Planning for Staffing: social media style

Planning for Staffing: social media style

Last week, I attended a great social media within financial services conference.  The conference brings professionals from all corners of financial services to discuss the how & why of social media.

What needs to be done to deliver a high-quality social media effort?

1. Own the dialogue – educate, excite, and engage business lines to further their business goals with social media usage.
   
2. Create and modify a process – write down each and every procedural act the firm will take with each social media tool used.
3. Liaise continuously with Legal – start and maintain a business dialogue with legal that replaces yes/no questions with how-to questions.  That begins from a deep understanding of FINRA 10-06 (among other guidelines) and competitive intelligence.
4. Create and refine metrics – understand internal evaluation process and map social media into those evaluation processes
5. Set up and monitor social media – [we got to number 5 before actually using social media.] own the primary relationship with each social media tool (e.g. login/password for facebook) and monitor usage
6. Build external usage – generate buzz outside the firm; nothing is sadder than a corporate Twitter account with 5 followers.
7. Evaluate new social media tools – investigate and determine applicability with each new tool under the ever-growing social media umbrella.

There are more firm-specific initiatives necessary, but these seven seem applicable across firms.  Some firms think the work can be added to already-stretched-too-thin marketing teams; I’m dubious of that.  In my eyes, there is a need for at least one full-time person.