Social Media Marketing Summit: Brand Spotlight on Wells Fargo

Another brand spotlight on a brand that’s really made social media work for them.  I’m surprised that I actually use this bank and never knew about some of the nifty things they are doing with blogs.

• Edward Terpening, Vice President of Social Media Marketing, Wells Fargo

Great presentation – well put together and I’m very excited that some of these brands that seem so dry have been so lively and and actually interesting.  At least, I’m interested so I hope you are too!

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• 10% of internet traffic comes from YouTube
• Social media is important to build trust.  People resonate with other people’s experiences.
• “A brand is what people say about you…when you’re out of the room.” – Jeff Bezos, Amazon.
• Marketing is becoming an opt-in activity (TiVo, satellite radio, different media and technological ways of avoiding ads).
• Wells Fargo was the first major US bank to blog in 2006.
• Brand blogs: blog about attributes of your brand that strike a chord with your customers (e.g. Stonyfield Farms, Dove, Guided by History)
• Product blogs: blog about your product, seek feedback, and participation (e.g. GM Fastlane, Student LoanDown)
• Entertainment/Educational: have fun (he changed the slide too fast for me to see the whole thing)
• They got started by experiencing the culture and seeing communication culture evolving (email signatures, SMS, websites).  Read blogs, then commented on blogs.
• Joined the blogosphere with authenticity and relevancy – Guided By History commemorated 100 year anniversary of 1906 earthquake and shared info from their internal documents from back then when they were around and helped to rebuild San Francisco.
• Guided by History was their first blog and initially intended to be a short term blog they figured would die down after the hype of the anniversary did but people still enjoy it and wanted more stories.
• Bloggers for The Student LoanDown are all authentic college student interns or recent graduates that tell personal stories related to debt consolidation and other financial concerns of college-aged people.
• Stage Coach Island – community on Second Life translated to an outside blog.
• 40-50 bloggers that are connecting with consumers on a personal level.
• Banking is traditionally very impersonal, so bloggng has been a great way to connect.
• They can’t do some things because their industry has a lot of regulaions  (e.g. they don’t accept full names, only aliases, to protect identity and stick with their standards).
• It took time to cultivate and recruit bloggers with the right voice and explain what social media is.
• 3% of comments on blogs are negative – most people expect that percentage to be higher.
• Communities in general want to have a positive, productive conversation.
• None of their bloggers are professional communicators – they want them to be authentic and be themselves.  Balance their blogging with day jobs.
• Had to set standards and guidlines in terms of comments and emails.
• When you launch, “stay in the room” and pay attention, participate in the buzz.  Shows you’re part of the community and not there as a leech.
• Tone recipe = Individualism + brand + audience culture.
• Know your audience: read + participation = dialog
• People become more civil when they realize there’s a real person.
• When they go off topic, they get high engagement.
• You have to be part of the ecosystem.  Let them know you’ll be the best source, but you’ll link to other places if you’re not the best source.
• Was hard to get comments, even with prompting them with questions.  So they integrated a comment box within the blog post and made it accessible – doubled the amount of comments.
• Recognize & reward active participants.
• Launched a vlog that’s fun & relevant to the history of the company has really driven traffic and engaged the community.
• Blogging alone is an incomplete social media strategy.
• Get out of your sandbox.
• Find your customers wherever they are, listen and participate when it makes sense.
• Hard to create buzz – just take existing buzz and amplify it.
• Doing some things with Facebook – Someday Stories, Facebook page for Stage Coach Island, can run Stage Coach Island on Second Life through an application.
• It’s another way to have a dialog with customers.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• How to get traffic?  Understood where the target audience was hanging out, used SEO but didn’t buy ads.
• When someone votes for a person to get their someday story, they also vote for a cause.  So while a person will win $100,000, the cause that wins will receive a donation of $250,000 (partnered with Habitat for Humanity, Boys & Girls Club, some others) as an incentive to get people to vote and participate.
• Creative definitely varies based on the audience.  They take cues on creative from the community, as well as looking at the demographics and the right topic.
• Any initiatives targeted to an older age demographic? CEO Product, retirement product RSI.
• Surprised to find a VP of Social Media Marketing, how’d he come to this position?  Came on as a consultant, before that headed community at Cnet, was blogging as a painter for awhile as well so he had the community experience.  The size of the team is 4 people, which is tough with 80 product groups and are looking to extend their reach with social media agencies.  Fairly small team.

I loved the last question asked!  I really was interested in that as well, and it was awesome.  Ed was a very competant and relaxed speaker, which also helped to digest the OH so sexy topic of financial blogging.  I also liked hearing about their network of bloggers – reminded me of some of the things said yesterday about the Best Buy Nation where they sort of ask their employees to work double time, but it’s employees who are voluntarily doing it.  Good stuff.