Blog post: We should appreciate Twitter’s decision – and encourage others to follow

Twitter’s move to ban political ads comes as the UK enters a six-week general election campaign, one that will be more influenced by social media than ever before. For various reasons – including the British November and December weather -, online will form a key element for the general election campaigns. This is a trend we have seen in UK political campaigning over the past five years, now with almost half of campaign spending used online. Online campaigning has the benefit of targeted messaging, and Twitter’s decision will make this a little more difficult.

It is the right thing to do though: in a YouGov poll from earlier this year, 80% of people said they are in strong favour of regulating political ads on social media sites. Twitter follows ByteDance’s TikTok which announced a ban on all political advertising a few weeks ago – even if a large part of the platform’s audience is too young to vote.

Blog post: Twitter & American Express introduce “pay with a tweet”: the future of e-commerce?

The announcement that Twitter now offers a fully integrated payments service on its platform via American Express doesn’t come as a real surprise. The logical extension of both companies’ existing collaboration just makes sense, and is in fact good news.

The US card mogul started integrating with major social networks a while ago, including Facebook and Twitter. Amex’ Twitter Sync already allows customers to be eligible for discount deals when they tweet special offer #hashtags. To enable that service, users have to connect their Twitter account to their Amex credit card account.

Published 12 February 2013, read the full article here: http://www.whiteboardmag.com/twitter-is-now-offering-pay-with-a-tweet-for-real-what-that-means/

Interview: "Should Banks Bother With Social Media?", PYMNTS.com

Should Banks Bother With Social Media?

An interview with me at PYMNTS.COM:

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Despite concerns about regulation and loss of control, Robert Roessler of MHP Communications argues that social media initiatives are no longer an option for FIs – but a necessity. He shared with PYMNTS.com his views on the specific benefits social media – both for revenue and product innovation – and weighs in on the key debate: should your employees have access to social networking sites at work?
Published 9 December 2011, read the full article here:https://www.pymnts.com/news/2012/should-banks-bother-with-social-media//

Blog post: "Should banks really bother with social media?"

For banks, using social media is a relatively new and challenging concept. The industry is heavily regulated, and yet there is uncertainty how regulation actually affects financial institutions’ social media efforts. The FSA guidelines for example are – to say the least – brief and vague. The suitability of social media as a method of communication has therefore been heavily debated for many years, leading to a growing void between banks and other more social media-friendly corporations. In addition, the majority of banks ban social media platforms from office desktops.
However, banks have now started to realise that they have to embrace social media to catch up with other industries – despite unclear regulation and a perceived loss of control over stories. These are some of the key findings of our recent survey amongst heads of communications and PR managers at global banks. This increasing interest is not only for banks to engage with customers. Employees feel entitled to use and access social media in their professional lives. According to research by internet security company Clearswift 26% of employees would be de-motivated by a stricter policy on social networking introduced by their employers and 14% would try to work around the rules. 3% would even consider leaving (presumably having first tried scouring LinkedIn to find a new job).
This does not have to be the route for banks. There are now a range of successful and compelling examples of how they can benefit from opening up to social media and planning engagement programmes. First Direct’s Little Black Book project is one, Wells Fargo’s use of social media to improve customer service is another. Many more banks will follow their approach, and this will be a matter of time only. And, certainly, of clearer regulation.

Appeared on MHP blog: http://www.mhpc.com/blog/should-banks-really-bother-social-media

Is social media really worth it?

Undoubtedly, social media is increasingly seen as a useful additional PR, advertising and sales channel. In 2010, for the first time in 25 years, Pepsi didn't run a Super Bowl ad in 2010, but focussed on a $20 million online Cause Marketing campaign instead. Dell has reported it generated $6.5 million of sales over Twitter, Sony Vaio's Twitter account has generated over $1 million in sales, and Blendtec's YouTube campaign led to a five-fold increase in sales.With social media activities starting to pay off for corporates (after all, they're free), they also become more attractive for investors. Paul David Hewson (better known as U2.0's Bono) and his private equity firm Elevation Partners have just acquired 5 million shares in Facebook for $120m, following the purchase of 2.5m shares for $90m in November 2009. Until now, private investors have pumped more than $830 million into Facebook which is by far outperforming Zynga (the Farmville game maker who has recently seen another funding of $147 million, bringing total funding to $360 million), Twitter ($160 million) and LinkedIn ($103 million).Looking at current market evaluations, these investments make perfect sense: Facebook is valued at $14 billion, Zynga $2.6 billion, Twitter $1.5 billion and LinkedIn $1.3 billion. Estimated advertising revenues for Facebook in 2010 are within the region of $1.1 billion to $2 billion. Twitter (so far) makes money by partnering with Google and Microsoft, and is currently testing advertising options. The value of Twitter is now estimated at more than $1.5bn (it was already valued at more than $1bn before it had generated any revenues at all).So the answer to the question seems to be a straightforward yes. Social media does make money and people do like Facebook & Co. Investors do invest and do make money too, and the market valuations are reasonable, given the platforms do the right things and do things right. The poster announcing the movie about Facebook sums up the current climate of self-confidence: you don't get to 500 million friends without making some enemies. If "some enemies" become "many" because of an overload of commercialisation or privacy concerns however, there might still be trouble ahead.

Appeared on Engine blog: http://www.theenginegroup.com/news-and-blog/?p=1684&cat=3