Pub. 4 2014-2015 Issue 3

12 O V E R A C E N T U R Y : B U I L D I N G B E T T E R B A N K S - H E L P I N G C O L O R A D A N S R E A L I Z E D R E A M S Contact: Tennyson W. Grebenar Stephen T. Johnson Karen L. Witt 303.623.9000 | www.LRRLaw.com Albuquerque | Casper | Colorado Springs | Denver | Las Vegas | Phoenix | Reno | SiliconValley | Tucson With a national reputation for our financial institutions practice, our goal is to assist clients in structuring and operating their institutions to meet business objectives and regulatory requirements. Our Financial Services Group can help your business run smoothly. Experience works. Experience works. Social Media in Progress Now that you’re ready to begin or reboot, what do you post? Where and how do you do it effectively? Never Forget Who You Are: Your brand should be the crux of your social media content. If your institution is known for its “Genuine Hometown Banking” slogan, reflect that within everything you do on social media. That doesn’tmean overstating the slogan or slapping your logo everywhere. It means subtly reinforcing that message when you converse on social media, and focusing on your products, services, areas of expertise and place within your community. Tailor to Your Audience: Social media should help you build and maintain relationships. To make that happen, match each demographic to the appropriate channel, keeping in mind that user preferences shift frequently. In addition, match the style of content best-suited to each demographic, and don’t try to be so trendy that you forget who you are—a financial institution. Never Slack Off: What happens when you don’t keep up your end of a conversation? The other person moves on to a more interested party. Once you put a social media plan in place, continually post new information and monitor incoming posts. If you start a discussion, keep it going by responding to those who comment. And join in on your fans’ or followers’ comments. Take the Good With the Bad: Nobody likes to hear criticism, financial institutions included. But even if you don’t have a proprietary social media presence, criticism about your institution will surface in other places, probably unbeknownst to you. Use social media to gather both the positive and nega- tive feedback firsthand, so that you can effectively control the response. Go With the Flow: The one thing that remains constant about social media is that it’s ever-changing, from the shifting popularity of platforms, to the rules for each and the way con- sumers and businesses use them. Be diligent in watching the trends, keeping track of your platforms’ terms of service and listening to your customers. There are many valuable uses for social media—engaging customers, problem resolution, marketing, and even fraud de- tection. So if at first you didn’t succeed, try again with these best practices and see just how far the conversation can take your institution. Ongoing stuff happens like this. To download CSI’s full white paper, Speak Up on Social Me- dia, go to compliance.csiweb.com. n Lee Thomas oversees the customer experience team for CSI Regulatory Compliance. He regularly presents webinars on Regulation E error disputes and social media compliance to financial institutions across the country.  Social Media – continued