Cutting through the cluttered media landscape and engaging with clients on social media platforms is increasingly challenging. As social media evolves and new entrants and mediums emerge it is essential Financial Services have an effective strategy to capitalise on the opportunity and grab the attention of its customers.
Headlines
- Remember the Arab Spring which took place over a decade ago. It was an exciting time and social media was seen as liberating opinion. There was a hope that it could galvanise the populous and ensure that crooked governments became history.
- Now it has come full circle and we have crooked governments manipulating data so it is difficult to pick something which is trustworthy.
- “Don't think demographic, think mindset. A mindset that demands an open dialogue; shared values; authenticity; and relatability. Mindset - not age.
Key issues and challenges
- Attention is increasingly hard to get in cluttered media environment.
- So the Millennials are liberated and conflicted – there is a crisis of trust.
- Within FS, ‘experts’ will not necessarily be FS experts, but potentially more vocal and frequent posters. Likely to be more personality-driven rather than authority-driven particularly in world of video.
Conclusions and solutions
- Future is generally bright for social media outlets as usage will continue to grow, particularly around video content submission and consumption.
- May not be the incumbent platforms and networks who benefit as new and more niche networks emerge with new and innovative business models.
- Shouldn’t think of social media as just the likes of Facebook, Twitter or Linkedin as more traditional media players develop a social component to their content.
- This also has implications for the ability of social media to monetise its content as more popular ‘posters’ can themselves be incentivised as affiliates.
- This could mean that social media may engender influencers who are commercially biased.
- Likely that more savvy consumers will realise that influencers promoting products and services via social media platforms are not likely to be truly independent however the evidence would suggest that the mass market is less aware.
- Agreed that influencers via social media could take more of a leadership role in terms of financial education and advice however perception of what is shared via social media needs to change over time.
Moderator: Phil Alcock, Raisin UK
Expert: Ste Davies, Consultant
