The Blog

This article forms part of a study on social media usage amongst FTSE 100 companies.

Each company in the FTSE 100 index was reviewed on its usage of such social media tools as RSS feeds*, blogs, online video, podcasts and social media platforms like Flickr and Facebook on its main website and on occasion, on websites of well-known subsidiary companies.

*RSS feeds are a simple way of delivering fresh versions of a website’s content to online readers automatically.

According to the Guardian.co.uk Business Glossary:
“The FTSE 100 index comprises the 100 most highly capitalised blue chip companies on the London Stock Exchange, representing approximately 81% of the UK market.”

In this article we will be looking at banking and financial group Investec (INVP.L).

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Online/Video Webcasts: Yes

Usage of Social Media Platforms: Yes

(FLickr, Facebook, YouTube, Del.icio.us, Twitter, Digg etc)

According to Yahoo Finance:

“Investec: a South African financial company taking the world by storm Since its creation in 1974 as a small banking group, Investec has continually grown equally in terms of acquisitions as that of its structure, to reach its ultimate goal of figuring amongst the big financial groups on the planet”.

My pre-evaluation expectation on how the company will fare:

A specialist banking and asset management company that sponsors rugby initiatives may be involved in use of social media to further their marketing strategy, lets take a look.

Commentary:

For a banking specialist company, they have a very nice presented slick website. Upon entering you are presented with a short video clip, from the start we can see that Investec are most likely to be more open to using multimedia within their website.

No RSS!, yes thats right Investec don’t have any RSS news feeds, which seems strange, they have lots of information which could easily be transfered to RSS feeds.

They keep the stock market share information in a really neat bar on the bottom of the website.

There is a Media Centre which opens with a nice animated video, there are links to Advertising, Sponsorship, an extensive Press Releases library, and a comprehensive Video page.

A nice touch to the Investec website is a social bookmark tool. Whether on the Media Centre or the Corporate Advisory page or any other page on the website, there is a Social bookmark tool which allows users to “Share”, the information, Investec obviously got the creative team on board here as there are numerous social websites to which the data can be shared, del.icio.us, Digg, Furl, StumbleUpon, Google Bookmarks, Newsvine, ma.gnolia and reddit. As well as the social media bookmarks, there is also an Investec Library, a tool next to the social media bookmarks tool which allows users to save sections of pages as bookmarks, making it easier to find that bit of information you were looking for, and also tracks your recent visited pages in a history box.

Investec have also thought about using social media, to broadcast information, they have numerous accounts on Twitter for their international offices, Investec UK, Investec South Africa, and their rugby sponsor. The interesting thing about their Twitter accounts is that all link to information relating to location, and they don’t just link to their website, they are linking to news feeds from external websites.

They have a Facebook page which doesn’t just contain a description from Wikipedia, but allows users of Facebook to post comments on the page, which has turned out to be of good use as users are not only posting comments relating to Investec topics but also personal topics as customers etc. There is also a page for the Investec Bank Super 14 Rugby, though this may be handled by a different team it has posts by users and by the creators of the page themselves, which shows they have interaction with the public through social media.

Its interesting to see they have their old TV advertisements on their website, some of which are posted on YouTube, along with recorded segments from the Investec Rugby games, but by other users.

Recommendations:

• RSS Feeds: – Of all the multimedia and social media platforms used by Investec, I at least expected to see some RSS feeds on the website, maybe there is a reason as to why Investec wish not to use them but as a means of sending information directly to consumers and customers, RSS Feeds are the simplest way. (Just thoguht id point out, there is no email alert subscription either)
• External link for videos: – As they already have videos on their own website if they were to have a channel on popular video broadcasting website YouTube, they could host the rugby games they sponsor, and again upload the catalogue of TV advertisements they have created, as from some comments on a commercial already uploaded on YouTube they have generated interest due to the creativity. That way they could gain more marketing across platforms.

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What do you think?

are you a customer, employee, shareholder or stakeholder of Investec? I would love to hear your thoughts on this review. What would you like to see Investec doing in terms of social media? More online video? More interaction between those affected perhaps?

Share your thoughts in the comments!

Need and help?

Do you work for Investec and want some insight into some of the ideas published here?

Or perhaps you look after marketing for Investec and would like a quick chat about putting some of those recommendations into practice. Contact us.