Keeping it virtual

Absa Bank announced its first foray into the social media world in May last year. It started with Facebook.

Says Absa's Internet Channel head Carl Louw: “Facebook is the most widely used Internet application in South Africa. Yes, you get MySpace [and others], but from our network traffic access levels, it looks like Facebook is the biggest player, so we picked it to get our toes wet. It was new territory, so we started with the non-confrontational stuff. We didn't want to go into social media with a hard sell.”

Absa kicked off its Facebook presence with a competition (offering an Apple MacBook) based around its 'Put your best foot forward' campaign.

“The campaign was inspirational and the competition encouraged people to give us their inspirational views,” says Louw. “We aimed to start a conversation and start building a community on Facebook.” The competition attracted 450 entries, and the Facebook site about 1 200 fans within a month.

“Once we had that up and running, we started to introduce more stuff and started setting up in terms of product positioning and product play.”

We didn't want to go into social media with a hard sell.

Carl Louw, Internet Channel head, Absa

This, Absa kicked off with a Facebook presence for its MegaU savings account - targeted at the teen to lower-20s market.

“As part of the marketing campaign, we had Idols winner Jody Williams going around the country, performing at different venues. We recruited a scholar (Kelsey) to tag along and blog her experiences.”

Part of the show was an Idols-like competition, which Jody judged, held at each venue. The winners received PlayStation games, and blogger Kelsey covered the entire experience, including her first flight and meeting 5fm DJ Khula.

“She started getting a nice following,” says Louw. “Membership on the page started growing, and parents would sign on to see their kids' videos on the site. Again, we were building a community.”

As interest grew, Absa's MegaU product was gaining visibility, as planned.

“Next was the Absa Currie Cup rugby tournament,” says Louw. “We posted results, fixtures, player profiles and so on. Our current thing is a fundraising site, launched around Christmas. It's on Facebook and Absa.co.za, and aims to raise money for the Tsholofelo Baby Sanctuary to help them get their own property, as they have outgrown the rented space they're currently in.”

Facebook visitors can donate money directly into an Absa account. There's also a mobile 'Match-it Challenge', where people can donate and then challenge friends and family, via SMS, to match or beat their donation. An e-mail campaign involving Absa staff has also been conducted. The Sanctuary needs R1 million, and Absa wants to help it get there, the Facebook site says.

“So far, we've raised R135 000,” Louw notes, “and the campaign will run until the end of February. The aim is to start building communities, and extend the reach of the brand. That's what intrigues me about social media; it's based on the fundamental fact that if we're sitting talking around a braai, and you recommend a product or service, I'll rather listen to your recommendation than take up an offer in an advertisement that has been finely honed and crafted to attract my attention. Our approach is to go in very authentic, position it and, through word-of-mouth, it will spread, grow and gain momentum.”

As Louw notes, Facebook is a very public space, and a lot of companies are worried about managing their reputations in that type of environment.

“Yes,” he says, “people did complain and, in some cases, we reacted and in others we didn't. We've watched the community become self-regulated, so if someone comes in and says something negative, the rest of the community defends the company.

“Right up front, we recruited people to handle our online reputation management, not just on Facebook, but also to monitor and manage reputation on the blogs and Web sites that are about Absa. We see what the trend is and apply changes to the organisation where appropriate. For example, we picked up that it's not very easy to open an account online, so we're fixing that.”

Louw says Absa has purposefully stayed away from having its own blog. “We're learning, it's a new space, so we're watching and seeing what customers say and intervening in a purposeful manner. We don't try to solve every little thing. We've also been very open in our Facebook policy and have moderated comments only if they are in bad taste.”

Louw says Facebook is a primary social media initiative, and the bank intends to stay there and continue conducting campaigns on the site. “At some stage, we'll test the market for acceptance of products,” he says. “We hope we can go in and be authentic and promote products, but at this stage, we're still building trust.”

“We've started exploring [the idea of] developing an internal social media strategy around communicating with staff. When we're ready, we'll put blogs on Absa.co.za, but we don't want to go there immediately, and we'll look at applications like Flickr and Youtube in due course. As far as Youtube goes, bandwidth here is a problem, so we're doing it [social media] conservatively, knowing what the technological constraints are.”

That said, Louw has plans for Google Maps, too, next year. “We're going to look at mash-ups,” he says enthusiastically, “overlaying Google Maps with our branch and ATM locations.”

He's also investigating any number of other interesting and potentially useful social media developments. ITWeb suspects his major problem is going to be deciding which ones to do when. The social media market, needless to say, is big and getting bigger. And the rate of change, from today's hottest application to the next, is only increasing.

Absa seems to have its head firmly around where it can use applications to benefit its business and where it should fear to tread, something not every company that has ventured online can boast about.