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: alistair.wheate@gorkana.com

Twitter: @alistairtweet

LinkedIn: uk.linkedin.com/in/alistairwheate/

Questions:

– In event – through Webinar panel

– Post-event – tweet to @Gorkana or @alistairtweet

Events contact: events@gorkana.com

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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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