Banks embrace social media monitoring and analytics

Banks and financial services firms are embracing social media in surprising ways. At least one hedge fund has been formed around the idea that Tweets can be monitored and analyzed in real time to predict market moves. Other entities have also discerned the value of monitoring millions of social media items to glean valuable information about various markets and customers.

Unsurprisingly, more banks are starting to embrace vendor services that not only allow for better management of social media campaigns but also provide valuable monitoring and analytics, according to Bank Systems & Technology.

ING Direct Canada uses Spedfast to tap the power of social networks. It helps with the marketing aspects of messaging, as well as various compliance issues. Citi uses various services, like ExactTarget’s CoTweet, Buddy Media, Radian6 and Scout Labs. SunTrust also uses CoTweet to manage social media conversations and obtain metrics for its three Twitter handles.

The key here is that this sort of information increasingly is providing strategically relevant data from the likes of FaceBook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

An indication of how hot this niche is right now comes from the purchase of Radian6 by Salesforce, the SaaS CRM powerhouse.

The whole idea of web analytics is getting more complex, that’s for sure. On one hand, it raises the costs of social media programs. But the investment may well be worth it. Increasingly, this sort of follow-on activity will be seen as part and parcel of any social media campaign.