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Posted 10 May 2012 21:52pm by Heather Taylor with 2 comments

Today, LinkedIn launched its inaugural Financial Services Summit in New York which focused on the role social media is playing in the financial services industry. The first panel brought together representatives from American Express, Citi, Fidelity Investments, Prudential Retirement and Hearsay Social to talk about using social media in financial marketing.

It was curious to see a panel on social media where only two out of six individuals on the panel have Twitter accounts. One was Clara Shih, who runs the agency Hearsay Social, and the other, Frank Eliason, SVP of Social for Citi. The panelists' lack of Twitter accounts felt like a microcosm highlighting how most financial service organizations are behind in social media.

Not that Twitter is the be all and end all of social media, it is a communication channel for 140 million active users. Saying that, in LinkedIn's new findings released today, financial advisors are mainly reaching out to prospective clients on LinkedIn with Twitter only used by 8% of them. Even brand identity building primarily takes place on LinkedIn over Facebook, Twitter and Google+ for those working in an advisory capacity.

Though the panelists did mention communication on all platforms, a lot of the issues they are facing aren't about where the conversations are taking place. It's rather that financial institutions need to put customers at the center of their decisions as well as enable their employees to do the same.

Below are a few of the key takeaways from each of the panelists. These points could be taken across any organization, especially those who have to deal with compliance issues and regulatory bodies:

There are two main things that Shih highlighted about how social media is shifting the way financial services market themselves:

1) Proliferation of online identity where people freely sharing what they do, who they are, etc. is very valuable for the financial world. When people get married or have a career change, these are great triggers for financial services discussion and this is when financial advisors and institutions need to reach out to customers.

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The role of social media in financial services marketing

The cheesy sex novel has long been a staple of literature, and its always a problem when staples are taken away.

But public libraries in several states are pulling the racy romance trilogy Fifty Shades of Grey from shelves or deciding not to order the best-seller at all, saying its too steamy or too poorly written.

Like there are no poorly written books in libraries.

When a book is removed from the shelf, folks who cant afford a Nook or a Kindle, the book is no longer available to them, said Deborah Caldwell Stone, of the American Library Associations office for intellectual freedom.

Fifty Shades of Grey, this generations 9?1/2 Weeks, has been called mommy porn because of its popularity among middle-age women.

This week, the trilogy holds the top three spots on the New York Times best-seller list.

Libraries in Wisconsin, Georgia and, of course, crazy Florida, all have had issues with the book.

Its semi-pornographic, said Don Walker, a spokesman for Brevard County, Fla., where the library put 19 copies of the book on the shelves and then pulled them after reading reviews. About 200 notices had to go out to people on the books waiting list.

It doesnt suit our community standards, said Cay Hohmeister, director of libraries for Leon County, home of Floridas capital.

Even though hundreds of people in the community want to read it.

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‘50 Shades’ of censorship

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/glw4rf/global_social_medi) has announced the addition of Frost & Sullivan's new report "Global Social Media in the Medical Devices Industry" to their offering.

This study's research objective is to gauge social media usage within the medical devices industry. The data was collected in October 2011, using web-based surveys. The sample consisted of 170 medical devices professionals from the United States and Europe. Personal use of social media for professional purposes is quite high among employees of the medical devices industry; this study assesses the main usage reasons cited by users of social media as well as the main benefits that are afforded by this technology. It also covers the number-one ranked risk of social media and how this might impact usage.

Summary

Personal use of social media for professional purposes is quite high among employees of the medical devices industry. The main reason to use social media is to get in touch with colleagues. LinkedIn is the social media site most often used for professional purposes. Nearly half of companies have written policies restricting use of the company's computers/network to access social media sites. Employees in the medical devices industry (in total-regardless of whether their companies have or do not have written policies) claim that they have access to social media/networking sites. Almost half of organizations have a social media presence where information about them is shared. The most widely used sites are Facebook and LinkedIn.

Implication

Companies should not totally block access to social media sites, as the whole realm of customer knowledge can be found there. Social media is especially important, taking into consideration the growing popularity of an open innovation model within the healthcare/medical devices industry. Furthermore, it is likely that blocking social media sites will not be effective, as many people use mobile devices to access anyway.

There is no possible way to censor social media, so there is a need to train marketing/public relations how to react when discussions in social media become out of control and/or how to overcome social media disasters. To guard against social media disasters and to allay fears of the compromise or misuse of sensitive information, agencies, consultants, technology providers, and the social networks themselves can take an opportunity to address the needs of this specialized group of professionals.

As only a minority of medical devices organizations are very well developed in terms of social media, working to increase development may create a competitive advantage - at least in terms of communicating with the market.

Executive Summary: CEO Perspective

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Research and Markets: Global Social Media in the Medical Devices Industry 2012

In the past few years, academia-specific social networking websites have grown in popularity among faculty members at universities across the United States.

These websites, including Academia.edu, Zotero.org and several others, offer new and efficient ways for scholars and students to share research and find colleagues who share their interests. Similar to Facebook and Twitter, these websites allow academics to follow updates in colleagues work and research while sharing their own.

While a majority of students and faculty may place more faith in sharing work through academic journals and other tried-and-true peer reviews, the time efficiency offered by digital publishing on growing academic social networks may entice more users to join in the future.

Some might be concerned that edits made to papers shared online tend to have less depth than those made in academic journals.

Yet in spite of apparent shortfalls in the quality of digital publishing, the open communication and socialization offered by these new websites retain promise for students searching for potential peers and newer research in their fields of interests.

Academia.edu alone has more than 1.3 million users, 3,685 of whom are affiliated with UCLA.

Christine Borgman, the presidential chair and a professor of information studies, is one of many professors at UCLA who have used these websites in their courses.

Borgman said students in one of her advanced graduate seminars participate in a Zotero group to pool their works as a group and to track one anothers research interests.

The use of these websites by faculty members and students, however, does not counteract the risks of using social networking websites. With general social networks like Facebook, the ability to share personal or professional information does not include the ability to choose who has access to that information.

This concern for privacy, however, is not an essential issue for academic websites, as content posted by users is typically related to their studies and set in a more professional tone than might be expected on more general interest networking websites such as Facebook. Furthermore, this content is usually only viewed by faculty and students in the same field.

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Social researching: Academia-specific networking websites offer new, efficient ways for scholars to connect, share works

With New Look, Bing Gets More Organized, Social

Microsoft is revamping its search engine and exploiting the growth of social networking online.

Microsoft

In an effort to make searching on the Web simpler, faster, and more socialand further differentiate itself from market leader GoogleMicrosoft's Bing search engine is getting a new look.

On Thursday, Bing said it will roll out a new design over the next few weeks that trades in its existing search results page formata mix of images and various types of text-based results on a one-column pagefor a layout in three separate panes featuring traditional text results, results from specific information sources and services, and results related to your social-network friends.

At an event to unveil the refresh in San Francisco on Thursday, Derrick Connell, Bing's corporate vice president of search program management, said Bing's search results page needed to evolve. "If we don't evolve our search result pages, in the industry we'll eventually become obsolete," he said.

Evolution is especially important if Bing wants to gain market share. The search engine is a very distant second to Google, pulling in 15.3 percent of U.S. search queries in March compared to Google's 66.4 percent, according to comScore.

Microsoft clearly believes these changes must include increased organization of social content, which has exploded with the popularity of Twitter and Facebook over the past several years. Within Bing's results, a new "Sidebar" column will organize relevant content from your friends on social sites like Twitter and Facebook. For example, Bing will suggest friends who might be knowledgeable about a specific topic by considering their listed "likes" on Facebook. A feed will also let you see and respond to your friends' Facebook updates and questions. And users will be able to ask their Facebook friends questions via Bing.

Basic text results will still be dominant with the new design, and executives said Thursday that separating them is meant to declutter the page and make it simpler to find specific links.

A third pane, called "Snapshot," will show search results related to places and services, such as maps and restaurant reviews. A partnership with OpenTable will let users make reservations on the results page.

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With New Look, Bing Gets More Organized, Social