We’ve done a fair amount of research into the financial sector in the past year, both Canada and the United States. Most of our data is of course, confidential to the client. But we can speak in “aggregate” terms of our findings. The broad strokes so to speak.
To put it bluntly, there is a lot of anger, frustration and distrust out there. No surprise given the tail end of 2008 and the subsequent spiral into a financial quagmire. Canada may have gotten off a little better, but it still saw a wallop at the banks in terms of consumer mistrust.
There’s lots of chatter going on, as might be expected. We found women tend to discuss bank services more than men (62% female overall) and that the most popular age group for discussion was 30-45. We looked at commentary in online newspapers, newsgroups and forums, blogs, microblogs and some social networking sites. Over 1.7M “conversations” in total across Canada and the U.S.
The topics that ranked the highest for consumer negativity towards the financial sector;
1. Mortgages
2. Fees and service charges
3. customer service
As might be expected, the larger the bank, the more negativity. Smaller, more localized banks in the U.S. had higher consumer sentiment while in Canada it was credit unions that saw the most positive sentiment. People are frustrated. Banks that used “trust” statements in their slogans were hit the worst with re-purposed content turning those slogans back on themselves.
So what does this all mean? As an industry sector, the financial world of businesses has a lot more trust building to do with consumers. It’s no small surprise, but banks and other financial institutions are likely addressing this issue. One wonders how consumer sentiment might be in a year or two from now. The volume of discussion is still rising across multiple social media channels as well. We expect to see a peak by May or June of this year, but that remains to be validated.
Reputation, Research, Thunking•
on February 15th, 2010•
The buzz was abuzzin over Google’s launch of Buzz last week. The initial debate seemed to be whether or not Buzz would slam Twitter. Our quick monitoring on sentiment was 10:2 against Buzz winning that one.
Privacy however, quickly became the issue. Prompting Google to announce in just 2 days that they were making changes to the privacy setting.
Which sets up the whole issue of privacy, which occasionally bubbles to the surface of mainstream attention, simmers and boils again. As a connected “always on” society, well, we’re starting to deal with a whole lot of issues beyond just privacy.
Issues on such a broad societal scale that we’ve never before had to deal with.
One privacy issue out of Buzz that struck me was a woman trying to hide from an abusive ex-husband; Buzz was kind enough to connect her instantly again to him. Fail.
Then there’s companies like us, listening to the chatter to help companies and agencies engage in better marketing opportunities – we do however, strictly observe privacy laws in Canada, USA and UK where we operate. Just felt I should hang that out there.
So here are some of the issues we’ve seen bubbling to the top over privacy today:
1. Some people really don’t care
2. Some folk suggest that privacy is an illusion nowadays anyway
3. Others think you need to be exposed to some degree or you’ve got something to hide
4. Then there’s those who refuse to engage in being online at all. Are they missing out?
5. And then some are starting to lock things down; they’re there, but aware and learning to lock it down.
It’s a big issue. No clear cut answers.
What do you think? What are your privacy concerns? or are you?
Media Analysis, Reputation•
on January 19th, 2010•
United and the broken guitar, moms insulted by Motrin, snotty-nosed Domino’s pizza employees; they’ve been analyzed and analyzed. Each element picked apart and pontificated over. I too am guilty of that. Let’s face it, they make fur juicy fodder to citizens alike and those of us engaged in the social mediasphere. Now it’s about to get a lot harder for Joe-citizen to get anywhere with social media.
Time to take a deep breath, step back and look at it from a different perspective. The likelihood of many of them happening again, to the degree that they did, is minimal. Each has changed an industry; mostly for the better. But what happens after the first big crisis in each industry?
United wasn’t the first airline to suffer from a social media crises and it wasn’t the first time United suffered from social media either. JetBlue gets that honour on valentine’s day 2007. Taco Bell will likely wear the unadorned crown of first for restaurants in 2006 with the rat scare and Domino’s second.
Most of the social media crises have happened with major brands. Not all, however; we’ve dealt with smaller businesses facing more localized crises. These big crises are likely to happen again, but one can speculate they’ll be in different industries. The airline industry groaned yet again with the United issue. Food services with Domino’s.
If citizens want to truly make a point with a negative experience via a major brand, they’ll need to become increasingly creative. Dave Carrol wrote a great tune and added a video behind it. Simply text blogging his experience likely wouldn’t have worked. We picked up on the Motrin issue more because it took a series of practitioners involved in Social Media to push out the message on how flustered moms were.
While it’s not impossible that another video of fast-food employees doing gross things to customer orders couldn’t go big, it’s not likely to happen to the degree it did with Domino’s.
There are still a lot of industries to be hit in a negative way, but as we did our research into the discussion volume around these crises, we found that each time around (with only United and the guitar incident as an exception) the volume of discussion decreased as did the viral factor and the Echo Ratio increased (the story stayed quite contained.)
Essentially, we’re saying that it’s going to get harder for the average Joe to use social media as an effective weapon for change or compensation when done wrong. Messages are 30% less viral the second time around in an industry and 65% less the third time around. The story will also have less of a long-tail effect; although it can stay alive forever in the digital world of Cyburbia.
While this can still be damaging to a company’s bottom-line, it’s less so than before; unless your industry hasn’t been hit. In that case, brace yourself if you’re the first to be targeted. Business will (and are) get savvier in dealing with them and citizens will have to work harder to get the message out.
Much emphasis on Social Media crises is focused towards large brands – JetBlue, United, Motrin etc., and there’s plenty of them. But what about the small local business? You’ll have to forgive me for not revealing the name of the client – I’m not into bringing my company down in one fell swoop, I have kids to feed after all.
It was early 2009 and a “tweet” came through my feed from someone I follow locally. They’d had lunch at a local restaurant, but were soured by the service. They said this on Twitter. Over the next 2 hours over 50 people within the city, and over 20 from outside, had engaged over this “discussion” with many relating their negative (and a some positive) experience with this restaurant. After the third “tweet” I started to follow the discussion, then started to track if it went elsewhere (most of our clients are large and in the US and UK, so this local one was of keen interest). It did. It hit Facebook and by 3PM that afternoon it had reached 3 bloggers within the city, whereupon several readers of those blogs also commented. The discussion ran to more general comparisons of bad gustatory experiences locally and other fine establishments were bashed as well. Yet the focus remained on this one particular establishment.
Our estimate of reach by 5PM that afternoon was about 4,000 eyeballs in Nova Scotia with 90% of them in the Halifax area. Now, we’re a highly connected city with 5 universities of international renown and a strong financial sector and economy. But we’re only about 400,000 people. Small next to New York city.
But that in itself shows how Social Media is becoming hyper-local and can have an impact at a very local level. When I went to see the owner a week later and presented my findings he was shocked to say the least…I had some serious explaining to do. The sad fact was, he noticed a 50% drop in business in that time period.
Fortunately the issue wasn’t quality of food, simply the speed of service. A change of the menu, some staff retraining, a little PR and some advertising and now their lunch servings are up 15% over last year. He recovered. But the impact was there. For a small business within a fairly small market.
Social Media activity can have a local impact. Negative and positive.
Reputation, Research, Thunking•
on January 6th, 2010•
As a “consumer” of a brand, is there a point where your engagement with that brand actually dilutes its value to you? Can you “know” too much about that brand? Can Social Media engagement by a brand be too much?
As consumers we engage with various brands in different ways. Some are brands we are loyal to, but only in the sense of continuous purchase. We don’t want to engage anymore than simply buying and using that product or service. Others, perhaps due to the nature of the brand (i.e. a computer or Smart Phone brand) we have to engage more deeply with – like needing customer service.
But I’m thinking separate from customer service issues. Do we want to continuously engage with a brand, like Walkers crisps or Skittles? At some point, do consumers find less connection with that brand as a result of engaging with them on Twitter or via Facebook?
Now, with so many brands dipping their toes into Social Media and some going full-bore into these social channels, are they diluting that sense of attachment we have to a product or brand?
Put on your “consumer” hat and ask yourself; do you feel a stronger engagement with that brand because they’re also in those social media channels your using? Do you want to be engaged that much? Perhaps it depends on the product?
Personally, when I find out more information on some brands, that brand loses some of its mystique. What about you?
(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Director)
Reputation, Thunking•
on January 5th, 2010•
I had the pleasure of being right in the thick of the first Internet bubble from 1995-2001 and lived through the implosion, even building a small .com and selling it off a few months later. They were heady days. Flying all over creation raising capital and so on.
We made bold statements then. Such as “we’re the leader in…” or “we’re the leading global provider of…” and “world leader of…” or “market leading…” says who? Is there an international organization that carries little gold crowns around and anoints your company saying “thou art now the global leader in…” while the clouds roil and thunder strikes shivers of terror into your competitors? No. There isn’t.
Anyone can write these statements, hey, I did, back in the day. But then it was the pioneer days of the Web. There were so few competitors so if you had three clients, well, you pretty much were the leader. Especially if they were paying clients!
I saw a new social media consulting company that launched a few days ago, I won’t mention the name. The first statement on their site was “…is the leading provider of social media marketing worldwide…” I’m impressed. Only in business a week or so and already the leader. And points for gumption in putting themselves on a timeline of social media as the next big thing…wait, I thought they were already the leader. A VC friend of mine once said “those who have earned the title seldom, if ever, have to use it.” Kind of like silly marketing statements.
I write this blog entry because the more research we do on the social web, the more we see that citizens engaged in social media don’t buy these messages anymore. Stating your “world leader in…” goes along with other inane marketing statements like “best deal in town” or “your only chance to save” they’re tired and us marketers are to blame for it. Blogger and PR pro Sasha Halima offers some great insights into similar such failures. As consumers, these statements today cause suspicion, not conviction. If you’re going to make such a statement, you’d better have proof.
What do you think? What other inane marketing statements are there that drive you nuts?
(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Director of the global market leading authority and provider of …oh, never mind…)
In 2001, market regulators in Canada, Europe and the U.S. required public companies to simultaneously issue press releases to the Web and the newswire. In addition, any public meetings were to be broadcast to the Web via video feeds. All this before the rise of Social Media in a significant way. The bulletin boards (newsgroups) for discussion on public companies have been rampant for years, Stockhouse being among the pioneers.
My days running communications for a public company at the turn of the century saw us monitoring those newsgroups every day. Some days it was hard to not tap a condemning response to the idiocy of some of the comments and speculations made there. But other issues became apparent, among them was the damage that could happen when an employee spoke of something to a friend who then posted to the BullBoard on that company – this could wreak havoc on a stockprice; and nearly ended up in a line employee being fired once.
This was several years ago. It’s not about to get better. Public companies will face even greater challenges with Social Media in the years to come. Regulators may eventually require public companies to also post information to Social Networks, the same time they issue a press release. Video’s might have to be posted to several video networks and across mobile platforms as well.
Given how the content is both consumed, shared and managed across these channels, public companies are going to face complexities in shaping, distributing and monitoring those messages. What if the company must also issue notices across microblogging platforms like Twitter?
What will public relations and investor relations practitioners have to to consider if such issues arise? Increasingly, companies that thought they didn’t really have to concern themselves with the Web beyond marketing, will soon find out differently.
2010 will, I think, see some interesting changes to governance on communications issues for public companies.
(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Director)
Today we’ve added a new metric to our mediasphere360 Social Media monitoring and analysis tool; we call it the Echo Ratio. So what’s that? Quite simply, we look at Social Media marketing campaigns or activity that we monitor for clients and can measure the viral uptake of a campaign, meme or discussion topic being monitored.
In Social Media marketing campaigns and with any meme or hot topic, the content delivered starts somewhere; someone “tweets” it out, posts to YouTube or similar and then finds Conversation Igniters to start the spread. In some cases it’s just a blog that someone posts and it takes off like wildfire. This often happens with high profile bloggers/thought leaders like Chris Brogan, Jeremiah Owyang, Seth Godin or Beth Harte. read more
Best Practices, Reputation•
on November 2nd, 2009•
Content chunking? A rather clunky phrase we use to describe breaking up your content for a press release or when promoting an important story about your business online. It helps when your building a story for release, to think of where you might be placing that story on various Web channels or how a press release might be broken up into fragments by bloggers or journalists or when “tweeted.”
Pick Up 2.0: These two words used to mean a reporter/journalist/editor at a newspaper/radio/TV got your story and then ran it or called for an interview. It still does, and that’s still important. But today it also means a blogger or regular citizen might send your story over Twitter or via their blog.
The Importance of the Headline: If it was important pre-Social Media then it’s even more important today. As you write a headline today, it’s not just to get the editors attention, you also want it to be “tweetable” on Twitter or a similar network. If its a good story, then be sure it can spread with a kicker headline.
The Content Chunks: Which brings us to the concept of “chunking” in that we have found that a press release or story should be written in a way that it can be broken down into chunks of content. Some blogs may only refer to a paragraph in the release or you may only be able to write a paragraph on some news seeding sites (i.e. newsvine). You may want to have a short bit for a Facebook company or group page or your LinkedIn company page.
The key is to know where you regularly “seed” your content from a press release or story and ensure the content can be adapted to each of the services you use. On average, we’ll “seed” a press release for clients to over 15 different online sources within relevant services. Yes, it adds work and puts ever more onus on the writer of the release, but it can help with SEO and generally getting to more of the right eyeballs wherever they may be in this vast media channel world.
When we think of and mostly talk about, Social Media crises, we tend to look at the bigger stories; United Breaks Guitars, Motrin Moms, JetBlue. Let’s face it, they’re juicier and hit a broader audience. These stories bring together traditional and social media. But smaller, mostly “hidden” issues can create PR nightmares for a business.
As we experienced with a client today. For obvious reasons I can’t name them, I like having clients and don’t like making a painful issue worse. The issue didn’t get broadcast across Twitter or Plurk or similar microblogging channel. Nor did it wind it’s away through Facebook.
This crisis took place across three “closed” forums. By “closed” I mean that it was in semi-moderated forums focused to a particular topic/industry. Someone posted a topic in a forum, within a short while, others joined in, discussing a product and their feelings about that product. It started only 3 days ago, but by this morning had reached a significant volume and resulted in a large volume of calls to a contact centre and began migrating up to senior management.
We monitor for this client monthly. Which helped. But the challenge of automated Social Media monitoring tools becomes quickly apparent – most of them are locked out of these forums. And this is a huge gap in Social Media monitoring.
Although this issue was “localized” and didn’t hit broadcast Social Media levels, it still caused a drop in sales in just 2 days of 8% and forced a mid-size business to focus many hours of senior management and people resources to contend with it. Fortunately it was kept localized and didn’t seep over into more public forums.
So what are some take-aways for a situation like this?
1. Don’t rely on Google Alerts or basic monitoring services.
2. Find out where “discussions” are going on in closed forums like newsgroups, chats or discussion forums and check in weekly to see what might be going on.
3. A crisis can occur in Social Media in closed loops and cause as much damage as if it hit the more public forums.
4. Engage in these discussions (be open and disclose who you are, trying to pretend your a customer is dangerous) and stay engaged.
5. Often times, these “hidden” sides of Social Media can be of more value than more public forums.
So what do you think? Have you had a similar experience? What steps do you take in this type of issue?
(Author: G. Crouch, Managing Director)
