Presentation by: Ben Cathers, Social Media Manager, Lightspeed Financial www.bdionline.com

1. Social Media: Where Are we Headed in
2011?
Ben Cathers
Lightspeed Financial

2. Introduction to Lightspeed
• Lightspeed Financial is one of the largest providers of direct market access trading technology to
retail active traders, small to mid-sized hedge funds and institutions.
• Founded in 2006 when Lightspeed’s management team acquired E*Trade Professional Trading
LLC.
• Headquartered in New York City with offices in Houston, TX and Sacramento, CA.
• Lightspeed maintains an active presence on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter and also manages its
own online community, Lightspeed Spotlight, which provides exclusive trading webinars and
educational events for customers.
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3. Prediction: 2011 Will Be to Social Media What 1998 Was to Websites
– Not being engaged on social media will set a company back
– Customers will seek out companies that engage in social media
– The people who “didn’t get” the web back in the 90’s are the ones who do not “get” the
social web in 2011
– Why? The web has become the social web
• The social web is an evolution that resulted from the original success of the web
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4. But First, Let’s Go Back to 1996
– Bill Clinton is in office
– The FBI arrests the Unabomber
– The Chicago Bulls and Michael Jordan won the NBA championship
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5. 1996
– In 1996, if you didn’t have a website or email, you were “behind the curve”
• Customers still wanted to interact with the business but lamented times when a sales question
or customer service issue couldn’t be answered via the web or email
• Americans spent 30 minutes a month surfing the web
• Twenty million adults had access to the internet in North America
– In 2010: If you didn’t have a social media presence, you were “behind the curve”
• Customers interacted with your business via the web, email or phone, but they wanted to
interact with your business on the social web.
• The average social media user in April 2010 spent 6 hours online a month on social networking
sites. (Nielsen)
• Facebook eclipsed the 500 million member mark
• Twitter surpassed 100 million registered users
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6. Now, Let’s Go Back to 1998
- Monica Lewinsky
- Final Seinfeld episode
- Frank Sinatra died
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7. Now, Let’s Go Back to 1998
– In 1998, if you didn’t have a website or email, you were a dinosaur
• There were 164 million internet users in the United States.
• The average user spent 6.5 hours online
• Google and Paypal are founded. AOL buys Netscape for $4.2 billion
– In 2011: If you don’t have a social media presence, you are “behind the curve”
• Facebook is now 10% of all time spent online
• Facebook is expected to surpass 600 million registered users in early 2011.
• 30 billion pieces of content are shared every month on Facebook.
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8. Let's Re-Read That Again
– More than 500 million registered Facebook users, of which 250 million of them use
Facebook daily, share more than 30 billion pieces of content a month.
– These are your customers, leads and competitor’s customers sharing content about your
brand, your competitor’s brand and about your industry.
– And the entire social web / social inbox isn’t exclusive to Facebook, either.
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9. Shift in Behavior
– Your customers want to have the option to contact customer service on the web
– The value of the social inbox is increasing
– Consumer research is shifting to the social web
– The value of an email inbox is smaller than the value of the social inbox
– Customers use social tools to seek friends’/trusted advisors’ opinions on companies
– Posing a question via social media is how customers now do research
– Social media is now used to “investigate” a company and influence a buying decision
– Customers go to YouTube for product support
– Social influencers become more important in a marketing strategy
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10. In Finance, Customers Use the Social Web to do Research
Since its launch 12 months ago, the site has had more than 10,000 user-driven reviews of every
type of financial product available. In fact, 75 new reviews are being posted every day.
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11. Changing Shift of Customer Research
• “Lightspeed Trading Review” is a top ten source of
keyword traffic for Lightspeed.com.
• Comparebroker.com and Investimonials are top ten
referrers of site traffic for Lightspeed.com.
• Most search results for broker name + review do not
feature the online broker’s website in the first ten
results.
• “Online broker review” and “Online bank review” are
trending keywords on Google Insights.
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is tied to social efforts
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12. My Predictions for 2011
My Thoughts:
– Facebook solidifies its hold as the premium social marketing platform
– Twitter will continue to serve an important niche
– Reddit will become part of a social media strategy
– Blogging will become more important
– YouTube becomes even more important in a social strategy
– Social media will be adopted by companies who have been studying the market /
determining the value of social media
– Facebook credits become important in e-commerce
– Facebook apps continue to build traffic for viral, high content items
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13. What the Experts Are Saying
• Group Buying continues it growth
• Mobile platforms drive social networking’s growth
• Facebook will surpass 600 million users
• Spam filters will become a thorn in the marketer’s side
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14. Let’s Look at the Social Network
Numbers One More Time
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15. Facebook's Numbers are Still Staggering
• Facebook has more than 500 million users and 50% of them sign in every day.
• That’s 250 million people on Facebook EVERY DAY.
• And more than 200 million people use Facebook mobile.
• Average user creates 90 pieces of content a month and is connected to 80 community pages,
groups and events
• 70% of Facebook’s users are outside the US
• 700 billion minutes a month are spent on Facebook
• 10,000 websites every day integrate with Facebook (more than 2.5 million integrated already)
• 20 million application installs a day
• 250 million external Facebook engagements a month
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16. As are Twitter and YouTube's Numbers
– Twitter
• 175 million users as of October 2010
• 370,000 new registrations per day
• 300,000 registered twitter apps
– YouTube
• 2nd most popular search engine on the web
• 24 hours of video uploaded every minute
• Average person spends 15 minutes a day on YouTube
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17. How Does This Affect Social Strategies in Finance?
– Facebook and Twitter become essential for communication
– Blogs become crucial for companies’ transparency and an important tool to establish
credibility and accessibility to top leadership
– Video strategy is necessary
– Social Media Policy is now required
– Integration with compliance is required
– Social media becomes a more defined role within an organization
– Reddit needs to be understood
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18. Facebook and Twitter Become Critical for Communication
– When there are news/rumors about your business, customers are now trained to go to your
social media channels to seek out an official response
– Customers want to go through the sales process on social platforms – let them
– Customers want answers to simple questions on social platforms – answer them
– Identify social influencers – interact with them
– Customers want to give you feedback – embrace it
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19. Blogs Become Crucial for Transparency
– Blogs become talking tools
• They allow an instant reaction to news in the industry
• Builds a firm’s brand and credibility
• Connects with the users
• Syndication and valuable link backs. Assists with overall SEO strategy
– Lightspeed blog strategy
• Create interesting content that is relevant to our users and industry
• Take the viewpoint/perspective that is most likely to benefit our customers (and show it)
– Lightspeed Blog Topics
• Lightspeed blog topics include: High Frequency Trading: What’s the real story? An answer to 60
minutes. Mid-term elections and the stock market. Steinbrenner, Long-term investments and follow
your dream, Regulatory Abuse: Managing Microburst
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20. Blogs Become Crucial for Content Sharing
– Give ideas for the type of message to spread
– Syndication and back links become even more crucial
– What other content on your own corporate website would customers want to share?
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21. Video is Even More Important
- Ask yourself: how much effort and resources are you spending on SEO?
• Are you putting the same amount of effort into optimizing video
- Best practices: targeted keywords in title and tags. Make sure description mentions keywords
- Create video content that is both informative and interesting to users. Use “interesting” videos
to lead to “informative” videos on product
- Promote videos on YouTube first, other social platforms second
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22. Social Media Policy is Essential
– Needs to clearly spell out rules and policies for Social Media
• Sites that are banned/allowed
• How employees can interact on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn and so forth
• When to determine if someone is acting on behalf of the company or themselves on
social media
– Social Media Branding
• Describes content guidelines and how the brand should interact on the social web
• Works closely with marketing and PR teams
– Plans for the future
• Defines what a future social networking platform is
• “Blanket” policy covers all future social media policies on new platforms
• Regularly updated
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23. Lightspeed's Social Media Policy
Because of the ever-changing landscape of social media, Lightspeed has adopted a conservative,
easy to understand social media policy:
• You may not, under any circumstances, mention anything work-related on your personal
social media profiles. Violation of this policy can result in termination of employment.
• Only the Social Media Manager can post content on Lightspeed’s social media products.
Only the Social Media Manager can update blogs on the Lightspeed.com site.
• Every piece of content posted on Lightspeed’s social media products must be approved by
the compliance department prior to posting.
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24. Compliance Issues
• FINRA formed Social Networking Task Force in September 2009.
• FINRA issued regulatory notice 10-06. Key facts include:
• Every firm that allows associated persons to communicate through social media sites must ensure
it can retain records of those communications.
• When a firm recommends a security on a social media site, NASD Rule 2310 is triggered.
• Static company blogs constitute “advertisements” under Rule 2210.
“Firms must adopt policies and procedures reasonably designed to ensure that their associated persons who
participate in social media sites for business purposes are appropriately supervised, have the necessary training and
background to engage in such activities, and do not present undue risks to investors. Firms must have a general policy
prohibiting any associated person from engaging in business communications in a social media site that is not subject
to the firm’s supervision. Firms also must require that only those associated persons who have received appropriate
training on the firm’s policies and procedures regarding interactive electronic communications may engage in such
communications.”
Source: http://www.finra.org/web/groups/industry/@ip/@reg/@notice/documents/notices/p120779.pdf
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25. Integration with Compliance is Required
- Work with compliance team members to educate about social media
- Brainstorm ideas to streamline compliance process
• Develop a database of pre-approved social media comments
• Marketing related tweets, sales related tweets, customer service related tweets, etc., etc.
- Policy for instant comments/feedback
• All content needs to be approved, but exceptions can be made for content that isn’t specific about a
certain security
- Social media playbook/guide
• Designed to guide junior social media employees
- Appoint a general email box or compliance employees for “social media duties”
• Ensures communication is relevant and interesting
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26. Social Media Becomes More Integrated
– The rise of the Social Media Manager
• Just as a “webmaster” or “website manager” is now as common of a position as an accountant, the
role of the “social media manager” will become as ubiquitous
• Social media internal teams with junior and senior employees
• Ever changing and evolving roles and responsibilities. “No day is ever the same.”
– Social media isn’t the afterthought in the marketing process
• Social planning/representation from social teams crucial in all PR/marketing campaigns and strategy
meetings.
– There is no “social media voice” and “corporate voice”
• Everything is one voice. One style of communication.
– Social media is seamless with the website
• Ability to log in via Facebook/Twitter
• Sharing all content on a corporate website site via social media platforms
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27. And What Trends Won’t Affect Finance?
- Group buying
- Mobile social networking
- Facebook credits/games
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28. Conclusions
– Working with compliance is essential for success in social and finance.
– Blogging is no longer a once in a while activity
– SEO/Blogging/PR/Marketing all become integrated
– Social is here to stay
• “Adapt or Die!”
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29. References and Sources
– http://www.rayfowler.org/2009/03/25/5-fun-facts-about-the-internet-in-1996/
– http://blog.nielsen.com/nielsenwire/online_mobile/social-media-accounts-for-
22-percent-of-time-online/
– http://www.computerhope.com/history/19902000.htm
– http://www.facebook.com/press/info.php?statistics
– http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/02/twitter-stats/
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