Citi Bank Taps Social Media Banking For Homeowner Support [VIDEO]

Social Business. With HomeownerSupport.com Citi bank taps digital and social media banking to support US homeowners. The video features Get Satisfaction’s CEO, Wendy Lea.

I’ve always been a big advocate for a holistic approach to social media and its integration with a totally owned digital asset, whether the financial institution’s website or a dedicated microsite like Citi‘s homeownersupport.com.

By launching this microsite at the end of last year, Citi has started to ‘own’ the conversations from US home owners about mortages and the bank will be looking to achieve page 1 visibility in natural search on the popular search engines like Google or Bing.

Online ‘community’ for homeowners

The site includes some ‘social media’ features involving peer-to-peer conversations and good seo content:

• The Homeowner Support Forums: a ‘community’ section where US homeowners or aspiring homeowners can register and contribute to.
• The Homeowner Support Blog: only about 20 blog posts mainly from Citi’s community manager, who seems a highly ranked community manager, Michael Cardace – Vice President, Project/Program Manager, Internet & Mobile Group.

SEE ALSO

• Citi’s CMO on Digital Innovation And Social Media Banking Strategy
• Citi Innovation Challenge 2.0: $100,000 For Winning Young US Innovator
• Citibank Integrates Customer Support on Twitter into its 1st iPad App for the Mass Market

Topics

• Citi road to recovery events
• Refinancing
• Payment plans
• Loans modificatin
• Short sales
• Foreclosure prevention
• National Mortgage settlement

You probably noticed this wasn’t a new launch announcement, the site has been live for about six months.  I decided to write this article after noticing last week a new video (please watch at the top of this article) uploaded on Citi’s official youtube channel: ‘Citi: 200 Years of Progress: Citi uses social media for home owner support‘.

The video features Wendy Lea – CEO of Get Satisfaction the successful social commerce company providing platforms and services enabling brands to give a voice to their customers on social media channels or via self hosted online forums.

Please note this video is a follow up of a panel discussion (with Citi’s Frank Eliason and Wendy Lea) I flagged back in December on Visible Banking: Customer Service is Not Marketing…But it Should Be.

With the right content and seo strategy, the right social media strategy, and some great community management, Citi bank’s microsite for homeowner support could be extremely successful, in terms of both owned and earned media.

It could potentially generate a healthy volume of social signals, increase brand consideration, change brand preception and eventually increase market share in a competitive US banking market.  But so far, it seems like the social activation part is still nowhere to be seen…

We invite you to share your thoughts on owned media vs social media, and this social media banking initiative from Citi, here, via twitter or on our facebook page.