The Social Media MBA in Practice

An Essential Collection of Inspirational Case Studies to Influence your Social Media Strategy

Christer Holloman

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781118524510
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Digital Marketing
• Index: Business

The inside information that marketers and social media practitioners have been dying to get their hands on... It seems like every day another self-appointed social media "guru" appears on the scene, offering to sell you his or her "surefire" cure for what ails you. Don't you think it's time you heard from the real experts—i.e., folks like you who are responsible for delivering their companies' social media strategies? Based on extensive interviews with marketing, media and networking professionals at many of today's most admired brands and companies, The Social Media MBA in Practice provides you with detailed examples of the social media strategies in place at ADP, Allianz, Barclaycard, Cisco, Confused.com, Dell, Electrolux, F5, Getty Images, giffgaff, Go-Ahead Group, HCL, Hobart, Honda, Israel Foreign Office, LivingSocial, Macmillan, Nationwide, NHL Minnesota Wild, Nokia, Play.com, PwC, Rentokil, Sony Mobile and Xerox. This book offers:

• The most comprehensive set of "blueprints" available in one book for delivering social media strategies more successfully.
• Includes in-depth case studies packed with hand-on-advice that you can put to work in your company immediately.
• Covers all-important strategic social media activities - from improving relationships with customers to generating more sales, product testing to team building.

Part I

Set-Up

1

Nationwide – Creating Senior Leadership Buy-In

It's all about the Customer, Stupid!

In the highly regulated, risk-averse environment of financial services, Nationwide Building Society's social media strategy breaks the mould by actively encouraging its customers to share their views.

Executive summary

Overview

As one of the UK's most trusted financial services providers, Nationwide used social media to better understand what its customers wanted to talk about and where they wanted to talk. Rejecting the view that “social is just for marketing”, they went back to basics and embraced social media as a customer service channel for a generation of customers.

Key findings

• Getting everyone in the room helps stakeholder buy-in.
• Listen first before you do anything.
• Honesty in the face of a crisis is the best approach.

Recommendations

1. Ask the tough questions first – how will social media make life better for the business and our customers?

2. Get the basics down – business case and governance – it makes life easier in the long run.

3. Listen to lots of people – but be wary of those that call themselves “social media experts”.

Background

Interviewee

Paul Beadle
@paulbeadle

Paul Beadle started his career as a journalist before moving into PR, specializing in financial services. After three years in South Africa, where he helped create the country's first financial comparison site, he returned to the UK and joined Nationwide, setting up the building society's social media team.

About Nationwide

Nationwide Building Society are the UK's biggest building society, meaning the organization is owned by their members, not shareholders. They are the UK's second largest savings provider and the third largest provider of mortgages, as well as being a major provider of current accounts, credit cards, loans and general insurance. With 16,000 employees and a branch network of around 700, Nationwide has around 15 million customers and assets of over £2 billion.

Their social media strategy

Nationwide approaches social media in a different way to most other financial services companies in that it doesn't view social media as just another marketing tool or, as is often the case, a customer service headache.

Nationwide sees social media as a channel with lots of different opportunities and requirements, many of which overlap and complement each other, requiring different business areas to get involved.

That's why the overarching strategy is managed by the social media forum, a group of key stakeholders that represents interests across Nationwide ranging from PR and customer experience through to HR and legal. This overarching strategy and management model was put in place by the social media team, who sit within external affairs, the department responsible for promoting, managing and protecting the bank's reputation in PR, media relations and public affairs.

Nationwide recognized that social media plays an increasingly important role in how businesses are perceived by the public and influencers, whether it is comment on the service customers receive or the news stories they read. As guardians of that reputation, the external affairs department had the right experience, insight and set of skills required to handle the implementation and development of social media at Nationwide, minimizing any risks and helping to realize the potential of the channel.

Whilst individual business departments are responsible for managing their own social media strategy and budget, PR, marketing and customer service, for example, the forum is responsible for shaping the strategic direction for the use of social media across Nationwide. For example, the forum will consider the effectiveness of its corporate governance, the impact of regulatory changes, potential new uses for social media or the opportunity offered by new technology or platforms.

The external affairs social media team, working with the internet channels team, formed the project group implementing social media at Nationwide, creating the forum, setting up the overarching strategy, putting in place the governance framework and building the initial assets.

The overarching strategy has three key elements:

• Boosting customer satisfaction: using social media to help customers by answering their questions and queries, as well as providing them with useful information such as guides, online Q&As and how-to videos.
• Reputation management: monitoring comments and mentions of Nationwide online to understand what their customers and others think of their products and services, enabling them to respond to any issues and use that insight to help shape future developments.
• Increasing customer engagement: using social media to engage with customers via content such as hints and tips, polls, feature articles, videos and competitions; as well as encouraging customers to share this content to raise awareness of Nationwide.

The external affairs social media and the internet channels teams also set up Nationwide's first social media assets – Facebook, Customer Twitter, YouTube and LinkedIn – creating the sites and putting in place governance to ensure that they are properly managed. In addition the external affairs social media team also implemented a social media listening tool to monitor Nationwide's own social channels and the wider web.

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The case

The problem

Financial services is a complicated industry, full of rules and regulations that control the way that products and services are marketed and sold, as well as setting stringent standards for the way customers are dealt with. As a result, many financial services companies are cautious of using social media, nervous of falling foul of regulations or worried about being overwhelmed by negative customer comments.

Yet the web is where people go to find out about the mortgages, savings products, credit cards and current accounts they need and the best companies to use to get those products – social media is the engine that drives this research, whether by sharing opinions with friends and comments in forums, or by checking out reviews by other users and stories from the media and bloggers.

Nationwide wanted to tap into this network of comment and questions, both in terms of understanding what customers wanted and what they already thought of the organization, and how the bank could inform and influence these discussions.

The issue for Nationwide was how to use social media effectively and appropriately within the framework of regulation and its own governance structure, whilst providing something that people would see as worthwhile and would actually respond to.

At the same time, the project team responsible for bringing social media to Nationwide had to show the business case and demonstrate the benefits, prove that it could be managed properly and show how any risks could be mitigated.

Background

Nationwide launched the UK's first internet banking service back in the 1990s, so it has a tradition of embracing new technology. But social media offered more than just a technological challenge – it had implications around reputation, public perception and the culture of the business, as well as putting the company under the spotlight of scrutiny by customers, financial regulators, competitors and even the government.

Nationwide knew that social media could be a powerful way to serve customers, providing them with help and support or resolving their issues, but it also brought with it massive reputational and operational challenges.

When they started to roll out its social media plan at the end of 2010, the financial sector was in the midst of an economic downturn and was struggling with negative headlines and poor public perception. The bank had navigated its way successfully through this period and had never faced any of the issues that many of its banking competitors had. So the opportunity for Nationwide was to build on this position of strength and use social media to raise awareness of the organization and the difference between it and the banks.

Some of the banks had half-heartedly tried their hands at social media, but it was either an ill-thought out marketing campaign that did not really seek to engage with customers, or it was a corporate Twitter feed designed to pump out marketing and PR messages that quickly became swamped with consumer feedback without any real strategy for how to respond and deal with customer service issues.

The solution

Nationwide's first step into social media came towards the end of 2010 when the external affairs team launched its @NationwidePress Twitter, designed to engage directly with the media. Recognizing that the way journalists found their stories had changed – with more turning to social media for leads, insight or public comment – the external affairs team used @NationwidePress to communicate with journalists, provide them with comment from the media relations team and alert them to new products and news stories. This also enabled the team to stay on top of emerging issues and breaking news being discussed by the media.

It was at this point that the external affairs social media team was set up, bringing together experts with traditional media relations experience and people with more in-depth social media background. The new team's remit was to explore the impact of social media on Nationwide, particularly in the area of reputation management, and to put together a plan for how social media could be used to benefit the organization.

The team's first step was to listen.

The @NationwidePress Twitter had already given Nationwide a snapshot of what was being discussed online, but the external affairs social media team wanted a much more in-depth and exhaustive trawl of the web, peeping into all corners to find out what people were talking about in forums, blogs and micro-blogs. The team chose the Sysomos monitoring tool, which not only provided the in-depth search and sentiment feedback it needed, but also delivered hourly buzz alerts via email to flag up any mentions to help the social media team identify emerging issues.

Using the insight the listening process had given them, the social media team next began to map out the opportunities and challenges social media provided: what people were saying, where they were saying it and how best Nationwide could get involved and influence those conversations.

Working with Nationwide's internet channels team, who were responsible for the nationwide.co.uk web site and the digital marketing activity, a project team was formed. Next was the creation of the social media forum, which would act as the heart, conscience and sense-check of the new social media project. Stakeholders from across the bank joined the forum, working on the “in the room” principle – if there wasn't someone in the room who knew the answer to any issue, whether it was the impact of regulation, marketing best practice or how internal customer service procedures should be applied to Twitter, then one of the forum members would know where to find the answer.

The forum was al...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Hall of Fame
• Part I: Set-Up
• Part II: Social Media Strategy
• Part III: Social by Department
• Index