was reading the latest blog post on 2020 Social blog by mohit on Social Community efforts by banks and financial institutions and realized that I might have something interesting to add here. In my view the thing worth noticing about the social media efforts by these BFSI institutions is the difference in the way their communities are architectured when they are targeting different segments of customers.

Background: When it comes to investing & saving ones own hard earned money , people prefer researching, asking others, going for tried and tested methods and moreover playing safe. Investments and savings are something that are although done by almost everyone but then not everybody has an expertise and hence people generally prefer taking expert advice, ask peers, research, read news just to keep themselves informed and updated. Many banks, financial institutions, trading and brokerage companies have realized this behaviour and are using a social web presence to solve their problems.

Scope: In this post I have covered three types of social media efforts by the BFSI sector. The first category represents the social media efforts by banks & financial services towards personal banking, the second category of efforts are towards targeting corporates, SMEs & entrepreneurs while the third is towards targeting the investors into stocks to make them smart traders. You will see a fundamental difference in the way these institutions use social web to target these three different categories.

Illustration:

a) Social media efforts towards personal banking: A large no. of BFSI institutions have realized that providing a platform to people to talk and learn about their business needs helps them multifold. Firstly, it helps them position themselves as an institution which cares to enable people to make smart savings and investments. Secondly, it helps them listen relevant conversations and establish conversations and relationships for business development. Thirdly, it helps them understand the current needs and feedback of customers which is like the best market research ever. In this a very inspiring effort has been made by the Young&Free Alberta community powered by the Servus Credit Union to give a voice to the young generation. Y&F launches annual contest where the community chooses its spokesperson. This spokesperson then participates in the community as Y&F ambassador and educates and converses with others through blogs, videos etc. Y&F also oganizes many events for its commuity which include year round online contests and offline events. (For more details see mohit’s post at 2020 Social blog).

ING Direct is also making several efforts in wooing savers on social web. They have a Saver’s Blog and a community for publishing feel good news about markets and investment called Savings feel good. The news is either submitted from press or by community members. The community also runs timely contests to build interests.

Another interesting effort in this direction is by mint.com which is a maney management and budgeting software company. They have a tweet aggregator platform with tweets from various experts on savings, budgeting, retirement, loans etc.They also have an official blog on similar topics.

As you must have realized that all these communities are architectured around people expressing their financial needs and helping people make smart savings and gain important informations about investments.

b) Social media efforts for corporates, SMEs and entrepreneurs: In such efforts the focus is to help the SMEs and entrepreneurs network and gain valuable information and aid related to their business. For example the Visa Business Network helps you find out businesses in your locality, related vendors, partners, suppliers and customs. It also helps you discuss important information in your work related discussion group, set up business related goals and get help from others to achieve them. A possible goal can be ‘to same some xy amount of money by year end. The person can get interesting article links from the community on savings. Or a goal can be ‘to find business through referrals’

Effectively you can see that the aim of the community is to help businesses communicate, learn and network. It helps the financial institute powering the community listen about the financial needs and ideas among entrepreneurs. Also it sends across the message that the bank reaches out to help businesses which helps them bringing in more business. Amrican Express, HSBC and Bank of America also has similar business networks the details about which you can get from mohit’s  last blog post

Another interesting effort here is by Kiva which is a one to one micro lending community where entrepreneurs submit their business idea. For this kiva partners with micro lending institutions. The community helps the entrepreneurs reach financial targets.

c) Social media efforts focussing on stocks and trading: There are a bunch of trading communities which are helping people become smart investors, invest in right direction, communicate with expert and get relevant market information. Also these communities help professional traders gain reputation as influencers. A good example is Covester where members can follow other members investments, read and write information blogs and if they see a trader making very good investments, the can align their investments with him and give him a share in profits for sharing his data.

There are other online invester’s communities like Zecco, Moneyrec, Stockhouse and Trade2win. Tipd gives a stock and financial news aggregation platform and news community. People consume, curate and create news articles on a model similar to digg.com. The value for these stock related conversations can be estimated from the face that certain corporates like Berkshire Hathaway have discussion forums for their own stocks.

Visiting these communities are worth it. We would love to have some such India focussed communities by large banks as there are many people here who because of dearth of good investing knowledge  and lack of trust on private banks go for safest government investments like FDs and RDs giving very low returns. Also there are many who do not understand the financial jargons of the large investment products given by these banks. Banking communities can definitely help there.

What’s happening in Health 2.0

Posted on 12. Jan, 2010 by Achintya in Case Studies, Reviews

While researching on health and wellness communities I fell upon various platforms worth of interest. It is fascinating to see that people understand that with changing times and health demands people are more interested in discussing out their health problems, helping each other referring the best practitioners and using similar social tools for health related purposes. When research shows that a majority of people seek the initial help of internet for any health research or related problems, it makes sense to make the entire health research and discussions social which is popularly known as Health 2.0.

There are a vast number of health related platforms running on the social web. On a broad scale they can be grouped as Health 2.0 communities, Health Applications and Health online tactical programs. I have discussed each of these platforms in detail below:

1) Health 2.0 communities: There are a bunch of Health 2.0 communities following roughly the same engagement architecture for the members. There are influencers (doctors, health experts, coaches, sportpersons) writing blogs and news articles on various health related topics, support forums on various topics various the influencers are participating and providing expert advice. The community members can interact with the experts on their blogs and discuss and find help for their problems on the support forums. Some such popular communities are Web MD (see pic) and Aarp.org’s health page. There are various other communities like Steady Health using news aggregation models similar to digg.com where members submit their health related news and others curate (rate/vote) the news articles to get the most popular news on the homepage. In India similar health 2.0 communities like Bolohealth are gaining interest. Similarly Quaker oats too has health related discussion forum on its Good morning heart community.

Apart from these independent health and wellness communities, there are some hospitals powering such communities too. Mayoclinc for example supports blogs and stories from patients, relatives, friends and staff of Mayo hospital at sharing.mayoclinic.org

2) Health Applications: There are many interesting health applications on the social web. One such application is Patients like me where you can enter various communities, feed your personal health data and find patients like you and get relevant help. Another interesting health application is by Gold’s gym (see pic) which is running of facebook. Here the members can set their personal health goals ( like losing weight etc.), find people like them, recruit supporters and post their progress. Other members can provide support and comment on their progress. In India saffola ( an Indian edible oil company) is currently running a health application where people can set up goals for better living, find people like them and get health tips.

3) Online tactical programs:  These include short user generated contests or advocacy programs run on the social web. An example of such a user generated contest to promote health was run by Gimme20 health community where participants were asked to submit their fitness stories in form of pictures, text or videos to win prizes. Mayoclinic Hospital runs an advocacy program where the patients can submit stories about their experiences with mayo clinic. Similarly another hospital chain Porter Adventis Hospital allows members to start free ‘carepage’ which are personalized web pages by/to patients and their families /friends to provide emotional and moral support.

Avoiding Collisions on the Social Web

Posted on 30. Dec, 2009 by Dave in Announcements, Case Studies, How To Guides, Ideas

Last week, the social Web felt a bit like a bad holiday sale…as some notable brands suffered collisions with their respective audiences. The combination of business processes and the consumer reactions, expressed via social media, played a role in each of them.

Post continues here.

Tata Indicom Uses Account Statements to Invite Customers to Participate in Its Blog and Forum

Posted on 15. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Case Studies

I was pleasantly surprised recently to see that Tata Indicom is using its account statements to invite customers to participate in its blog and forum –

I have been presenting slides on how real employees (including old friend Nidhi) use the Tata Indicom corporate blog to have real conversations with their customers –

I tend to be very particular about building the right customer community platform using the right software (which, very often, is something like Lithium), and for a reason. The right platform enables and encourages the right behavior, opens up new degrees of freedom, both for community users and the administrators.

However, the Tata Indicom example is a reminder for me that brands can do a lot of right things without using sophisticated software. Their blog is built on the free Wordpress blogging software and their forum is built on vBulletin, not a particularly sophisticated forum software. The forum user interface is unwieldy, the different pieces of software don’t speak to each other, and there’s only so much that Tata Indicom or their customers can do with it.

However, even though Tata Indicom doesn’t have the right software to run a customer community, it sure has the right soul and, in the end, the right soul matters more than the right software.

When we build online communities for our clients, we work hard to get both the software and the soul right. Ask us how.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

Kudos to WagonR Think Big Challenge for Online-Offline Integration

Posted on 10. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Case Studies

It’s too late to submit your big business idea to the WagonR Think Big Challenge now, but you should still check it out.

Basically, Maruti Suzuki has tied up with the Times Group to launch a contest to find smart business ideas, a theme that ties in with the WagonR positioning of “For the Smarter Race”.

Compared to most Indian consumer generated content contests, the WagonR Think Big Challenge aims big and does several things right.

- First, the theme of the contest, or the social object, is closely tied to the brand positioning. Smart business ideas from/ for the smarter race.

- Second, the contest is supported by television, print, radio, online and on-ground activities. Here’s a gate for the WagonR Think Big Challenge I spotted outside a Maruti Suzuki dealership next to my office:

- Third, the contest extends over city, zonal and national rounds, with prizes worth over Rs. 5o lakhs across different stages, and gives WagonR an opportunity to sustain interest in it over a long period.

- Fourth, the presence of celebrity endorser Madhavan adds a dose of appeal to the contest.

- Fifth, the contest has an active media room, and has received significant coverage in national and regional press.

Still, the contest fails to generate interest on the social web. The YouTube video has about 6000 views but no comments, the Facebook page has almost 1200 fans but no activity, the Twitter profile has less than 50 followers, and I could find less than a dozen blog posts about the contest. The contest would have benefited from a tighter integration with social platforms like Facebook, Orkut and Twitter during the voting phase and stronger social media outreach, especially to influential business bloggers.

Buoyed by the marketing spend behind the campaign, the contest website has overtaken the Maruti Suzuki website in terms of Alexa traffic rank:

However, I don’t see this interest being sustained unless WagonR comes up with a clear answer to the question: what happens after the contest?

My free advice: WagonR would do well to follow up the talent hunt contest in phase one with an online reality show in phase two, where the winners share their entrepreneurial journey in first person. Then, next year, they can perhaps mentor the next round of applicants as they seek to bring their big ideas to reality. Now, that would be a really smart idea for WagonR.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social Media and Social Change.

Business World Case Study: Why Should an Indian Retail Chain Build an Online Customer Community?

Posted on 08. Dec, 2009 by gaurav in Case Studies, Media

Meera Seth recently asked me to share my analysis on a Business World case study about an Indian retail chain E-sqd exploring whether it should dip its toes in the messy world of social media. The case ends with the E-sqd management team discussing the Motrin Mom fiasco and arguing the pros and cons of opening a corporate Twitter account.

Here’s my analysis: social media isn’t only about Twitter –

Analysis: Using A New Language
To engage social media users, its underlying value system has to be understood

The Motrin case is a popular case study of how a brand took a beating on social media. There are several similar morality tale-style case studies that argue that “unless the brand is present on social media” it will not be able to respond to negative rumours and consumer backlashes, or worse, get brandjacked by profile squatters or spoof artists.

Such doomsday scenarios often attract the attention of senior executives and dominate conference room conversations about social media. These conversations inevitably involve conflicting points of view, as executives and managers have different comfort levels with social platforms in their personal avatars, and may lead to one of these five possible scenarios.

1. Sometimes, these horror stories scare away executives from social media, as they associate social media with morchas and mob mentality.

2. Sometimes, executives correctly decide that such scenarios are an exception rather than the rule, and creating an elaborate social media presence as a form of insurance isn’t really an attractive proposition.

3. Some recognise the value of listening to social media conversations and start a listening programme, but are disappointed when they realise that no one is really talking about them.

4. Some executives mandate a corporate Twitter account, or Facebook page, and realise that engaging people takes time and, sometimes, a dedicated resource.

5. Still other managers decide to dip their toes in social media themselves and create a Twitter profile, or perhaps even a personal blog.

In all these scenarios, executives are disappointed with the results in the first three months — 200-odd followers on Twitter, 125 fans on Facebook, 22 or so subscribers on the blog — and decide that Twitter and Facebook are peripheral to their business, perhaps even a distraction. Often, they are right.

The problem is not with the social platforms themselves. Twitter, SMSGupShup, Facebook, Orkut, Flickr and YouTube are all powerful platforms that have enabled new forms of social behaviour and unleashed unparalleled creativity among their users. The problem is with the excessive focus on the platform of the year.

These social platforms are transient, the underlying value system is important, which can be summarised in the form of five archetypes, or the Five Cs of social media.

Consumer Generated Content: Your consumers are authors, photographers and filmmakers, all rolled into one. Tap into their creativity and ask them to interpret your brand.

Conversations: Your customers, partners and employees are talking about you, in public. Listen to them, reach out to them and engage them in a two-way conversation.

Collaboration: People work together in flow when they connect with each other as people. Create rich profiles and shared workspaces to enable people to help each other.

Community: Communities come together around a shared social object — a lifestyle, cause or passion. Build and nurture a platform to host these conversations and become associated with an idea that is bigger than your brand.

Collective Intelligence: Customers, employees and partners can give you new ideas and insights. Ask for their ideas, help them build on these ideas, recognise and reward them for their contribution.

So, Lopa should start by asking how can these five underlying dynamics help E-sqd achieve its business objective of becoming a world-class lifestyle retail chain? Can we seek insights from our customers on what Easy Elegance means to them? Can we identify E-sqd evangelists and ask them to share stories about items they found at the store and the reactions these items elicited from family and friends? Can we integrate the customer community with our loyalty programme? Can we ask our store employees to share stories on how they handled a particularly difficult customer or went out of their way to help a regular customer? Can we collect stories from the internet on what Indians are saying about fashion, style and design, and showcase them on this community platform?

If Lopa looks beyond Twitter and asks herself these questions, she will realise that E-sqd can do so much with social media and that it is easy to start.

Also, if her CEO Dwij Nanda asks if the internet user base in India is significant enough, Lopa can tell him that India’s 40 million active internet users are not only young, urban and upwardly mobile, but also heavy users of social networking and blogging platforms. Add to that India’s 400 million mobile subscribers, of which 20 million use group SMSing services and 20 million use mobile internet. The base is big enough to be interesting to most Indian marketers, certainly a high-end lifestyle retail chain such as E-sqd.

Gaurav Mishra (gauravonomics.com) helps Indian and international brands build and nurture online communities as CEO of business consultancy 2020 Social (2020social.com).

(This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 14-12-2009)

Do ask us how an India retail chain can benefit from building and nurturing an online customer community.

Cross-posted at Gauravonomics: Social media and Social Change.

Using social technologies to build Organizational Culture

Posted on 30. Nov, 2009 by Gautam in Case Studies, How To Guides

BUILDING AN ENGAGED WORKFORCE

The Story Until Now
(scenario 3 from here)

Over the last two decades LMN Corp has grown from a family owned business to a professionally run conglomerate with diverse interests in shipping, mining, IT, telecom and media. Growth has been robust as the diversifications have paid off.

Sumit Bangia, the 50 year old COO of the company, has been an old LMN hand. Over the last few years, Sumit has become increasingly concerned with the increasing turnover of younger workers. Sumit’s trusted HR Head, 35 year old Shalini Taneja, found out from exit interviews that recent recruits felt disconnected from the conglomerate and felt that they didn’t know how they fit into the big picture.

Sumit and Shalini decided that the key to retaining young recruits was to build an open organizational culture where young recruits could connect with each other and older mentors across levels and functions. It was also important that they felt empowered and encouraged to bring their whole self to work.

When Gautam met Sumit he said “I don’t think we need more increments and higher salaries or better designations to motivate our people. We’ve hired some great people over the last few years – if we can just make them connect with each other and discover their strengths and then get out of their way, I am sure they will take us to great heights… my question is how can I help help them to tap their full potential and connect with each other?”

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Gautam tells Sumit “You have the right approach, however before jumping into an initiative like this you have to think through certain aspects”

“What are those?” Sumit asked, intrigued.

“The first thing is you have to understand such an initiative will mean disrupting existing power structures – are you sure you want to do that? Will the rest of the management team support this initiative?”

Sumit pondered on Gautam’s question “Maybe not, but I am prepared to push my way through – as this is what will enable us to break to the next level”

“You can’t push an initiative like this Sumit, it has to be owned by all the leadership.. however what you can influence is by leading the way – and influencing others to follow your lead. Let’s assume over all your objective is to increase the engagement of people with the organization and with each other, would that be right?” asked Gautam

“Yes true” agreed Sumit

“You need to build a community that will congregate around areas of work, levels and other areas of interest”

“You mean like a Facebook for the whole group?” Sumit asked.

“Well, it would look like that, and have rich features to encourage people to connect with each other – however there would be features that would encourage a mix of social and business interaction. What would really help this would be the softer aspects of the initiative”

“Such as…?”

“It would encourage people to connect with others, discover people across organizational silos, understand them beyond their roles as individuals – and trigger overall encouragement. It has been proven that having friends is a sign that people will be more engaged at work.”

“Really…?”

“Of course, people like to work in a place that enables them to bring their whole selves at work”

“How do we know that people won’t just goof off? Keep chatting?”

“You’ve got to give them guidelines, Sumit. We can help you in evolving these guidelines. Many large organizations have such guidelines. However, you have to remember that the ‘how we use it’ will become a process when people realise that they have to work with people, not to do things to them. People like you and your senior team will be instrumental in creating that mindset – which is why we’ll have to collaborate with them extensively to make this a success.”