Brandle Social Media Governance Blog

4 min read

What's another URL among friends, Facebook?

By Chip Roberson on October 28, 2015


LEAVE IT TO FACEBOOK...

...to randomly change the ground under your feet. Of all the things which are important to your business' web presence, the addresses people use to find you is near the top of the list. Lose your URL and you can become invisible.

However, URLs pose another problem which most businesses don't take into consideration: the fact that you can have too many URLs for the same web property. And now it seems that Facebook has decided to give your business page one more.

Big deal, you might say? Well if you're a large organization with lots of brands or locations, your problems just got multiplied...

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6 min read

Social Media for Financial Advisors: New Survey Shows Trends

By Janet Church on October 05, 2015

In every industry, good sales and marketing professionals seek external data to support marketing ideas and business decisions. That is doubly true in a regulated industry, like financial services, where a decision could cost the company high compliance fines. So when external data is available, such as meaningful survey results showing social media industry trends, it's a great idea to leverage the findings to update, change, or confirm your existing social media programs.

Recently, Putnam Investments and Socialware conducted social media use surveys among advisors in financial services firms. In this article, I present highlights of the Putnam survey and more detail on the Socialware study.

The biggest data point from the Putnam Investment study that demonstrates why you should ramp up your social media program for advisors is

  • The share of advisors acquiring new clients through social media is up sharply to 79% (from 66% in 2014), with the average annual asset gain from these clients standing at $4.6 million.

The top findings in Socialware's Social Media Trends survey are:

  • 48% of advisors are allowed to create their own social media posts, as well as share pre-approved content
  • The top challenges center around social media risk management 
  • 39% of firms still have no ROI metrics to assess social media program success 

We hope you find information in this article to help you navigate the chasm of corporate risk and build a bridge to social media success!

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8 min read

Social Media Compliance & Your Sales Team: 6 Steps to Success

By Janet Church on September 24, 2015

One of the more difficult challenges for the corporate team responsible for social media governance is the task of monitoring the web presence activities of the sales team. The challenge is even greater when you have a distributed and large sales force. And if you are in a regulated industry (such as mortgage, finance, insurance, or pharma), the job is critical to the regulatory compliance of the company!

I recently got a call from one of our mortgage customers asking if I could recommend best practices to manage a distributed sales team so the company could demonstrate corporate-wide social media compliance. He commented that he felt like he was "herding cats". I was happy to guide him through the process I recommend and I thought others might benefit as well. Additionally, I get to use a photo of really cute kittens in a blog post (attentively gathered for training and monitoring).

In this article, I outline a sound process to help you manage web presence compliance for a social sales staff. Although I do highlight procedures for companies in regulated industries, these steps can be followed by any company so that you can get the most out of your social sales team while managing risks for your company.  

As usual in business (and herding), it comes down to the adage, "Make the Plan....Work the Plan". Successful social media compliance is all about implementing best practices for governance, leveraging corporate brand marketing, and training your sales team how to "be social".

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7 min read

3 Social Media Compliance Tools You Need for a Regulated Business

By Janet Church on August 26, 2015

If my headline caught your attention, then I'm betting you are responsible for advertising and social media compliance in a regulated business. You may be in the financial sector (a mortgage, securities, or banking company) or other regulated industry (like a pharmaceutical or medical business), but the challenge of selecting the right solution for your web and social media governance program is the same for everyone:

What tool do I need to achieve corporate web and social media compliance?

There are three tools you need to consider to run a good compliance process. Once you understand the web and social media tools landscape for regulated businesses, you will know which tool is your priority starting point.

 

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2 min read

Web Presence and the Social Media Management Tool Space

By Janet Church on August 21, 2015

Are you responsible for managing, publishing, listening, or analyzing the data from your corporate social media properties?  If you spend part of your work day focused on any of these activities, then you are using at least one Social Media Management System!

The growth of Social Media in the corporate environment has created a large market for different tools that help you achieve different goals. Most people start with a publishing tool, but a new tool category is emerging called Web Presence Management which addresses the key needs of corporate web and social media governance.

Is it time your company adopts a Presence Manager?

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