My First Tweet

  With the recent IPO of Twitter in the news, I wanted to go back and see when I first became a user of Twitter. But first, a little history.
  According to Wikipedia, Twitter was created in March of 2006 and launched in July of the same year. It is now one of the 10 most visited sites on the Internet with over 500 million users in 2012.
  I first heard about Twitter when I attended a Net.Finance conference in New York City in October, 2008. As we discussed various social media tools, the facilitator talked about Twitter. Having no idea what this "micro blogging" site was all about, I went to Twitter.com and signed up. My first tweet was below:

kplynch: talking about Twitted 2008-10-02 19:48:18

  As you can see, I didn't even spell Twitter correctly. Not a very auspicious start. Needless to day, I've gotten pretty comfortable with it, using it both personally and professionally. For those of you that want to find out what your first Tweet was, go to My First Tweet, type in your user name, and you can see what your first tweet was. Hope it was more eventful then mine!



Getting ready for e-Finance next week

I'll be co-presenting at the e-Finance Marketing & Innovation Conference in New York next week. Our session is entitled Social Media in Action: Turning Customers into Lifers. We are focusing on some very specific examples of our social media interactions and avoiding the theoretical discussions that seem to dominate so many of these events. If you are attending, please say hello. I'd love to meet some of my "virtual" readers in person.

As we were prepping for the event, it gave me a chance to reflect on the growth of my own engagement with others through the social media outlets. From my first tweet in October, 2008 to today, when I'm checking in via FourSquare, writing both a personal and company blog, on Facebook, and, of course, tweeting on a regular basis. It's been an interesting journey that doesn't look to end soon. Wonder what's next......

A Social Media discussion from Net.Finance

As mentioned in a previous post, I attended the Net.Finance Conference in Chicago last week. It was a very nice turnout of financial institutions, investment firms, insurance companies, and vendors. One of the personal highlights was watching a Cubs game from the Wrigley Field Rooftop Club as a guest of Rosetta, one of the long time sponsors of the event. I had the pleasure of being part of a panel discussion called Prioritizing Technology Initiatives to Gain Competitive Advantage along with Stu Fisher, SVP of Addison Avenue FCU and Mark Schwanhausser, a Research Analyst with Javelin. Social Media and Personal Financial Manager (PFM) solutions were the two primary topics. Today's post will focus on social media.

Both of our companies have been early adopters of social media including Twitter, FaceBook, and Blogs. Addison Avenue recently added some community groups and hired a social media manager to add focus to their efforts. We will be adding a Community component to our site in June. There are some compelling reasons for participating in social media. Javelin's research indicates that over 52% of all consumers are active in social networking, with the 35-44 year-old's the fastest growing segment.

While our organizations are very different, we did agree on one key point. Social media should be an extension of, and not separate from, your overall web strategy. Let's face it, bank web sites can be somewhat boring with product descriptions and (lots) of regulatory disclosures. Our goal has been to connect with customers and prospects, build the brand, and have some fun in a less formal environment. How you use it, or whether you even participate or not, depends on your overall strategy.

Next post will be on the Personal Financial Management discussion from Net. Finance.

Upcoming Social Media Conferences

I'll be participating in two conferences in the next couple of months that I thought I'd mention to the readers of my blog.

One that I'm attending for the third year is the Net.Finance 2010- Marketing for Banks "Improving Your Online And Mobile Channel Performance To Deliver A Differentiated Customer Experience", May-11-12th in Chicago. I'll be part of a panel discussion "Prioritizing Technology Investments to Gain Competitive Advantage". Also on the panel will be Mark Schwanhausser of Javelin Strategy & Research and Stu Fisher of Addison Avenue Federal Credit Union. This is always an excellent conference with great networking opportunities.

The other one is a new event from the World Research Group called "The e-Finance Marketing & Innovation Conference", June 22-23rd in New York City. I'll be joined by my colleague, Steve Kruskamp, and our topic will be "Social Media in Action: Turning Customers into Lifers". We'll have some real world examples from our experiences in the social media trenches. It looks to be a pretty good lineup of speakers including William Azaroff from Vancity Credit Union and Shari Storm of Verity Credit Union.

If you are looking for opportunities to connect with others in the financial services ecommerce area, these look to be two pretty good events to consider. Hope to see you there.