11:15 — Jim Lovelady introduces CME Group‘s Allan Schoenberg.
11:16 — Allan: We’ve been around for many years, so we’re an example of how old dogs can learn new tricks.
11:17 — Allan shares a brief overview of how the CME Group relates to the Chicago Board of Trade and the NYMEX. When you talk about all the things people trade, it’s all traded at CME Group, explains Allan.
11:17 — Allan shares how his benchmark for when they started social media was “Groundswell” by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff.
11:18 — Allan says that their core strategy is to build brand enthusiasm. It’s not about immediately driving transactions, says Allan, it’s about evangelism and loyalty.
11:19 — CME Group’s key objectives: Brand enthusiasm, customer service, issues management, and building advocacy.
11:20 — Allan shares the example of how through Twitter, he’s been able to connect with some of CME Group’s biggest fans. Allan says Twitter is really about relationships.
11:21 — Allan describes how they worked with @StockTwits because it was a “no brainer” — they were talking directly to CME Group’s customers. This was about “going where your people are,” explains Allan.
11:22 — Allan: Another thing that’s really worked well for us is creating content — unique content that does not exist out there. I’ve tried to create sentiment surveys — and failed miserably. Nobody that’s trading wants to take a survey. So, what I’ve done is just interview people.
11:24 — Allan uses Twitter to conduct interviews and organizes the tweets with a special hashtag — and lots of people jump in.
11:26 — Allan talks talks about the importance of having real conversations with people on Twitter, not just retweeting existing content or pushing an RSS stream.
11:28 — Allan talks about how they use Hootsuite to organize and manage a bunch of content important to CME Group.
11:28 — Allan: For me, it’s all about the audience.
11:29 — Allan describes their core goals, including sharing information and ideas, maintaining reputation, demonstrate thought leadership, inform the market about their products and services, promoting special events, and monitoring the conversations.
11:30 — Allan talks about tracking, and says that while he doesn’t have a magic bullet for tracking, all activities relate to a metric that they report back.
11:32 — Allan says that while he doesn’t put too much stock in click-throughs, it does help to show him what content people like and he tries to share more content like that.
11:34 — Allan encourages everyone to just try new things, saying you never really know what’s going to work.
11:34 — Allan: Find your audience. They’re out there, you just have to go find them.
Q&A
Q: Do you repeat your tweets? How many times is it OK to mention it?
A: I don’t do it very often. Every once in a while I do it. If I tweet something out and a lot of people retweet it or talk about it, I’ll set it up to retweet it later at 1 AM or 2 AM so it can reach our audiences overseas. The other thing is, I’ve had people send me a DM and thank me for a great blog post, and I’ll just say thanks and ask if they mind retweeting it for me.
Q: How do you balance your day with monitoring and listening in this space and managing everything else you have to do?
A: In all honesty, I have a great team. They help with everything, including traditional media. Allan also mentions they’re having a lot of success through LinkedIn — which is another platform that uses internal resources. Allan says there are lots of tools that help, but there are no easier answers.
Q: Are you using Twitter and Facebook instead of traditional media relations at all?
A: I’d say we’re balancing both. We’re still use traditional media a lot, and we’re working to see how we can integrate this strategy with new tools.
Q: Where does email fit in to your strategy?
A: We have a number of email newsletters that the products group put out, and we have an influencers list to send content whenever there is an important issue. Again, it fits into the overall marketing integration — but, personally, my team really is not using email.
Q: Have you done an ROI analysis?
A: For us it’s not about making money. I’m not Dell, I’m not going to go out and sell $6 million worth of things. I did start a store and promote it on Twitter — and we sold two T-shirts. So, I guess I made $20 for Twitter, which is more than most of the tools I use cost me.
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