Social Media ROI Will Come from ‘Social Selling’: Hearsay Social CTO

Banks have for the most part approached social media as a communications vehicle for customer service interactions and marketing messages. This has worked out quite well — many an online banking glitch has been explained on Twitter and branch opening events are announced on Facebook. But many have also decided they don’t want to spend a penny more on social media until they can prove a return on investment on it.

Steve Garrity, CTO of Hearsay Social, maker of a popular social media marketing and compliance platform, says he sees financial institutions moving toward “social selling.” In social sales, someone like a financial advisor or wealth manager reaches out aggressively to customers and prospects on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter whenever those people share information about themselves that could lead to the purchase of a financial product. This, Garrity believes, is the key to that coveted ROI in social media.