Who's In Charge of This Stuff?
Posted by Tim McAlpine on January 7th, 2008
By this stuff, I mean this new stuff. Web 2.0. User-generated content. Social media. Whatever you want to call it.
All this stuff you live and breathe. All this stuff that continues to come in waves. All this stuff that you know is perfect for your credit union. All this stuff that you can’t explain to anyone who is not involved. All this stuff your members are doing online. All this stuff that you know is passing your credit union by.
How about the brand and name experts? No, they’re too busy helping credit unions merge to waste their time on this stuff. They’re telling credit unions, “Skip this stuff. It will pass.”
How about the ad agency? Not likely. They make their money in 30 second increments. If they can’t monetize it, forget it. They, too, are telling credit unions, “Skip this stuff. It will pass.”
How about the PR consultants? Nope. User-generated content with no editorial review is too scary for them. “We need to control this stuff.”
How about the IT department? Yeah right. They’re too busy with bank system security and making sure your in-box isn’t filled with spam. Just try to convince the techies that embedded code from a third-party website is a good thing to do. “Nope, that stuff is not touching my stuff. My job is to block stuff, not touch stuff.”
How about the young person in the organization with a knack for computers? Maybe, but this person will never have the influence or the resources to really implement this stuff. “OK old dudes, this stuff is so cool. Trust me, we really need this stuff.”
How about your marketing and communications department? They would be the natural fit, but with a steady flow of branch requests and with the production of your ingrained annual sales promotions, time and resources are spread too thin. “We’d love to help, but we just don’t have time to do this stuff.”
How about the digital agency or the web consultancy? Possibly. They are definitely capable of doing whatever your credit union wants to do. But they can’t go it alone. “OK, before we do anything, we want to make sure you guys understand this stuff and are comfortable with us doing all of this stuff.”
How about hiring an expert on staff? Good idea. But you better be prepared to listen and give him or her the freedom to experiment or he or she will get frustrated and leave. “I have been telling you about this stuff for months now, but you all still don’t get this stuff. I’m packing my stuff and leaving.”
So, who’s left? Your senior management and, especially, your CEO. Until credit union CEOs and the senior executive team are actually involved in this stuff, it’s not going as far as I know it can go to propel the credit union movement forward.
CEOs and the senior executive team need to feel the anxiety of not being able to see what their Twitter crew is up to while on a flight. CEOs and the senior executive team need to feel the exhilaration of receiving a slew of comments on a controversial blog post that they just posted. CEOs and the senior executive team need to understand the power of this new form of community firsthand. It cannot be explained. It must be experienced.
And CEOs and the senior executive team need to be seen participating in social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn by staff and members. CEOs and the senior executive team need to give permission to experiment and innovate.
As it stands, credit union CEOs and the senior executive team are out of the loop. They see all of this stuff as a waste of time and energy. But guess what, this stuff is real, this stuff is happening right under their nose and this stuff is not going away any time soon, if ever.
Signing off on a message from the president that you didn’t write for your credit union’s quarterly newsletter is not a two-way conversation. Not even close.
Two questions for you:
1. Who owns this stuff at your credit union?
2. What can we all do to prove this stuff is worth doing?
Tim McAlpine is the President & Chief Strategist of Currency Marketing. You can read Tim’s ‘stuff’ on the Currency Marketing blog at www.currencymarketing.ca/blog.
Unfortunately, no one owns this stuff at our CU. Most have the “it’ll pass” attitude. You have to have someone on staff who knows the technology, but also has a little bit of influence. They may not be an executive, but they can make things happen. It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission.
I feel like Ronhere, but you need to find a way to prove ROI!
Tim – excellent thoughts, and I think you’re on to something. A lot of the CU blogs out there already are authored by the CEO.
Meanwhile, many credit unions view Social Media as a literal waste of employee time and productivity.
</sarcasm> Yep, no need to dive into a medium that helps humanize the credit union staff and develop an authentic conversation with members. That is folly, indeed. </end>Robbie’s right.
As it stands today, all these people Tim is wagging his finger at don’t see an obvious or direct connection between organizational objectives (such as ROI) and “Web 2.0, user-generated content, social media, whatever you want to call it.”
These people need more than an explanation and understanding of the tools, they need to see how the dots connect. It may seem intuitive to those on the inside, but to others it isn’t.
Tim, your next post should discuss the ROI of “Young & Free.” Or better yet, have Jeff Mulligan write it.
This might be a chicken and egg thing, but in order to find ROI someone first has to take ownership of any social media initiatives and decide what they’re going to measure to determine success.
ROI is key, but ownership has to precede ROI. Otherwise its nobody’s job and it doesn’t happen.
@Robbie and Jeffry. Yes, I had a whole ROI paragraph at the end as the conclusion but decided to omit it and leave the discussion open ended. I also wanted to leave room for Ron Shevlin to burn the ROI issue in. :)
I agree with Brent, I wanted to raise the question of ownership first. There is a need to show ROI, but until credit unions step up and actually put some senior muscle and investment behind their social media initiatives, what ROI can be shown? “We invested very little and received very little in return. Case closed.”
If Open Source CU will have me back, I would be happy to do a Young & Free overview once the dust settles on the first phase.
Tim, ROI makes sense to CU management – credit unions are financial institutions, after all. I realize that I may be speaking from a bias but, if senior management doesn’t have the inclination, expertise and/or the vision to take ownership, then perhaps it can come from another CU leadership body like the BOD. I’m finding that board implementation of social media initiatives may not be the fastest way to get to measuring ROI but as the tortoise said, “Slow but sure wins the race.” Measuring ROI is certainly my goal for 2008.
Tim, great post. Many of these points hit very close to home. I believe adding social channels into the CU definitely have value, but I know that many CU employees just don’t quite understand what all the hype is about or have no idea what some of these sites are all about. At our CU, the first baby step was to get an internal staff blog up and running so staff had a place to experiment and learn. Recently I posted question on our internal staff blog asking if employees visit social sites like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter and Youtube (all of which our I.T. dept. blocks access to) on a regular basis. Only 53% answered yes. I’m hoping at some point in the near future, we can pose the same question to our membership. I’d be willing to bet it’s higher than 53% since we have a relatively young membership.
The ROI is certainly important.
But there’s something else – and initially, more important – that proponents of the “stuff” are missing: CONTEXT.
Context as is in “how does all this STUFF relate to what we’re doing, trying to do, and hoping to do.
Organizational functions and business processes and concepts that are understood by the finger waggers. STUFF proponents need to put STUFF in a context – functions and processes – that others can relate to.
THEN you start talking about ROI.
@Shevlin – This is why you dropped the “ROI” from your blog. Am I right?
I say – When it comes to calculating ROI – make stuff up.
Seriously.
Credit unions have been doing this for years…. It’s time to do next year’s budget. What will we project? Make stuff up.
It’s time to set our annual goals at the planning session- what should our ROA be next year? make stuff up.
It’s time to write this mont’s newsletter – make stuff up.
It’s not about ROI, it’s about fear. Fear of being wrong. Fear of making a fool of yourself. Fear of being sued. Fear of being committed. Fear of letting staff have a voice.
Of course, I just made all that stuff up!
WOW! What a great topic to start the new year. It’s a process and not an event, right? And I suspect that most CUs can’t possible identify with the ABC debates last Saturday in partnership with Facebook! We’re just a little old credit union, right? It’s like everything else I witness involving innovation…a few will start and the others will follow. And you are right on about FEAR, Denise.
I am a fairly new employee (4 months on the job) with my CUSO employer and I have been tasked as the owner of our blog. Fortunately for me, I’ve already got a few believers in the movement on my side in the way of upper management, but the way I make sense of it all when trying to push things further is to start with what I can measure. Keep track of your comments, watch the stats on your blog, measure the amount of time people are spending there, watch your incoming links, etc.
Start with what you know and can measure and use that to leverage further involvement. I may not have an ROI calculated based on what we have spent, but as others have said, how much does it really cost to get involved? It’s mostly just someone’s time.
I intend to keep fighting for this medium and continuing to find new ways to get my company involved. As time goes on and I can show them more ways this impacts our business, I hope that I can gain wider acceptance.
Great post and comments. I just feeling like slamming my fists down on my desk and yelling “right on!”. I get emotional about this stuff…
I’ve found a kindred spirit!!!
Tim,
Another great, thought-provoking post. I’ve come to expect these from your keyboard, and you haven’t let me down yet.
Hey Tim, good post. I think you are expressing the frustration that a lot of professionals that use “This Stuff” everyday feel when trying to tie in the rest of the CU organization.
My opinion is that ultimately better customer experiences equal better ROI. But you can’t prove better results with trying and measuring all the time. And organizations that don’t experiment will not be leaders. They will see what works and follow. Maybe that isn’t too bad, that is what happens with organizations that are too big and having too much at stake.
I seem to see the smaller CUs getting more involved and reaching out because they are nible enough to respond to customers if they find they are on the wrong track or that they can do things better. Although there was a great post about the CEO of Amazon going out on a limb and taking a risk when he said he was going free shipping. You can read some comments here – http://www.grokdotcom.com/2008/01/06/should-you-cancel-all-your-advertising/ – but it totally paid off because customers spend more.
As you said, CEO’s and executive need to take the lead, but you need leaders who are willing to step out and experiment a little.
I agree with Ron. Initiative ownership, and therefore success measurement, should happen around functions (what it does)...not media (where it lives).
Social media can be used for marketing, but also for education and training, product development, and sales. Grouping social media with traditional business goals and letting those goals dictate who’s in charge of it is necessary for success.
Excellent post Tim. Excellent.
Tim – first I take offense to the Agency cracks (but of course I know you didnt mean us.)
I am amazed sometimes by the folks who think that the internet stuff is still a passing fad of some sort. As our world gets bigger and bigger, the internat has become a vital part of our information and communication infrastructure. Almost every part of my life is somehow connected via a “social” technology.
What makes me cry are the credit unions that will spend $200,000 a year on billboards and radio spots under the auspices of “Awareness” with little to no tracking or ROI requirements but will not devote $20,000 to exploring social media opportunities that are far easier to track.
The most ironic part is that the new batch of members will likely not come from television, radio, newspaper or bilboards. Each of these technologies fall short of capturing the “Under 21” crowd. So it is time to start planning your “New Media” marketing.
All the cool kids are really into that “Stuff”.
Tony – Totally, totally agree.
Look at the cost in comparison of blanket billboards and radio ads (huge) to targeted ads on Google or Facebook(miniscule). Crazy!
The development of Internet-based social media is having an impact on the 21st century world that Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press had six centuries ago. It is still taking time, but it’s happening. This writer is over 40 years old (another birthday coming up WAY TOO SOON) and the development of social media has had an extraordinary impact on my life.
I’m not sure why credit unions have been so slow to catch on. They run the risk of becoming irrelevant to Americans born in the 1980s and 1990s, who are far more web-centric than this 1960s-model author.
In response to the “how can we prove this stuff is working”. (1) Recognizing that there are benefits to social media outside of “traditional marketing goals” (which are usually defined in terms of things like building market share and acquiring new customers), (2) and ignoring these “non new customer acqusition” aspects for the sake of discussion for the moment (3) if social media is to rightfully earn some portion of the traditional marketing budget (4) then is needs to produce a measurable return, (5) couldn’t we test social media the same we test and track other media, that is (6) make an offer to a customer that we think will elicit response from them and (7) see if (measure) we get the desired response? (8) In the case of social media we could be pretty specific and actually uniquely creative about the offer and how it’s presented. (9) And since from the comments above, social media is so much more targeted and powerful than mass media, (10) it should produce a greater response.
Any credit unions ready to actually try this? (Let’s hear from the CU employees, and managers, the people that could actually implement this, not the usual chorus of outside consultants on this site that always advocate social media because their paychecks depend on it). Love to hear your thoughts, and results. I bet the people on this site would even offer to help put the offer together if we all could have a stake in the outcome.
Hi Steenman,
I can’t divulge too much of the results that my clients get, but I can tell you how social marketing has affected our agency.
First, let me get te myth out of the way that consultants advocate this channel because we make more money. It is actually the opposite. We make more money in the design, purchase and placement of newspaper, radio, television and direct mail than in social media simply because the budgets are larger (200,000 vs 20,000). We promote social media because, typically, we see it work in our own lives.
Now, as for our stats. We started our blog about a year ago. Since then we have seen our corporate site traffic increase by 200%. After every post, we get about 100 to 150 unique visitors. Most of these visitors (about 92%) are not our clients. This means that potentially, if they like what they read, they could become clients. I would presume that about 30% of our visitors are other agencies (we do some pretty good tracking) but amazingly we get visitors from all over the world.
This may not be so great for a credit union, but it is excellent for a marketing agency.
Now to add in other elements – my facebook and linked in and even myspace accounts have created so much new business that I can barely keep up. I am better connected with other agencies, industry leaders and now new friends that love credit unions and marketing as much as I do.
I have connected with old friends who, now that they know what I do, are connecting m to THEIR friends. I have even got phone calls from friends of friends of friends. It is amazing.
Social networking has increased our business by about 20% in less than one year. It was the best thing that WE ever did.
As for “Non Agency” sites. We alo have a myspace page for our coffee shop and we will be starting one for the bar that I own (we are moving it and social media will be part of our new marketing plan). The coffee shop one allows me to market to our customers (free coupons, special deals for our “Friends” etc). The bar site will basically be the same thing but we will be posting videos of parties and events.
So, the promotion of social media is not as self serving as you make it out to be. I can vouch for some of my collegues when I tell you that we all want our clients to be successful. And we would look pretty foolish convincing a client to do something that only lines our pockets and fails to produce results.
I, for one, do definitely believe that social media should be a part of a credit union’s marketing strategy. Not a huge part, but a distinct part. The stats speak for themself
comScore shows that Facebook’s traffic went up 89% year-over-year in May to 26.6 million unique visitors, and the demographics have changed dramatically. The age group of 12-17 was up 149% in that same period, 25-34 was up 181% and 35+ was up 98%.
85% of college students have and use a facebook account. (by the survey done in 2005). Here are some other very interesting statistics.
That means more people are on facebook than read the WSJ. It is almost as many people as what American Idol pulls in on their finale show. That is a pretty significant number. Take into account that most households have more than one person using that internet connection which could easily double the facebook statistics (since they share an IP address). So their real traffic could be higher.
Now facebook and myspace are not the definition of social media. But it is what most people think of. It also gives you a good idea of who uses these kinds of sites. Because if they use one, they use another.
The main point of interest with social media is that it is social. It is communication. What is marketing if not communication? And the folks who take part in it are actively searching out the information that brings them to your site. This means they are more receptive to your message.
And in the words of Marth Stewart – that is a very good thing.
p.s. dang it. I didnt realize this was going to be so long. I should have made this a post on my blog.
@Ginny – I think the Boardcast concept is brilliant and it is initiatives like this, where people (slightly) older than 24 in positions of influence can get people thinking about how social media can be implemented at their credit union.
@Matt – An internal blog is a great and a great starting point.
@Ron and Brent – Your points about context are right on the money.
@Denise – I do agree that fear is a great de-motivator and doing this stuff takes courage. Very few want to be first to try anything.
@Tony – Don’t take offense, you’re one of the good guys! My agency cracks are meant for the multi-national meg agencies that are protecting their dynasties. The fact that you found this post, means you get it and are aware. I also agree with your point about agencies not making as much money off social media. It isn’t about the money. It’s about encouraging credit unions to get involved in conversations with members and potential members.
@Steenman – I agree. There has been this unwritten rule that you can’t use social media to sell product. That it is a passive media and that mixing it with commerce will fail. I don’t buy that. It’s about being authentic and unique. If you have a great product or service, why not use social media as part of the media mix to promote it?
Thanks to everyone for all the great commentary on this post!
OK, at the risk of being the dinsosaur walking among you, I am going to add my 2 cents. it is an interesting discussion, and it intriques me as to how we integrate your knowledge and passion into the real world of running a financial institution.
As background, I am President & CEO of a 10 branch credit union with Assets under Admin of $600 Million. Total staff 191 and ambitious expansion plans. Age 53. We are actively seeking ways to both grow / attract the next generation of leaders, and attract Members in a variety of target segments. For the first time, this year we have allocated resources to leverage the knowledge of a current employee with expertise in the Social Media.
Realistically, a great deal of my time is spent on strategy and “selling” the stakeholders (Directors, Senior management and staff , as well as Members) on the need for change.
I am predisposed to believe it is critical that we adopt this medium however I am probably an exception among our apparent stakeholders. I also live in the world of Enterprise Risk Management, Regulators, and layers of complexity. If you were in my extremely busy world what would you tell my stakeholders if you had the opportunity to influence them?