My Marketing Strategy
Nicolette Lemmon, President & Founder
For several months, I have been noticing a shift, a change in the Twittersphere. As I have monitored several key words, client names, and my “follow” list, there seemed to be three things happening:
- Less tweets from everyone with some disappearing altogether
- Less new followers except more suspect or pornographic scammers
- Less interesting tweets but lots of article links
A recent statistic in the blogosphere cited that of the 75 million users set up on Twitter, only 15 million globally are considered active. The determination of “active” was did “some” tweets in the last quarter of 2009. According to Twitterati, the activity on Twitter has been declining since last July. Plus, a high percentage of tweets came from only 50,000 Twitter handles.
For our credit union clients, the idea of using Twitter originally was twofold; one aspect to monitor for customer service issues, and the other to present interesting information out to build conversations.
It has become apparent to me that it’s hard to use Twitter as a customer service tool for credit unions. Rarely does someone use the name of the credit union, favoring the generic term “credit union” instead.
While Bank of America has experienced success using Twitter as a customer service tool, they also have a significantly larger customer base. Despite my monitoring efforts on Twitter, I have yet to see specific credit union customer service issues come to light this way.
Regarding the tweets from the credit union to its universe of Twitter followers, it is good to use financial education tips and sometimes promotions for tweets. However, the key is that Twitter is a social medium and who really wants to be social with their financial institution?
As with every new innovation, there will be a point where the frenetic interest wanes and there is a settling of what the best use of the medium is. Right now, the value of being “on Twitter” still seems to be the halo effect that you or your company is progressive. And, that you (or your brand) are youthful in terms of embracing new things.
What are you noticing at your financial institution? Has Twitter been helpful as a customer service tool?
(1 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5)
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Thanks for the comments! Glad to see that others are finding the same thing.
Carole, you are right about going direct to get answers, especially when your money is concerned!
Peter, you have been a pioneer in social media for credit unions, so hearing about your tests was really enlightening.
Jeffrey, as a gatherer of great financial industry marketing information and resources, hearing that you have become disenchanted with the response was reassuring. I have to admit that I review your email version of sound bytes and it’s more efficient for me than just catching a tweet when I look on Twitter.
Thanks Nicolette. You’re right, I started taking the items I would normally tweet and started packing them into “Best of the Web” articles. These articles may only get a couple hundred pageviews each, but it’s obviously better than 25 people (or even 75) clicking through to read the links straight off of Twitter. That’s 200 pageviews for my advertisers, whereas the tweets yield… what?
I began my retreat from Twitter about a month ago for all the reasons you cite Nicolette. Quality of followers, level of engagement with material, quality of tweets… all down.
When I had 1,000 followers, about 75 people would click on the article links I’d share via Twitter. Now, with around 2,500 followers, fewer than 25 click through.
It took about 8-10 hours a week to sustain the level of Twitter activity I had at my peak. I wasn’t getting 8-10 hours worth in return.
For 99% of financial institutions, it’s a B2B, peer-networking tool and not much else.
And you’re right, practically no one wants to be social with their bank (or credit union).
Hi Nicolette
I would have to agree with you that Twitter as a direct channel for connecting with members is not going to replace our call center any time soon.
We’ve even tested it. A few months ago we conducted two experiments. At one branch we partnered with a local coffee shop to give away free coffee coupons to members who stopped by that branch and asked for one. At a different branch, we did the same thing with a sandwich shop and were giving away free sandwiches coupons. All members (or followers) had to do was visit the branch and ask.
We posted tweets and Facebook updates to announce the availability of the goodies and no one took us up on it at either location. Nobody.
I still think Twitter is a valuable way to brand Bellco and build “thought leadership” but as a customer service tool, I get the chance to help a member maybe once a month.
–Peter
I found your comment “who really wants to be social with their financial institution?” to be the crux of the matter. Quite frankly, any issues I have with a company are going to be addressed directly with someone that can do something for me.