Chris Carfi of Social Customer fame is liveblogging the Blogher conference session, Wells Fargo Blogging Case Study:
Communicating via the medium took a lot of convincing with both compliance and legal. Compliance reviews EVERY post that gets put up. (Tip: In regulated industries, build in a couple of extra days for review.) Comments are allowed; although they are moderated, comments do not need to go through compliance.
Here’s a gateway page to the three blogs and here’s a recent excerpt from their Student LoanDown blog:
Some even speculate that the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) is intimidating enough to keep low-income college students from applying for financial aid in the first place—which is one possible explanation for the lower college attendance rates among low-income students.
Researchers are testing that theory—they’ve set up an experiment to address the FAFSA “fear factor” and gauge whether making the financial aid application process easier will improve college attendance rates among low-income students.
I do some banking at Wells Fargo but probably won’t be subscribing to any of their blogs in the near future. Natural disaster history according to my bank, student loans, and an “online virtual world created by Wells Fargo for young adults” aren’t really for me. Still it’s encouraging to see a gigantic company incorporate some decent blogs into its public relations effort.
Also, here’s the statsaholic lowdown on that gateway page for wellsfargo.com.
March 23, 2007 at 3:36 am
Hi Pete–Thanks for your candor! I realize that these particular niches we’re addressing aren’t relevant for everyone. But since you’re a Wells Fargo banking customer and I’m a Wells Fargo blogger, I’m curious: what topics would interest you?
March 23, 2007 at 5:55 am
Hi Staci, thanks for stopping by.
Since there are already a lot of blogs out there that provide periodic financial advice for mere mortals in their 20s and 30s (iwillteachyoutoberich.com, pfadvice.com, etc.), how about leveraging your unique advantage as a large retail and commerical bank to offer a group of amenable customers some free, detailed financial advice in exchange for anonymously sharing the details of their finances on the Web?
I would enthusiastically subscribe to a Wells Fargo blog that provided expert commentary on anonymized (i.e., not just hypothetical) customer financial profiles, be they personal or small business, explaining how this person or business could significantly improve their financial position through adjusting how they utilize their current Wells Fargo product setup, through adding something to it, or even through exploring avenues outside Wells Fargo.
consumerismcommentary.com is pretty cool, someone going by “Flexo” discusses their finances in detail on this blog “to regularly publish…account balances and spending information so I could publicly track them over time and perhaps gain support from readers”.
Not quite what I’m suggesting, but close. Everybody’s financial position is unique in one way or another but in terms of demographics we also have a lot in common and by sharing some of your internal expertise with us, you’d be doing your customers a great service and showing potential customers that you can and will take their individual financial health seriously!
March 29, 2007 at 10:16 pm
Pete, that’s a really interesting idea. Almost a “Choose Your Own Adventure” approach to personal finance–if I were to go down XX path, XX potentially could happen, etc. Now that I’m back in the office, I’ve passed your thoughts along to the rest of the Social Media team here at Wells Fargo, so you may be hearing from them soon!
March 30, 2007 at 7:48 pm
[...] a sensing mechanism to capture and monitor direct and indirect customer feedback. Check out this post and the comments by Pete and the Social Media team at Well Fargo. It is pretty cool to see this [...]
April 2, 2007 at 6:48 pm
One of my favorite Social Media apps to watch right now is Wesabe, which uses financial data from their network of users to better understand where they fit (eg, my cable bill is X, but the average cable bill for people in my neighborhood is Y…why is that?). But more to the point of your question, we have been thinking about an “ask the expert” permanent sidebar feature on our blogs to open things up in the way you suggest. I appreciate your perspective on this.
April 3, 2007 at 3:12 am
Ed, Wesabe is an intriguing site. The CEO makes himself personally available over the phone for four hours a day — maybe you or Kovacevich should consider doing something like that.
As for a financial ask the expert sidebar, it’s a nice idea but in my humble opinion not particularly innovative (google ‘”ask the expert” finances’ to find plenty of existing resources). Rather than add more blood to that red ocean, why not reach beyond existing demand and do something “frame-changing”?
Just a thought! Thanks for taking the time to comment.