Gideon Spanier had an interesting piece in the Evening Standard yesterday about the growing importance of social media for marketers and the brands that employ them. I recommend you head on over to read the full article.
For me, the key takeaways were:
American Banker released the list of top 100 FinTech companies last week and it makes for an interesting read. Head on over to AB’s site to view the full list.
As I perused the list, I couldn’t help wondering how different it would look if the companies were ranked by Twitter followers instead of revenue. I’m not suggesting that your number of followers is a direct indication of how well you are executing your social media strategy – far from it – but it is a nice simple way to gauge a firm’s reach. Is there a corrolation between size and following?
As a quick follow-up to my post about how to convince your executive team to reconsider social media, there’s a good piece in today’s FT about the trends emerging in social media as it relates to financial services – and particularly the fund managament world.
Emma Boyde concludes her piece by saying that:
even if asset managers are doubtful over the use of social media as a trading tool, its value in the public relations space cannot be ignored.
I was asked recently by a client to “explain why social media is critical to marketing and PR – and indeed to the organization as a whole.” The person in question worked for an organisation in which YouTube, Twitter and Facebook were all banned and they were looking for a compelling argument to persuade their senior management team to reconsider.
Headhunters Ellwood and Atfield recently published the results of a survey they undertook with chairmen and chief executives designed to see how the role of communications director is evolving. The report is interesting reading as much for the people who responded – they include Sir Win Bischoff of Lloyds, Sir Christopher Gent of GSK, Dennis Holt of the Bank of Ireland and Hector Sants of the FSA – as what they said.
In summary, chief executives and chairmen clearly recognise the value the communication function provides, whether through managing investor, media, government, employee or other stakeholder relations. However, when it comes to rating the relative importance of the individual disciplines within the function, views vary considerably depending on the organisation’s particular circumstances.
For my money, one of the more interesting keynote speakers we’ve had at Sibos was back in 2009 in Hong Kong when Guy Kawasaki closed the week.
Kawasaki is something of a legend to technology marketers. His first book, The Macintosh Way (subtitled ‘The Art of Guerilla Management), focuses on his experience at Apple in the early days of development of the Macintosh.
When the book went out of print several years ago, Kawasaki set about getting the rights back. Is there life after print? Of course there is. It seems he finally succeeded because he is now making the digitized eBook available free to everyone. In typical Kawasaki fashion though he’s using it to promote his new book, Enchantment.
Since I was talking about using social media in financial services yesterday, I thought I’d just mention a new feature that WordPress has just introduced: the ability to integrate tweets directly into blog posts.
Dubbed Twitter Blackbird Pie. The new feature makes displaying tweets in all their glory as simple as pasting a link in your post.
With Blackbird Pie Twitter, hashtags link to search pages and usernames link to twitter profiles. An individual tweet, or pie, includes all the details, design, and information that a single tweet page would include.
As a blogger, Blackbird Pie offers a great way to engage Twitter on your site and bring discussion to your blog.
In the papers
Andrew Carrier
InMarketing 