The Importance of Social Media Insights in Financial Services PR Alistair Wheate October 1 st 2014
Jul 01, 2015
The Importance of Social Media
Insights in Financial Services PR
Alistair Wheate
October 1st 2014
About me
Alistair Wheate
Head of Social Media Insights
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @alistairtweet
LinkedIn: uk.linkedin.com/in/alistairwheate/
Questions:
– In event – through Webinar panel
– Post-event – tweet to @Gorkana or @alistairtweet
Events contact: [email protected]
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Social Media and Reputation in
Financial Services
Topics covered:
• How journalists use Twitter
• Tips for how to listen to social media conversations for PRs
• Reacting to social media „triggers‟
• Analysing long-term trends
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Rebuilding Trust
“Confidence has been badly shaken and needs
to be re-built. That's a big job and its not going to
be done in a year or two. It's a job that will need
to take place over many years.”
- Andrew Tyrie MP, Chair of Treasury Select Committee
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What role does Social Media play?
Social Media can:
• amplify negative stories
• put a negative, cynical spin on positive or neutral stories
• perpetuate rumours and myths
• act as an early warning signal
• provide a useful insight into public opinion*
* But use with caution! 4
PRs Need to Focus Their Attention
• In Social Media monitoring terms, less can be more for
PRs
• Focus on Journalists + Media Influencers
– They have important real world connections
– They proactively hunt for new information/scoops
– They are (usually) reliable sources
– They make speed a priority
– They are highly interconnected
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Journalists all follow each other
6 http://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog
/2011/apr/11/journalists-twitter-following
Journalists Twitter Activity Analysis
All UK National Journalists
• 2300 active per month
• ~270,000 tweets per month
• Average 4 tweets per day
UK National Journalists covering Finance/City
• 150 active per month
• ~20,000 tweets per month
• Average 4.4 tweets per day
• 10% more than the average journalist
Political Journalists – Average 6.9 Tweets per day
Most Active (Avg Tweets/Day)
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The Scottish Referendum – a long day...
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Number of active political journalists by hour
Are you using the right tools?
Quotes from Financial Service PR people I‟ve met in the past:
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“Oh I already follow
my journalists on
the Twitter”
“Our agency
monitors social
media for us”
“I just use
Tweetdeck to
monitor for
mentions”
There is too much going to
have a casual dip-in approach
to social listening.
Professionals should be using
a professional tool set!
Q&A
Tweet First, Publish Later...
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Should Customer
Services be dealing with
this?
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Perhaps I shouldn‟t have said that...
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Deleted Tweets:
Financial Journalists Timeline
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May 8th Wordcloud
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Jun 5th Wordcloud
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Sep 30th Wordcloud
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Triangulating Alerts
Who What About
Top Influencer Anything You
Other Influencers Key Themes You
Other Influencers Critical Issue Industry
Anyone Critical Issue You
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Alert priorities table:
• Journalists
• Politicians
• Bloggers
• Analysts
• Senior personnel
• Industry leaders
• Campaign groups
• Think tanks
“Top” influencers = e.g. industry journalists, industry leaders, analysts
Who are your „influencers‟?
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• Senior personnel changes
• Results (especially leaked)
• Fines & penalties
• Bad practice
• CSR activities
• Comments from political leaders
• Key clients/investors/partners
The top issue will vary – search terms for alerts will need to be kept up-
to-date to ensure relevancy
What are your „issues‟?
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• Email alerts
– Work email
– Personal email?
• Dashboards
• Social Media „Command Centre‟?
How to be alerted?
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Reputation – the long-term view
Social Media analysis can be an important way of
measuring medium to long-term trends in the reputation of
your brand.
Media coverage may be more positive in tone but the
public do not necessarily believe what they read if their
opinions have hardened...
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Tips for Social Media Analysis
• When comparing automated sentiment:
– look at ratio of positive to negative comments
– watch out for „top tweets‟ that are humorous and can
skew results
– measure changes in SOV for positive and negative
over time vs competitors
– benchmark against sentiment average for the
industry as a whole, include generic mentions
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Tips for Social Media Analysis
• Don‟t just rely on automated sentiment:
– Identify what the key issues are that affect reputation
and tag posts that relate to these issues
– measure the trend for these issues over time
– measure your SOV issue by issue against your
peers
– apply manual analysis for mentions about key
personnel, reputation or strategy and from key
influencers
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Top Tips
For day-to-day monitoring:
• Focus on the issues and individuals that matter most
• Don‟t try to track everything
• Don‟t obsess over each article
For reporting and analysis:
• The more data the better
• Get the bigger picture to provide context
• Don‟t just focus on your own business
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The recording of this webinar is now
also on YouTube
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