‘Social Media in Financial Services’ Workshop #8 in Asia Pacific in 2011 [Wrap Up]

Yesterday, I completed the 7th, and last, social media in financial services workshop as part of my extended business trip to the Asia Pacific region.  This 2-day workshop took place in Kuala Lumpur.  I delivered one of my very best events to date to a fantastic group of participants from 8 banks in Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia.
What a great feeling!

It wasn’t my first time in Kuala Lumpur.  Two-and-a-half years ago, I chaired the ‘E-Channel Management in Retail Banking‘ event, where I met many great people.  Among them, my good friend Brett King, the best selling author for Bank 2.0.

And to be exact, this KL event was the 9th socia media event I delivered in APAC, if we add the workshop on crisis and reputation management I delivered in Hong Kong earlier this year, and my own Visible Banking workshop in Singapore from October 2010.

My team now tracks over 1,600 twitter accounts and 1,100 facebook pages and apps in 70+ countries, which gives us some unique insights to understand and benchmark how financial institutions worldwide are using those popular social media channels.

In the APAC region, we now track over 140 twitter accounts and over 150 facebook pages and apps.

In the last few months, I’ve covered more and more key social media initiatives from Malaysia, Singapore or Australia: Commonwealth Bank’s ‘Kaching’ -mobile payment app for iphone-, CIMB’s YOUth application -the most viral application on facebook for the youth-, Standard Chartered’s smart way to increase their Net Promote Score via their online banking logout page…

And there is more to come.  Stay tuned on Visible-Banking.com!

A Highly interactive Workshop, with Highly Engaged Participants
We had participants from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia and from the following financial institutions: Etiqa Insurance & Takaful, HSBC, Perbadanan Tabung Amanah Islam Brunei, Permodalan Nasional Berhad, PT Bank Mandiri, PT Bank Negara, RHB Bank Berhad, RHB Banking Group.

I love those two-day workshops with a small group of participants.  I believe it gives us enough time to maximize interactions and cover the most important principles and strategies to build a successful social media programme and trusted digital engagement.

I made sure to share my experience and my passion for the most important topics in social media such  as:
* start now, but where it makes sense.  It is critical you build your social media presence asap to regain a bit more control of your brand online.  Being inactive is better that being absent.
* there are so many types of social media activity, KPIs / ROIs or even risks in social media.  First of all, what is your business goal(s)?
* blogging, tweeting and to some extent using facebook is not risky
* maximize your existing resources first (people, content)
* build a smart content strategy and a reward strategy
* you don’t have to respond to every single comments online
* Identify your key influencers and build a communication strategy with them
* Know Your Followers/Fans (KYF): the better you know your communities, the more relevant your content strategy, the better your shot at converting some of them into customers
* the most potential in social media: capturing and leveraging the Voice of your Customer (VOC)

As usual, I was keen to facilitate a brainstorming session.  I dedicated about half-a-day to a group exercice where the participants had to pick two topics and come up with smart social media initiatives.  I facilitated the discussions, hopping from one table to the other.  My goal was to make sure everybody remembered the most important characteristics of an engaged social media strategy:  I would ask specific questions, constructively challenge assumptions and stress out any missing elements from the conversations…

I was genuinely really impressed and somewhat proud: the 3 groups were very creative, they took all my advice in, happily work together and share their thoughts and ideas between each other.  I’m confident it was a highly energizing experience for the participants.  It definitely was for me.

Order Your Copy of my Book: ‘a Practical Guide to Social Media in Financial Services’
Back in June 2011, I realized one of my dreams.  Becoming a published author.  I invite you to find more info about my 1st book, ‘Customer Experience without Borders: a Practical guide to Social Media in Financial Services‘.  I hope you will buy several copies to distribute to your colleagues and employees.  Please check outthe reviews of the book on Amazon.com.

At the end of the workshop, I organized a small draw to give away a copy of my book to one of the participants.

Congratulations to the lucky winner, Devi from HSBC Indonesia!  I was happy to write a short message and sign her copy.  And it was my pleasure to do the same with the copy Dadang bought a couple of months ago online (Dadang is AVP and Head of Social Media at BNI in Indonesia).

Indonesia
Last but not least, I plan to announce in the next few weeks that we’ll be co-hosting a conference on social media and digital engagement in financial services, followed by a workshop, in Indonesia around the 22nd of Februray.

Please contact me asap to confirm your interest in attending, or recommending potential speakers (APAC bankers and insurers with a good story in the social media space).

Pictures
To get a feel of our events and how much you might have missed out, I invite you to check the photos from the event.  And if you were in the room, please feel free to like and/or comment those pictures.

Working Together
We at Visible Banking would be delighted to help you and your team better UNDERSTAND and LEVERAGE social media in a strategic yet pragmatic way. So please don’t hesitate to call me, send me an email or DM me (@Visible_Banking) to book a meeting and talk about twitter, facebook,crowdsourcing, customer reviews, social media & social commerce in banking, financial services and insurance.