Barclays is an English bank that began operations in the 17th century, it now currently operates in over 60 international countries, employs 147,500 people and has countless customers, one of which is myself! Barclays states it is a bank that “moves, lends, invests and protects money for customers and clients worldwide” I’m sure many of you have seen the famous Barclays water slide advert that focuses on making the life of the Barclays customer easier. Barclays claims to work with their customers and move with the times. So what are the implications of this in regards to social media? Mayfield (2011) stresses the rising importance of using social media, especially for large corporations, such as Barclays. Cowles and Crosby (1990) add to this the increasing relevance in interactive media in the service industry. And I would add that banking is a famously competitive industry, so every possible medium should be used to gain competitive advantage, including social media. So the justification for social media has been sculpted so what steps have Barclays taken?
Looking at the Barclays corporate website, it is a rich abundance of information and services including a host of links to all of the Barclays groups, PDF files for download, RSS feeds for Barclays news, branch locator soft wear and the opportunity to sign up for FX text alerts. The site however provides no way for the Barclays customers to interact with the brand. Schultz (2000) warns of this stating “Lack of interaction between the mass media and their audiences has always been a target for media criticism” Barclays do however interact on a more social level. I could find seven Twitter pages ranging from those aimed at wealthy customers, those who follow Barclays premier league and those interested in such schemes as Barclays cycle. In addition to this a search for “Barclays Bank” on Facebook brings up numerous pages, none of which are substantial or creating any meaningful dialogue with the consumer. One area that Barclays have found useful however is LinkIn.com, the professional network site. Reuters reported in 2010 that the bank used the site to hire laid off staff during the financial crisis. I feel however this is Barclays using the social platform for their own benefit, and not interacting as Schultz suggested.
A suggested improvement for Barclays to step socially forward could be a corporate blog on the company’s site, giving the chance for the customer to comment upon news and happenings at their bank. In addition running an official Twitter page that isn’t isolated to one category of customer but instead evokes discussion with all Barclay’s customers. A final idea is based on Livingstone’s 1999 idea that people would rather watch videos to learn than read, a Youtube channel or video updates for new services could have the same success that Steve Jobs video for Apple have received.
However, as public relations officers, we need to look further than the issues within Barclay’s current use of social media and instead look at the possible problems that could occur within social media and banking. In a digital privacy lecture Conor O’Kane used a quote from Facebook creator Mark Zukerberg telling us we live in a new paradigm where “openness is the new social norm”, replacing the old norm of privacy. An openness that could be potentially dangerous in an industry such as banking, that relies on consumer privacy. Pikkarainen et al, 2004 states the acceptance of online banking services has been rapid in many parts of the world. The speed at which people accepted online banking shocked many academics; it can be likened to the speed at which social networking spread. Jin and Cheng argued in 2005 that the acceptance of online banking was down to the “innovation of bank information technology” and that it is our job as public relations officers to handle this image. A task achieved as shown by the table below:
So it is established that the security and privacy surrounding online banking is tight, but can the same be said for social media? In one of the first academic studies of privacy in 2005 (cited by Boyd 2008) 4000 Carnegie Mellon University Facebook profiles were analysed and outlined the potential threats to privacy contained in the personal information included on the site by students, such as the potential ability to reconstruct users’ social security numbers using information often found in profiles, such as hometown and date of birth. The debate over security on social media has ragged since the first profile was made and recent we must relate this to security over banking. Recent reports following a Barclays survey are suggesting that a new style of financial terminology is changing the traditional banking terms. 43% of the Twitter users surveyed, thought that the advent of mobile phone banking is changing the way people talk about money. We must question however is it changing the way people think about money? As PR people has the reputation of money become too social and do Barclays need to implement a campaign to educate people on the risk of tweeting their bank details of social security number? A quote from Sean Gilchrist, Managing Director of Digital Banking at Barclays states:
“It appears that this new banking language is being driven by the phenomenal growth in social media forums, combined with the sheer number of smartphones now available in the market, making the more traditional forms of banking seem outdated for this group of people.”
I would argue that although Barclays should move forward and use social media as a tool to aid their customers, we must not leave behind the security elements of “traditional forms of banking” and forget that a computer can be used for hacking as well as mobile uploads. The handling of ethics, risk management and the reputation of Barclays and money as a whole are all issues that specialist tech PR firm Babel are to face as we step into the predicted more social future.
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