One Man’s Birthday Story, Social Networking Insights, and the Power of Cookies

Greetings everybody, welcome to the Wednesday, June 5th, 2019 episode of Free Webinar Wednesdays. This is Eric Cook with WSI Digital, and today is my birthday. I turned 49, and not quite to the big 5-0, but today's my birthday. And for those of you that are joining live, I appreciate you spending a little bit of time of your day with me here today. There will be an address later that I will post where you can mail your gifts. I am just kidding. But I am with WSI Digital where we work with businesses and organizations on helping them better understand and leverage the power of the internet as a strategic business tool. Hop over to poweredbywsi.com and check us out if you are interested. As you can see, I have my LinkedIn page up and I posted A video from the airport on my way home. I actually just got back to the office like literally five minutes ago, and had a rather bumpy ride, literally back from a conference that I was at in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. You can see across the right-hand side the barrage of messages coming into me on LinkedIn wishing me a happy birthday. Certainly are not stopping, and I won't even pull up Facebook and show you all of those messages. But if nothing else, social media certainly makes you feel loved in today's day and age. But I wanted to recap some stuff, whether you're a banker or not. I think there were some things that came out of the conference in South Dakota that I wanted to share. That— let me go ahead and kind of close these because my birthday messages— hopefully nobody sends me an inappropriate message while I'm actually doing a live webinar. It would be a little uncomfortable. But I want to share with you some insight on what was talked about in South Dakota at their annual convention. A good friend of mine by the name of Lee Wetherington, where you'll see a picture of him just in a little bit, kicked off the conference. I got an opportunity to have dinner with him the night before. He is by far one of my most favorite speakers of all conferences, and just with his, I guess, perspective on the world of banking, and we just have really good discussions when we're together. And so I'm gonna share with you some of the insights that he shared During his session, I'm pretty excited that as part of this event, I'm actually going to get access to recordings. And so we're going to actually have that recording available to us here internal, and I'm going to make sure the team watches his session because I thought it was a really, really good one. And then my reason for being in Sioux Falls, South Dakota was to facilitate a roundtable on social media and social strategies involving a couple of bankers, a representative from the South Dakota Bankers Association, another individual from a digital agency that works with banks like we do on helping them build kind of an online strategy, and then an attorney to kind of give us some of the legal and compliance things that you need to think about. And as an annual convention, a lot of the representatives from banks that were there were C-level executives, kind of the ones that are responsible for driving big-picture strategy. And whatnot for their, for their banks. So I want to just jump into that, and then I'll come back and give you a reason why you might be interested in checking out the video that I did from my Jeep at the parking lot of the airport in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and why I'm holding on to a couple of sugar cookies. But let's, let's jump over and we'll share a couple of pictures just to kind of give us a visual of what we're going to talk about today. Okay. So let's see here. We're gonna click on the little checkmark. That's good. So this is my buddy Lee taking the stage, and he kind of kicked things off, made sure that before he departed we got a selfie, because, you know, I do selfies and selfies are kind of fun. But his whole talk was really— if you've not heard Lee talk before, his role with a company by the name of Jack Henry, which if you're in banking, you're familiar with who Jack Henry his, but his role is kind of a metadata analyst. I think he refers to himself that way, where he basically takes what the analysts are saying about what's going on in the world of banking, and he analyzes what the analysts are saying to determine whether or not there's elements of truth or exaggeration, or kind of what the numbers are really saying. This is going to have obviously a lot of bank feel to it, but think about it if you are in a different industry, kind of what information is being conveyed in your industry. And one of the things that a lot of people are purporting in the world of banking is branching is dead. Branch offices— everybody's doing everything electronic, everybody's doing digital, nobody wants to talk to a human anymore. You got to have an online presence and a mobile app and everything, everything, everything, everything should be electronic. And what the data really is telling him when he does his research is branch numbers really aren't declining as drastically as everybody said, which means people are still walking into offices and wanting to talk to people face-to-face to get assistance. Banking is a little bit of a complicated thing at times. It's definitely a personal thing. And so the reality is that branching is not dead. Maybe there is more a scenario of the banking industry has been overbranched, and it's just a correction where some of the branches that aren't necessarily needed are closing. But in the rural communities, the smaller market areas where the community banks are, you're not seeing branches being closed just to be closed. And in fact, some of those areas are actually getting new offices. And we talked to a lot of bankers that are actually building new locations to increase. Now, the The purpose and the functionality of the branch might change. You might not have 5 teller lines because you're not taking a lot of traffic that's coming in, but you're going to have transaction pods. You're going to have private rooms for conversations and consultations. You're going to have areas where maybe a community meeting space, space where community members can come in and spend some time and come into the bank. So, so branching certainly is not dead. And as part of his discussion as it relates to digital and personal, he really reinforced the fact, and I think this is an important thing for any business, is you can't discount or discredit or ignore the importance of the human interaction. And I think with chatbots and artificial intelligence and marketing automation and all those things that I love and I talk about, The risk is you rely too much on that technology, and if you do that and don't have an equally, if not better, way of communicating with your customers and your prospects and your community as humans, you're gonna almost do more damage than good down the road. Because at some point, the digital automation AI components of your strategy will serve their purpose and might be able to answer basic questions or address things You know, when when when people aren't available, but when somebody really needs to talk to a human, if it's not easy to do that, we've all been there. We've all been frustrated, and my recent experience traveling back from South Dakota through Minneapolis, thanks to Mother Nature and storms, getting stranded, automation booked me on a different flight than. Didn't sync with what I wanted as it related to getting me home today so I could do Free Webinar Wednesdays and a few other commitments that I had. But to get in touch, or when I needed to talk to a human, there was a gate agent there that was available, even though they were obviously frustrated with the technology that automatically picked me a different flight that wasn't going to get me home until 5 o'clock tonight. connecting through Atlanta, Georgia, out of Minneapolis into Fort Wayne, which was a comfortable way for me to fly because then I would have missed everything this afternoon. The reality was, even though the Delta app thought it was doing its best to find me a suitable alternative, at the end of the day, I needed to get to a human. And that's really kind of the overreaching theme that Lee had talked about is You need to make sure that that human connection is there so that you don't get kind of, you know, I guess sidetracked or enamored with the technology and forget about the fact that your customers are really going to need to talk to people and to talk to the human that's there, because at the end of the day, those are the ones that are going to really be able to take on those complex and maybe more involved customer service needs, where you really are presented with an opportunity to either make or break your relationships. So there's a lot of other stuff that Lee talked about, but a lot of it was really banking, banking, banking focused, so I don't want to get into that. But the nuts and bolts of that was don't discredit the importance of digital, but making sure that you've got the ability to bring technology into play. I then next took the stage with a handful of really smart folks, and we spent the hour kind of sharing our thoughts. We took some questions from the audience. Just as it relates to social media, one of the things that we did kind of at the end is I asked all the panelists to provide some advice for a bank, and again, any organization that wants to maybe start a social. And for some organizations, that statement may seem kind of weird because, you know, there are still community banks out there that for whatever reason, whether it's the resources required, the fear of compliance and privacy and security, productivity, whatever the case is, have not jumped into the social media world. But even if you have, but you're interested in maybe taking that initiative to the next level and being more productive, more successful, seeing better results. Each one of the panelists gave some suggestions that I thought were worth repeating here. The first one was make sure that you've got established goals and objectives of what you want to accomplish and put those out so that you've got at least a month's worth of activities and other sorts of, you know, your content, what you want to look at, how often you're going to go in. At least a full month's worth of a plan, because if you can do one month, then you can do the next month, then you can do the next month. All too often you jump in and say, well, we're gonna post and do this and do this and do this, and then all of a sudden those initial posts are over, the newness has worn off. What do we do for the fourth week? And you might have a little bit of a struggle. So look at it in monthly cycles. Think about who the audience is that you really want to be communicating to. You know, in the world of banking, you've got a variety of different audiences that you can communicate with. You might have individuals that are looking to buy a house for the first time. You might have small businesses that need to network and connect with their commercial loan officers. You might have people that are looking to invest or finance, you know, commercial property or real estate. You might have people that are looking at retirement strategies or college education and where each of those are residing. One of the questions was, you know, the younger generation, how do you get to those folks? You may need to stretch your comfort level a little bit and explore putting some content out on Instagram or maybe even playing around with Snapchat because that's where the audience is. Don't overlook the third one, use it as an opportunity to communicate good news. And the positive things that you're doing as part of the organization, not necessarily product info. Now, product information still may be something that you're going to want to share on a case-by-case basis, but a vast majority of the content that you should be posting out to social media probably shouldn't have anything to do with— it should be about building your brand, creating the feeling. What's it like doing business with you? How do you take care of your customers? What are the things that you do? The market, because at the end of the day, a lot of products are commoditized and can be obtained elsewhere. Banking, certainly the checking account that you get at my bank is not really that much different than the bank that you get at the credit union across the street. If you're a retailer, that somebody could go out to Amazon or walmart.com and purchase. But if they get a feel for your organization and what you do and the benefits of doing business with you versus an Amazon or a Walmart.com or Target, that's going to help set the stage for people to want to do business with you versus going online. There was some discussion around making sure you understand the platform capabilities and their limitations. And one of the things that Sam talked about from one of the agencies that was represented is, you know, Facebook's organic reach is getting very, very small. It continues to get small. We've talked about that on Free Webinar Wednesdays before. So that would be a limitation. So how do you get around that? Do you leverage video? Do you spend some time learning how to do advertising? Do you explore stories or possibly build a group that you could invite people in to have more of an intimate conversation? So each of the platforms are evolving and they're having different ways of using their service and different ways of influencing reach. So that's an important part. It involves research and paying attention, maybe sitting in on webinars like this and others just to kind of learn what's going on. Not being afraid to try new platforms. You may be very comfortable in Facebook because that's where you started, but if you realize that your audience is going and spending time on Instagram or Maybe you need your staff because you're a B2B organization. You need them to get more comfortable in LinkedIn and all that are there, like the videos and the reactions and the posts and the articles. You are going to have to try new platforms and make— expand the reach of where it is that you're shedding or you're sharing your message. And then lastly, we kind of wrapped it up with the attorney on the panel, really reinforcing, at least from a bank perspective, and I've not talked to a lot of non-financial institutions really, but the reason for it I think is valid, is start with some sort of a policy or a procedure. And you don't necessarily have to have a board-approved policy that goes and gets officially approved and entered into your minutes like maybe a bank does. But having some sort of a policy within your organization— you want to get out of social media, who has the ability to post on social media, what do you do if somebody says something bad or posts a negative comment about you on social media. So the policy and those procedures of how often you're going to post, where you're going to post, what you're going to post, how you're going to measure the effectiveness of those posts— those are all really important things to have documented. In the banking world, we do that because we're required to do that by our auditors and our examiners. Outside of the world of banking, that's not a requirement. You can't get in trouble if you're a manufacturing company and you don't have a social media policy, but it is best practice because it forces you to think through some of the things that you should be aware of before it comes up. Somebody posts something bad to your page, how do you react to that? Do you delete it? Do you hide it? Do you respond to it? What if somebody drops an F-bomb and they start ranting with profanity? Or what if somebody posts confidential information? Do you have the ability to delete that information without making the other person upset? How do you do it in a way that's going to make sure that you're protected? One of the things that I suggested Let's say somebody goes to your Facebook page and they're upset at you and they drop a bunch of F-bombs. Well, one of the things you probably would want to have in place before that is some sort of a community guidelines statement that just sets the rules for, hey, this channel is a place for feedback, both positive and negative. We appreciate the thoughts and views of all of our visitors and followers. However, profanity, confidential information, sensitive data, you know, will not be tolerated and could be removed at the discretion of the moderators. So that you have something to fall back on so that if somebody does go to your page and they drop a bunch of F-bombs and profane language, you can post a note to say, well, we appreciate your feedback, we're going to hide this because it violates our terms and conditions. We can't have profanity on our, on our page, but We do take your criticism seriously, and we will be in touch. I also suggest that you do a screenshot of that before you hide it, because people that post things that typically are a little bit on the emotional side will screenshot it themselves and almost wait to see, oh, I bet they delete that. And when they delete that, I'm going to really come unglued, because now they're just trying to hide the information that I'm posting, and they're restricting my freedom of speech, or whatever the case is. So it's a good idea to also get a screenshot of that yourself. But if it's not something that's in your community guidelines, then definitely responding. Who has the ability to respond? So those are the things that should be thought out ahead of time to make sure that if something bad does happen, you're not scurrying around like cockroaches with a light coming on to figure out what's going on. And you have something in place. Again, this is something that the banking industry has been ingrained to understand. Because we have to have these policies in place in case something bad or adverse happens, and we need to be able to understand how to actually shift through that. So those were kind of some of the observations. Hopefully those will help you in your organization as you think about how to leverage maybe social media and/or take it maybe to the next level. The last thing that I wanted to talk about, kind of wrapping up here with the whole goal of still keeping these at the 30-minute range is I mentioned Mother Nature and travel, and then— and I do a lot of traveling, I do a lot of speaking at conferences, and I had the joy, I will say, of spending the night on the floor. That's my, that's my bedding. That's where I woke up this morning for my birthday. I was on the floor. On a mat in the Minneapolis airport using my laptop bag as a pillow. So Mother Nature brought storms into Minneapolis, caused flight delays, and by the time I finally made it to Minneapolis, the flight crew had exceeded their allowable hours of operation and they were grounded. And it was about 10:30 at night. Um, Delta had made the effort to automatically put me on a different flight that still I would be traveling right now through its technology. But I was able to get on an earlier flight and made it back to Fort Wayne, which was really nice. I ended up— and one of the things that is really cool about flying into Fort Wayne is when you land and And as you're exiting the secured boarding area, you're greeted by a hospitality representative if you land during normal business hours. And they're typically, I would say, retirees. And they have a little basket and they have little sugar cookies and they say, welcome home, and they give you a little cookie and just kind of put you at ease. And they don't know what the story is behind all of the people that are traveling. And they don't know if you've come to Fort Wayne because, you know, maybe you've got a family member that's graduating, or you've had a long business travel and you slept on the floor in Minneapolis, or you're coming for business. But they're there to greet you, to say hi, and to give you a little cookie and to try to put a smile on your face. Before you just continue on with your day. And so I knew as I was flying that I was at least going to get to see one of these smiling faces and get myself a cookie. And when I had the chance to get my cookie, I asked if I could take a picture, and she said, well, what are you— what are you going to do with it? And I said, well, I might put it on social media. I might talk about it later today. I don't really know, but I'm just looking forward to this cookie because I had to sleep on the floor in Minneapolis, and it's been a really long travel for me. And, and she said with very kind eyes and total sincerity, you poor thing. And I said, yeah, to make matters worse, today's my birthday. And without hesitation, she reached into a little basket and said, I'm going to give you another cookie for your birthday. I hope your day gets better. Now, I posted on LinkedIn and I've been talking about video in past episodes of Free Webinar Wednesdays. I mentioned I went to Social Media Marketing World. Video was a big, big thing there, you know, telling your story. I think I've talked about Goldie Chan and her 600+ days of straight video posting to LinkedIn. And even though I know that that's something that I should do, that was back in March. I haven't taken my own advice and done a video on LinkedIn, but today was the day that that was going to change because the Fort Wayne International Airport and this kind individual that gave me 2 cookies for my birthday got me thinking about what businesses could or should be doing to kind of wow their customers, to create differentiation, to get people to talk about you. It's a cookie. It probably cost them 10 cents, and it's a tasty cookie. I'm not going to say that it's not a good cookie because it is a really good cookie, but it's just a cookie. But it got somebody like me to share a post out on LinkedIn. So now I'm talking about the airport. I'm talking about giving people some ideas of, you know, what's your cookie? Basically, what are you going to do that would get people To talk about you, to wow them, to make their day. I know at the bank there would be little things that we would do. We'd give dog bones out. We would, you know, walk people back to their car. In bad weather, I'd grab an umbrella and some of our elderly customers, I'd walk them back to their car. Or if it was snowing, make sure they got back okay. Just little things like that that you don't think really mean a whole lot, but But on the other side, you may have somebody that just had to sleep on the floor in the airport that's bummed out that they didn't get to wake up with their family on their birthday. And, you know, it's not going to make all that go away, but it's still going to put a smile on their face and at least make that part of the day a little bit better. So if you're interested or so inclined, would love for you to check out the post that I put out on LinkedIn. I'm probably going to share it out onto Facebook, and I know it went to Twitter as well because I do cross-posting from LinkedIn to Twitter. But if you go out to linkedin.com/in/ericcookmba, you should be able to find that post. And it's just a little over 2 minutes long, but it just kind of shares a thought. And I thought this would be a good way to kind of start my video effort. I don't know if I'm going to do 600+ daily videos because I don't think that's in the cards. But this was my first official video out to LinkedIn sharing a thought or a story. I was fully parked during the entire time I was doing this, so I was not driving and videotaping. But this was, you know, something that has sparked some thoughts and some conversation. I've got some nice comments. And maybe just something to think about as you're going through the rest of your week and You pull a team meeting together, kind of say, hey, what, what do we have like Fort Wayne? What's our cookie? What's our little secret thing that we can do that'll make our customers kind of know that we appreciate them and maybe get them talking about us that nobody else is doing? Because I've flown into a lot of airports over the years, and to this day, the Fort Wayne airport is the only one that I've ever flown into that has individuals They're greeting you with cookies and smiles, and are willing to take a selfie and just kind of walk back home, which I think is pretty cool. So with that, we're going to go ahead and wrap up today's show. I appreciate you joining me today. If you join live, today's show and other shows are recorded and will be made available over at freewebinarwednesdays.com. You want to hop back over to LinkedIn, check out that post if there's. companies that you have worked with that have gone above and beyond, or maybe you do something within your own organization that is pretty cool that would, you know, maybe be worth mentioning, feel free to brag it up and let folks know. I'd love to, I'd love to hear about it. So with that, I will wrap the show. Thanks for joining me. Make it an awesome week, and we'll look forward to seeing you down the road at freewebinarwednesdays.com. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.