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 is a big topic. Today, many banks are pouring 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 positively impact effective transformations of the customer journey.

A Few Take-Aways 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 the world is a connected place. Only 10 years ago, global connectivity was just getting started. However, in the last five years, it’s been in the mainstream.

During this major period of change, this connectivity is bringing humans together. People are able to share enjoyment or angst during this major 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, over the last 10 years have been moving to mobile payments, mobile wallets and peer to peer connectivity. This has taken people who were previously unbanked and given them banking through low cost, global reach activity.

With technology changing the way 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.

For businesses that were born on the internet, this is no big deal, but for many regulated businesses, the issue becomes about the people based in the office.

Suddenly, this has completely shaken up their day to day 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 come to the conclusion that working from home reduces overall business costs, travel overhead, and increases the productivity of employees.

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 who operated in a command and control model.

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

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

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

We all have a duty 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 are you 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.