Who is or what is GTBank’s fear?
Author: yinkaolaito
Yinka Olaito is happy,excited and passionate Brand Communication, Social Media expert, Trainer and speaker. Yinka Olaito helps brands(Profits and Non-profits)with effective communication and positioning for premium service delivery and returns.Yinka Olaito also has special interest in Development Communication and has consulted for noted UN Agencies. Yinka Olaito is the CCO of Michael Sage consulting and African Child Right Inc.Lagos Nigeria
At a recent World social media mob flash held in Lagos Nigeria where we have the gathering of social media enthusiasts, professionals and those who intend to use social media, the audience was generally talking about best use of social media in Nigeria by corporate organizations in our environment.
People suggested GTBank Plc should be rated as one the best uses of online community in Nigeria. As moderators of the session, we asked that audience should give reasons for their suggestions and can we all looked at the brand’s online initiative, presence and activities together in the face of best practise internationally. Given the fact that Community is supposed to be an agglomeration of people with common interest, who have common language and where everyone has a say. Also, the community members of today do not want organization to talk at them but to talk with them. They desire dialogue, conversation and feedbacks. Strong community does not rest solely on the game of number; it is the extent, depth of interaction and engagement
This view has been supported by Lani Rosales when he wrote ‘there is no value in ‘friend collecting/likes’ but there is a massive value in building your network…If the end goal is to put money(through the relationship you are building) in your pocket(or build relationship as the case may be), stop friend collect, build network’. Brand community is not about the community creator; it is all about engaged network that speaks the truth and promotes the brand.
There is no online community that will become celebrated when it is only the brand that is speaking and does not allow feedback. No solid relationship has been built on Monologue. When a brand does not give room for feedback, it will lose enough credibility it is supposed to get. To gain word of mouth, clients or community member must be allowed to ask question, express their opinions. As we know word of mouth is a cultural accelerator but the brand must set up the architecture to engage audience.
To create a worldwide rave about a brand online in which people help to tell your story, you must be ready to lose control. We are in the age of information democratization and not monologue or broadcasting. If there are virtual strings attached (feedbacks on the ‘wall’ of GTBank Facebook page is deactivated), people will not engage you or choose to speak to you or for you about your offerings.
When a brand sets up online engagement mechanism with a mission to listen, get opinion of the community, it will always lead to a higher social intelligence and better leadership for the brand. Juliet Powell says’ while traditional leadership understanding of leadership structures stressed the need for power and stern guidance (as we see GTBank seems to be doing with its community now) new structure of leadership (which GTBank community is aiming to achieve) is based on empathy, two-way communication…to be an effective leader, you need a team (community members/stakeholders) that supports you and is willing to work hard not only on your behalf, but on their own as well for you’.
Given the above, how many of the close to sixty thousand ‘friends’ of GTBank on its Facebook page are singing, propagating GTBank Orange rules yet?. GTBank now has easy access to gather enough feedback it will spend money on yet it has muffed the voices of its community by removing facility/applications that will make it get feedback through the setting it is operating now. In a Nielsen’s report on ‘Why Banks should listen in Social media’, it clearly states that when banks listen, it gives the feeling of stability, solidity, partnership, empathy and understanding.
For its Twitter page, it is well designed with care and we must give kudos for this. But what is the value of a beautiful house whose family members has to listen to the father’s instruction only, while feedbacks are not given attention as fast as the information the father has to push out. We have monitored/followed conversation on that page and we discovered questions are not answered immediately. Speed is important in today’s fast speed online world. A customer that is not answered on time may post a comment that will catch fire within few hours. The bloggers’s post that started ‘DellHell’ got 760 comments among many examples we can cite.
My conclusion on this session is that strong community requires honesty, credibility, openness, willingness to accept feedback irrespective of what they have to say. There is no fear in love (which brand community wants to promote). When dialogue is allowed, it will give the brand the true performance rating of its services to the cherished community. It gives brands opportunity to know how to correct wrong impression, information at the disposal of the clients, community members etc. A great community is not a place to ‘self-promote’, it is an avenue for dialogue, support, engagement, understanding and sharing that will allow members to defend one another. I just hope someone is listening. In all, we ended the analysis on the fact that we should commend the GTBank team for pioneering an online brand community. Our plea is that what is worth doing is worth doing well.
Hey admin, very informative blog post! Pleasee continue this awesome work..
great Pece yinka. Whilst i must sincerely agree with most of your postulations, i also share some ‘fears’ that the GTBank team might be facing. i this country we reside, it is not uncommon to see negative marketing againgst other corporation in the same/across industries due to lack of proper regulations. As a financial institution,i do not think total democratization is best for them – what they have done, which is integrating mail+twitter+facebook to offer enhanced security of their customer’s information is ‘okay’ but might not be just ‘GREAT’.
Though i, and a lot of others have had our issues with the Bank solved that way, i still believe the Bank’s strategists should look for other ways to enhance the interactivity and depth of their socmed profiles.
democracy without a form of censure = Anarchy
but interactivity + Security = richer customer experience
Hi Yinka. Many thanks for ALL your hardwork and insightful analysis. Congratulations on a wonderful event. We do hope we’ll be invited to the next one. Allow me offer some insights into our New Media Strategy at Guaranty Trust Bank. Post-consolidation, Guaranty Trust Bank made a strategic decision to actively engage in retail banking whilst focusing on new, innovative, efficient and accessible technologies to boost that drive. A major re-branding exercise followed in June 2005, which saw the Bank emerge with cutting edge service offerings, aggressive expansion strategies, advertising policies and our now trademark vibrant orange. All of these played a major role in our decision to strategically deploy a presence across key New Media platforms. We realize that the online media has become one of the most relevant and important medium of communications in the 21st century. We therefore felt it was time to deploy a consolidated online communications strategy to compliment the use of current traditional communications and marketing methods. We believe that an articulated online communications strategy will enable the Bank monitor groups and community chatter on GTBank and its subsidiaries, as well as harness the global platform and the progressive Brand differentiation that New Media provides. We also believe that it will also enable us communicate with a more global audience and offer targeted communications initiatives to select customer groups for product development as well as service enhancement. We sincerely understand your concern & reiterate that these profiles are deployed to help us build and nuture relationships online as well as engage our customers and non customers, on platforms they were comfortable with, whilst receiving real-time feedback on what they had to say about the Brand, our products and services. We want to assure you that we are re-evaluating our New Media Strategy in line with new realities. Thanks again for the kind words…
@Cicero,
I love to welcome you to our community, your contribution is valid and encouraging. While we acknowledged this, we want to warn that you should avoid impersonation as we realized that you are using the same ISP of GTBank’s community. Since you are neither part of the team(given the impression you created that you are GTbank’s client), we do think you should not try to destroy the great brand GTBank is building.
I am sure GTBank will not need a hacker to prooof a point. We have alerted the team to monitor people like you.
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