Recently Personal Finance Expert turned Reporter Erica Sandberg released a shocking article about the latest social media practices in the credit and finance Industry.  Here’s a brief summary in her own words:

What’s going on: In hopes of identifying good credit customers, some financial institutions are tapping into the information you and your friends reveal online. The idea is that the friends you keep and data you disclose may help them make more accurate business decisions.

Who is doing it: Companies such as Rapleaf hunt and gather social networking transmissions, turning the conversations you have in your network into consumer profiles. These profiles provide banks with insight into your behavior patterns – what you like and dislike, want and don’t want, do well and do poorly.

How it’s being used: There are a couple of ways this information may be applied. It can help creditors promote certain products, cutting down on marketing waste. Why sent pre-approval letters to people not interested, right?

Lowering lending risk is another reason. Creditors can see if people in your network have accounts with them, and are free to look at how they are handling those accounts. The presumption is that if those in your network are responsible cardholders, there is a better chance you will be too. So, if a bank is on the fence about whether to extend you credit, you may become eligible if those in your network are good credit customers.

Having a robust online social network can also expedite loan acceptance. If you’re connected to a lot of people who are great credit risks, it can speed you through the process. Amazing, isn’t it?

What you can do. While financial institutions and companies that gather your online data are emphatic that the idea is to increase the odds of a person getting credit, what you reveal online can have unintended consequences. Therefore, if you want to opt out, turn all of your settings to private. Other best practices:

- Don’t accept invitations to your social networking site from people until you check their profiles out first.

- Be acutely aware of what you write. Don’t make public anything you don’t want public.

- Take an annual inventory of all your social networking sites and delete people and information that can potentially damage you in the eyes of a creditor or employer.

What are the top five largest countries in the world by population? USA? Indonesia? China? India? Facebook?!? According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook has acquired over 200 million users who are updating their online status, posting news, and connecting with friends and brands of interest. You’d think that every industry would be tripping over themselves to harness the opportunities offered by Facebook, Twitter and other social media communities. Yet, acccording to JD Rucker, the auto industry seems slow to cash in.

By maintaining a social media presence car manufacturers could interact with potential buyers before they head down to the auto showroom.  They could use search.twitter.com to find folks who tweeted about going car shopping or someone who tweeted about their car breaking down and offer to solve their problem by offering a new car alternative.

Sears uses this tactic with appliances. Recently my cousin’s dishwasher broke.  A Sears repairman came to fix it.  Later that same day, the dishwasher broke again.  After tweeting about it, she discovered a message from someone at Sears who was embarrassed by the repairman and offered to solve her problem by giving her a new dishwasher for free!  That is a terrific example of how brands are using Twitter to maintain customer satisfaction. Imagine the possibilities for auto industry!

Implementation strategies for social media use in both car sales and manufacturing can be found in JD Rucker’s post in FastCompany.com’s blog: Why Going Social Can Make or Break the Automotive Industry. In it he explores the potential for dealer and manufacturer impact on client relations using social media.

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From 123 Social Media

Education is critical for any social media practitioner or specialist. Whether you need to redefine your business and jump into “social media” or if you just need to figure out how to talk with your team, the following reports present an immense amount of information that will make your business better.

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Charlene Li from the Altimeter group has published a view into the benefits and correlations of social media and brand value, along with business margins.

“There exist thousands of social media channels, each with a slightly different value proposition. It is therefore a daunting task to figure how to objectively evaluate various marketing efforts across all social mediums. The Wetpaint/Altimeter Group ENGAGEMENTdb Report introduces a single criterion: engagement.”

Download here.

From ESB Journal

Social media optimization or SMO is yet another method for search engine optimization of your site.

As the name implies, you optimize your site by advertising it through the social media sites, online communities and community websites such as blog sites, message boards, podcasts, wikis and blogs.

The methods for social media optimization involve the use of RSS feeds, social bookmarking, video and photo sharing, social news buttons and blogging etc. The basic idea is to drive traffic to your site without spending money on search engine advertising.

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From eMarketer:

Understanding and integrating data

To prove the success of their campaigns, marketers need analytics. But many report frustration with understanding and using the Web analytics tools necessary to prove their success to management, according to “The Web Analytics War Reader Survey” by Unica.

The biggest challenge for marketers was integrating Web analytics with other marketing solutions, cited by 46% of respondents. Verifying the accuracy of data was a problem for 41% of marketers, while 32% reported trouble with analytics that were not comprehensive and 29% complained of budgets that were too small.

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From eMarketer:

ROI metrics neglected by most

The vast majority of professionals worldwide are using social technologies for business purposes, according to an August 2009 survey by Mzinga and Babson Executive Education.

Fully 86% of respondents to the survey of professionals from a variety of industries said they had adopted social technologies. Most said they were using the tools for marketing (57%), followed by internal collaboration (39%). Almost three in 10 respondents reported using social technologies for customer service and support.

It was more common for professionals to report devoting employees, either full- or part-time, to working on social media initiatives (57% of respondents) than it was to commit budget dollars for social media (40%).

The top way for professionals to implement social applications was integrated within their Website or another site, mentioned by 61% of respondents. Standalone community sites and third-party widgets were popular among 40% and 39% of professionals, respectively.

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From Social Media Today:

20% of tweets about brands is the results of a Penn State study in the States.

Researchers led by Jim Jansen, associate professor of information science and technology, and Twitter chief scientist Abdur Chowdhury looked at half a million tweets. 20% of them were apparently people ‘asking and providing’ product information. Assuming three million tweets a day, that would translate into 600k posts daily of direct relevance to brands.

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Jeremiah Owyang’s suggestions for starting and building community online. Read more at Web Strategy.

1. Create compelling content on a recurring basis. Brands sometimes create videos, podcasts, or stories on a daily or weekly basis that encourages members to come back.
2. Reward users who fill out their profile. Folks like to see other friendly faces, so giving them access to premium features or recognition of those who have the most complete profiles should recognized.
3. Invite community influencers and advocates to the community first –giving them first right of testing the system and then inviting others.
4. Encourage interaction through conversations. Ask questions, talk about controversial topics, or host a contest that encourages participation.
5. Reward top contributors: Those that participate the most, or perhaps, are the most helpful should be recognized on a leader board, and thanked in public.  Unexpectedly, send them something nice as a thank you, or reward them with premium services –never money.
6. Centralize your community around your real world events.  People want to find each other before events, talk about the event during the duration, and then afterwards are key.  Use the community in your physical events.
7. Virtual Events integrate community:  Don’t just use on your real world events, but integrated with your virtual ones, I‘ve written at length about that here.
8. Integrate with your website –and other customer touchpoints. Remember, corporate sites of the future are aggregations of community discussion, be sure to integrate community in your corporate site.  Make sure your call center, email marketing, and external newsletters all integrate community.  (don’t forget even the email signatures)
9. Encourage employees to get active.  A party isn’t much fun if there’s no one there, so encourage the hosts (often employees) to kickstart discussions by talking, debating, and arguing about the news, updates, or even relevant YouTube videos will trigger discussion.  Of course, you have a community manager on staff, right?

In his ClickZ post, Gary Stein examines five ways people go wrong when measuring social media.

Big Mistake No. 1: Assuming Your Fans/Followers Will See a Post

Big Mistake No. 2: Failing to Account for Overlap Across Networks

Big Mistake No. 3: Failing to Count Clicks

Big Mistake No. 4: Disregarding Search

Big Mistake No. 5: Focusing on Followers

Stein: “The bottom line with social media measurement: we’re in some really early stages and there are plenty of bright lights to distract us. The biggest mistake of all, of course, is not to measure. With the effort you’re putting into social media, it’s like that famous bumper sticker: “If you’re not concerned, you’re not paying attention.”

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