How to build a social media marketing strategy in a globalized world

It’s certainly been an interesting time for social media marketing strategy, and for globalization. As current events continue to unfold, we’re proud to bring you, ‘The Globalization of Social Media’, an Oktopost discussion series.

In our first episode, Chris Skinner, known as one of the most influential people in technology, author of the bestselling book Digital Bank, and best known as an independent commentator on the financial markets and fintech through his blog, the Finanser.com, joins Colin Day, Oktopost’s Managing Director of EMEA, to discuss the digital transformation of financial institutions.

You can join the conversation by searching for B2B Marketing Now and subscribing wherever you listen to podcasts. Stay tuned for our next episode.

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Banks and social media are a big topic. Today, many banks pour resources into transforming the customer experience and building a social media marketing strategy to encourage engagement.

Looking to break the traditional perception that banks are anti-social, these institutions are utilizing social media to impact effective transformations of the customer journey positively.

A few takeaways from Chris Skinner:

It’s all about engagement.

In many instances, financial institutions were frightened to engage with customers in an online environment where the conversation is open and transparent.

With the benefits of positive digital conversations becoming increasingly clear, banks continue to make the shift in their social media marketing strategy. At first, by lifting the prohibition of social websites from employees in the workplace, to using social media as a way of monitoring customer feedback, and transitioning, to very recently, utilizing these channels to engage with the customer.

By engaging with customers through Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, these institutions found that response and engagement turned into a positive discussion. In return, this created a positive meaningful connection between banks and their customers.

Be where your customers connect.

When building a social media marketing strategy, remember that the world is a connected place. Global connectivity was just getting started only 10 years ago. However, it’s been mainstream in the last five years.

During this significant period of change, this connectivity is bringing humans together. People can share enjoyment or angst during this considerable adjustment, and do business where they were previously unable to do business before.

For example, in Chris’s book The Digital Human, he discusses how African, South American, and Asian nations have been moving to mobile payments, mobile wallets, and peer-to-peer connectivity over the last 10 years. This has taken people who were previously unbanked and given them banking through low-cost, global-reach activity.

With technology changing how people live, work, and do business, staying connected is vital to company survival.

Adapt to remote and digital strategies.

In today’s Corona crisis, what was an emerging trend to work from home has now become mainstream.

This is no big deal for businesses born on the internet, but for many regulated companies, the issue becomes about the people based in the office.

Suddenly, this has completely shaken up their daily lives, leaving them to find a new workplace, their home. That workplace is being disrupted by partners, spouses, and children. In addition, that workspace has left them with less access to their network, and if they are unable to adapt quickly, they risk failing. However, if they can thrive, they will find great opportunities.

Large corporations will use this time to evaluate employee performance. They may conclude that working from home reduces overall business costs and travel overhead and increases employee productivity.

This alone is enough to encourage a decision to work from home for the foreseeable future.

Empower employees.

Historically, empowering their people was feared by banks that operated in a command and control model.

The evolution of bots began to enter the workforce, and even human responses became heavily scripted. As employee interaction with customers became robotic, the relationship between customers and financial institutions took a hit.

Today’s times prove that businesses see incredible results when employees are empowered and encouraged to be human.

Bringing the humanity of relationships into your environment allows customers to feel engaged and employees to feel empowered. The delicate balance comes between allowing people to be human and empowering employees to change the script as they see fit, but within reason.

We all have to educate our customers. In a heavily regulated industry, of course, there are things you should never talk about online or over the phone (like bank codes or social security numbers), but it should absolutely be encouraged to ask how you are doing and share relevant content across your social media channels—for, at the end of the day, we are all human and thrive on human interaction, even if at this time it is only able to be digital.