It's not about social media...it's about brand and relationship management

By Neil D. Wernick

The intangible nature of Twitter, Facebook and even LinkedIn is confounding even to the most seasoned financial services industry professionals.  Deep down, you know that if social media can play a pivotal role in toppling entrenched, hostile governments in a matter of a few weeks that you should be able to figure out how to use it to attract a few new clients.  Your kids and maybe even your grandkids conduct much of their lives connected to the world through an arsenal of electronic devices that they manipulate with seemingly autonomic reflexes.  They engage with an astonishing number of friends and friends of friends through a flow of exponentially emerging "apps" with names like Instagram, Pinterest, Reddit, Tumblr, Snapchat, Vine and Pheed...to name a few. And they multi-task...and do they ever multi-task.

 

Try having an uninterrupted, five minute conversation with anyone under the age of 30 and you may, if you can get over your anger, frustration and disappointment begin to understand that you are witness to the fundamental shift that is taking place in the way that people interact with one another.  Make no mistake, this is not a phase, not a fad and not a craze.  It is a true and certain paradigm shift...an irreversible change in the nature, scope and depth of our relationships.

In our professional lives, the impact is huge.  We've built our most valuable relationships the old-fashioned way:  face-to-face across conference room and kitchen tables, in private offices, in coffee shops, on the golf course or the tennis court.  We've maintained those relationships through periodic, personal touch-points, many face-to-face. Most of us and many of our clients still prefer to do business this way.  But that is evolving quickly whether due to aging demographics, increasing time demands or simply, personal preferences.  And to grow or even maintain the success of our practices, we must evolve as well.

What social media has not changed are our mission and our core values:  To focus first and foremost on our clients, their needs, priorities and preferences.  Trust, confidence and integrity based on experience and reputation are still, ultimately, what clients are buying when they engage and retain you and your company.  You, in turn, earn their business every day by showing that:  1) you understand their goals and their risk tolerance; 2) you maintain your leadership as a subject matter expert; 3) you know how to navigate bureaucracy to get results; and 4) you are both proactive and highly responsive to their needs.  What clients continue to demand is that you help deliver these outcomes with accuracy, responsiveness and no surprises. 

Our current research indicates that financial services executives and street-level professionals are pursuing social media primarily for brand-building and attracting new clients.  Most socially active professionals gauge success at least in part by the volume of responses they receive from their posts.  However, these same professionals generally believe that they have achieved only a moderate level of social success.   Therefore, the state of social behavior today begs some critical questions including, how to:

 

·       Set and achieve viable social media goals

·       Demonstrate value to others in your firm

·       Gain clarity about who to follow and who to pursue as followers

·       Assure that all social media activity contributes positively to your brand

·       Deliver a continuous flow of timely, value-added and compelling messages to carefully targeted audiences

·       Achieve a time-effective balance between social media reading and posting

·       Address the challenges/obstacles posed by Compliance and/or Legal

While the business development objectives of attracting, engaging and retaining clients are clear...as they have always been, it is our approach that must be adapted.  Email, video-conferencing and social media are the key components of the delivery system for a spectrum of robust, productive and cost-effective strategies in the new way of brand-building and managing professional relationships.  In other words, the understanding, planning and use of social media are the new “user ID and password” for mastering value-added, relationship management.

The seemingly-vague and random activities of social media may, at first, seem daunting to the technologically-challenged among us.  However, the critical question is not, “How do we, as successful financial services professionals, learn and master this new set of relationship management skills?” but rather, “When?” To which the unequivocal answer must be, “Now!”

 

Neil D. Wernick is the president of Rifkin-Wernick Associates, a business consulting practice engaged with some extraordinary people to achieve strategic, sustainable and positive impact through communications, brand evolution and relationship management.