Nearly two billion people use it everyday. It has helped overthrow governments and highlight atrocity, and also shared millions of funny animal video across the world. Social media could be the most important business tool out there. Leasing Life’s very own Twitterer, @Grant_Collinson, spoke to leasing firms and a social tech guru about how best to navigate the Twittersphere and generate business online.

More than 600 million people generate around 5000 tweets-per-second, nearly one-sixth of the globe are registered as Facebook users, and just under 200 million professionals connect with peers on LinkedIn.

With those kinds of numbers, social media is a sure-fire way of speaking directly to millions of potential customers and many lessors, brokers and banks are doing just that. But how does it differ from traditional marketing and does it actually work?

"We are at the beginning of social media and what it will do. There are parallels to when the internet first appeared," says Gareth Jones (@garelaos), head of product strategy at HR consultancy The Chemistry Group and social media geek.

Jones says customer engagement through social media is about five years ahead of the curve compared to other commercial functions, such as recruitment or internal communication, in terms of strategy but, he adds, companies haven’t got it quite right yet.
"There is huge potential to use social media to engage with customers," he says.

Social media is used as catch-all term for a host of online platforms where people can interact with each other including weblogs, or blogs, forums, microblogs such as Twitter, and social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

As well as being interactive, the main difference between social media and traditional media, newspapers and television, for example, is in social media the content is all user-generated and that, says Jones, is why marketing through social media is so different.

"Companies haven’t got it right yet – marketers have jumped on social media as an ordinary marketing channel but it is not a channel."

"In 10 years time marketing will look back embarrassed and realise their biggest mistake was to think social media was a channel," says Jones. "It is an access point but social media is a different dimension."

Before social media, customer engagement on the internet was about driving customers to a company’s website and communicating the brand message, all in one direction, says Jones.

"It used to be about getting the customer to come to your place but social is about going to the customer’s place [any personal hosting space such as a Facebook account, blog or website] and that is fundamentally different because you’ve got to behave completely differently."

Through social media, individuals are what Jones terms "über-connected" with the average LinkedIn user directly connected with around 150 people, a figure which doubles for Facebook users, many of which will be "weak connections" – people we hardly know but are connected to anyway.

"The irony is despite how much the technology allows us to connect the level of trust we build between us on social networks is substantial given how little time is spend face-to-face," says Jones.

Which means, he adds, people on social media respond to transparency and authenticity from companies.

What many companies have done with their social media accounts is fold them into their regular marketing mix, says Jones, when what they should be doing is joining in the conversation and building a bond of trust.

"A finance company should look to social media as an opportunity to have a conversation about financial challenges, what keeps their customers awake at night, how to help them – not anything to do with its product per se."

"Social media creates trust between us as individuals and if you can get in as part of the conversation and add value to the subject, or even off-subject stuff, you create trust."

Jones advocates blogging about subjects relevant to a company’s customer base and engaging with an audience rather than using social media as platform for the hard-sell.

"There is an opportunity for companies to use the social platform to have a conversation but they need to stop marketing down it and start talking," says Jones.

The social leasing network
The majority of leasing firms, from multinational bank-owned networks to regional introducers, have some level of social media presence and are endeavouring to turn the conversation on to leasing matters.

When Leasing Life put out a request for comment on the subject, appropriately enough, over Twitter, it was perhaps inevitable the first companies to reply were in the technology sector.

France-headquartered IT funder Econocom, through its UK account @Econocom_UK, told Leasing Life it is utilising social media through Facebook, LinkedIn and predominantly Twitter to "share about technology, and inform about Econocom special offers and projects."

IT leasing and management company 3 Step IT (@3StepIT) said: "Different social media channels provide us with new, modern ways to get involved in industry discussions and also convey our own message."

Shawbrook Bank, emerging UK bank and parent of Singers Asset Finance, @ShawbrookBank, in contact through good old-fashioned email, elaborated and said: "We use Twitter and LinkedIn to stay in touch and engage with potential new clients, brokers and other stakeholders such as business organisations and people within government.

"It’s a great way of sharing updates on Shawbrook and giving people a bit more of a sense of who we are as a bank, and what we think about key issues affecting the sector. But it’s not all serious – we also like a bit of light-hearted tweeting from time to time."

This light-hearted approach is one which Jones supports and says it is often "small, agile, and funky" young companies which achieve the correct tone and tap in to the "richer" forms of engagement which social media offers.

Joking with people on Twitter is one thing but what companies really want is to turn potential customers into genuine business leads.
@Econocom_UK told Leasing Life it signed business which was originated through Twitter by advertising a deal and providing contact details then running through the normal sales cycle.

Johanna Kolehmainen, communications manager at 3 Step IT, said the company does hope to generate business leads eventually but is currently concentrating on participating in relevant discussions.

Shawbrook’s marketing manager, Yasmin Butt, said the bank’s strategy is similar; focussed on driving traffic to Shawbrook’s website and building relationships with potential customers through discussion of relevant issues by frequently linking to blog posts and news stories affecting SME businesses.

Butt also added an active presence on social media can help the bank keep abreast of competitors and how public opinion stands.

Jones also rates social media as a tool for taking a sounding of sentiment.

"[Social media] is unmanaged, unfettered conversation and opinion. It is a bit like the world’s biggest focus group that’s not coerced or led in any way.

"We’ve not really had the opportunity to monitor conversation and draw sentiment from it before and that is incredibly powerful," he says.

All three brands fit in to Jones’ model of a social media strategy going in the right directions as he emphasises businesses which take part in conversation and become a trusted part of it will end up generating business, "almost by default," he says.

A dangerous game
Anyone with an eye on the news and even a passing interest in brand management will realise social media is far from a free ticket to more business and a great reputation – PR disasters abound in the ultra-connected online world and going "viral" in social media always has the potential to backfire.

All three leasing firms acknowledge one danger of social media is the temptation to try for the hard sell and end up alienating the potential audience.

3 Step IT’s Kolehmainen accepts there is a danger in a company’s online message and brand can be hi-jacked.
"It could get out of our hands," she said, "There are quite a lot of scary examples from the consumer business industry."

Kolehmainen gives the example of company’s online advertising being mimicked and lampooned, sometimes playfully but equally sometimes with a serious agenda, and these ironic versions often get spread more widely than the original.

One recent example involved environmental group Greenpeace hi-jacking a campaign by oil company Shell and inviting the public to edit their own tongue-in-cheek adverts to highlight what the group believed to be potential destruction of the Arctic ecosystem as a result of Shell’s plans to start deep sea drilling in the region.

"In social media," says Kolehmainen, "you need to be prepared for the fact that anyone can express their opinions, even if they are completely against you or have the facts wrong."

Being prepared for that is something Jones says a lot of big businesses struggle with to detriment of their social media presence.
"Bigger businesses can struggle with control, struggle with the message, and so they have a very structured way of marketing and it is usually a one-way message," he says.

Jones dismisses companies’ fears over potentially losing control of their marketing message as a failure to adapt.

He says companies don’t like that they cannot control the message and says it feels alien for anything to go out which mentions the company without first going through the press office or marketing.

Jones links social media to the consumerisation of technology where companies don’t have total control over employees’ technology anymore.

"Someone else is driving now," he says. "If a company wants to, and it is stupid enough, it can stand on front of the vehicle and say ‘stop’ but that will only result it them getting run over. People respond to transparency and authenticity."

The future
What people also respond to, says Jones, is people and he anticipates successful social media for companies will move away from branded, managed marketing.

The industry firms Leasing Life spoke to all have a social media policy and guidelines for staff and are happy for employees to have their own accounts.

"A corporate twitter account is a predictable first response to the medium but I think that will change," Jones says.
"The whole value of social media is we identify with each other as individuals and we respond to transparency and I think there will be a trend for individuals interacting without the company badge," he says.

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