Banking Executives- listen up

I recently came across an article on the Huffington Post by Brett King, consultant and author of the book, Bank 2.0: How Customer Behavior and Technology Will Change the Future of Financial Services. Entitled "The 5 stages of social media grief", he describes the process that many executives go through as they deal (or don't, in many cases) with social media in financial services. I recommend you read it, whether you see the value in social media or not. It's as much about dealing with innovation as it is about social media.

Social media, and the impact on relationships with your customers, is not a fad. It is (as I've said before) just another extension of the Internet channel. As he concludes, start with the customer in mind and the rest will fall into place. It's pretty sound advice.

Big week for Social Media

Well, It's been a pretty interesting week around here. This morning, an article about our use of Twitter was released in the Baltimore Business Journal. A small excerpt can be seen here. We were pretty excited to be recognized for these efforts.

Later in the afternoon, we participated in Digital Insight's 2nd Twitter Town Hall with the topic of "Financial Fitness for Financial Institutions". The discussion (which can be see at #ditownhall) focused on FI's 2010 plans to address the financial needs of the consumer. It was a very interesting dialogue with a lot of participation from individuals and institutions around the country. We really appreciated the opportunity to participate.

One interesting point. There appear to be few of our peers in the banking industry who actively participate in this channel. The Journal article specifically mentions other, local FI's who aren't even exploring social media. In the Town Hall, many of the participants were from credit unions or the credit union industry. They really get it. We were really the "token" bank involved in the discussion. Seems like many other banks are missing a huge opportunity to connect with their communities via these other channels.