Social Media and Retail Banking, are they compatible?

What do you mean by retail banking? The banking services which you and me use, that is depositing money, withdrawing money, using ATM, fixed deposits, credit/ debit cards, etc.

I initially through what would a bank do on social media?!, Bank can not use broadcast media like social media to do any of the above mentioned jobs, right?

But there is more to retail banking then just above mentioned tasks, here are some of the things which retail banks like HSBC, Barclays, Citi Bank are doing on Social Media

1. Level 0 Customer Service : Banks have established country specific accounts / pages on social media and are providing first level of customer service on these, this level of service does not include any personal or financial information, some very good examples are @BarclaysOnline, @citibankau
2. Recruitment / HR tasks : Since Social Media is one of the best ways to connect to individuals, banks are using social media to connect and recruit work force., some of the best examples are @BarclaysRoles, @BofA_Careers
3. Marketing and Sales : Banks are also using social media as every other industry to do the ususal sales/ marketing online

So basically apart from three pillars of CRM, i.e. Marketing , Sales, and Service, Banks are also using social media as a platform for finding talent. And why not? after all "Social" in Social Media is nothing bit the human element and that's what is required here. :)

Outsourcing Social Media presence - myth or reality?

Before you start reading this post, I want you to Google following "social media presence maintenance"

The result you see is a proof that it is possible to outsource social media presence or at least this is how it appears.

Before jumping to any conclusions, lets first understand what is meant by outsourcing social media presence for a business. Lets take an example of a small business as they are easier to understand and visualize. Say I own a coffee shop, I sell gourmet coffee, cakes etc. I do most of my operations on my own and this do not get time to ensure that my brand is actively present on various social media or may be I do not know how to handle my brands presence on social media.

One day some one comes to my shop and asks me if I would like some help on making sure that my brand is actively present on social media, he/ she also tells me that by doing so I would be able to do the following things which would help my brand

1. Marketing of new / existing products

2. Sales and promotions

3. Maintain relatinship with my clients and gain feedback on my products

I say yes (obviously :D ), he/ she then tells me what all he can do for my brand and what would be the price of the same.

I agree and get into a contract, now this person makes sure that my brand is actively posting on Twitter, Facebook, etc. by making accounts on these websites and representing my brand on these sites. He/ She actually logs into FB as administrator of the Pages and posts latest about my brand. How does He/ She comes to know about what happening in my coffee shop? He calls me daily and asks me about what’s happening in the coffee shop? what are the cakes we are selling today? which products are on discount etc.

After some time as the number of followers for my brand increase and they start interacting with my brand it becomes difficult for this person to make sure that he is answering all the questions and thus he has to hire more people to do so and so he increases the price of hi services to me.

After some time i realize that i can do it inhouse if my wife learns to handle social media presence and does it for my coffee shop and thus my wife takes a training on social media presence and starts doing it for my coffee shop. I no longer take service from this person. My wife act as the page administrator now.

After some time I realize that it would be better if my wife helps me in preparing coffee, making cake etc. as we have no loads of customer in our shop so I call up this person and ask for his services again.

End of story...

So what I could understand from this example is that answer is "Yes" and "No"

it depends on what you want to do with your brands social media presence. Please share your views in comments below!

Which sectors are benefiting the most from social media!

According to Nielsen 85% of the world’s online population has used the internet to make a purchase - increasing the market for online shopping by 40% in the past two years (Source)

84% of internet users in Asia Pacific have made an online purchase as compared to 92% in North America and 93% in Europe. (Source)

 As per another Nielsen report on Internet users in India (Source)

• 26 % of online discussions mentioned brands
• 92% have read online product reviews in the last one year
• 77% visited the product website after reading the review on social media
• 58% of all social media users have made buying decisions by using online reviews as their main source of information

Now let us further magnify the trend in context with different sectors.

Retail: As per the report retail sector is the most benefited sector from online purchase sales. Books, Shoes, clothing and accessories are the most sought after products which are purchased online and the trend in Asia Pacific is in line with the global trends. In Asia Pacific Region 38% of the users in surveyed said that they have bought Clothing, Accessories or shoes on the Internet in the last three months as compared to 39 % in North America.

Travel and Hospitality: Travel and Hospitality is one sector which has the second highest degree of exposure on internet. Increasingly more and more people are planning their travel first on the internet and then on road. None of us can think of planning a vacation or business trip in absence of internet access. Indian Internet users have highest number of air tickets online, more than any other country in the world. 70% of the users surveyed said that they have bought airline tickets/reservations on the Internet in the last three months,

So all the above mentioned facts bring us to a conclusion that online purchase is becoming a reality with every passing year and trend is common across the globe.