Face(book) the reality of social media

Ewan McIntosh challenges the banks to put social media higher up the marcomms agenda – or risk having to face what could be uncomfortable consequences.

In the summer of 2007 HSBC found itself under siege from a mob of angry students. This wasn't some May Day debacle where the security services would rush in and protect the bank from sticks and stones. This was a war of words. And the students won.

Until then, it had been a fairly standard practice: post letters to customers to let them know of a change in the conditions of their bank accounts. But timing, as they say, is everything, and letting students know of new charges on their overdrafts while most of them were on summer holiday, in bed or travelling the world, was a poor move. Within days, Wes Streeting, Cambridge NUS vice-president, had set up a Facebook page in protest against the charges that most students, by default, were bound to end up paying.

Within days there were 2500 members, and the story had hit the national press. There would be a F2F (face-to-face) demonstration at HSBC headquarters in London within a fortnight if something didn’t happen.

HSBC reverted to their previous policy, heading off any more problematic PR. Except for the fact that over 4000 members of the “Great HSBC Rip-Off” page still dominate the second position on Google for “HSBC Facebook”. Forever.

The UK is the country most engaged with Twitter, and most of Facebook’s users are lucrative over-35s. Since the HSBC blowout, you'd have thought that banks’ engagement with customers through social media would be at the top of the marcomms agenda. But you'd be wrong, if current efforts are to go by.

The HSBC (@HSBC) Twitter account has been “suspended due to suspicious behaviour”. Someone borrowed the brand, since folk must have thought Twitter was just another fad, a bandwagon not worth joining until someone like, say, Stephen Fry signs up. In the meantime, they’ve been cybersquatted by an opportunistic – but more connected – individual. At least it wasn’t a competitor…

Jumping on these bandwagons does pay off: Dell made $6.5m in revenues in 2009, directly through Twitter-based sales. Zappos.com, the shoe retailer bought up by Amazon last year for $300m, prides itself on all its staff communicating with shoe-mad customers on Twitter, and several of its staff are considered “power users”, engaging constantly with clients, existing and potential. Its CEO has 1.7m people following his daily take on running a shoe company.

So who in your organisation is going to jump on those bandwagons and see if they go anywhere? What are you providing to your staff in terms of media literacy skills to help them navigate the new waters of communication that increasing numbers of your customers are using?

This is not marcomms’ job: there are too many customers already trying to engage with you for one department to keep up. In fact, customers don’t care what department you’re in as long as you can solve their problem.

That means, engaging with the customer in their spaces on their terms has just become the job of every one of your staff.

Ewan McIntosh consults governments, public sector and technology startups on their approach to social media, inbound marketing and engagement strategies. www.notosh.com

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