Posted: 28th May 2013
With journalists, government departments, consumer groups and even regulators active on Twitter, are retail financial services senior managers aware of the wealth of information on this platform for them?
Relevance to financial services
Twitter offers more than just the latest Justin Bieber chatter. Financial services experts are engaging in free content sharing online on a daily basis. This trend means you can benefit from the latest news, free white papers and fresh points of view on financial services themes. Could this be an interesting source of information in a time of constantly changing regulation, rising standards and the 24 hour news buzz?
Time specific content
Twitter is most effective when viewing time specific events. If a relevant judicial review decision is being announced, you may find someone is live tweeting from the courtroom. Or a Treasury Select Committee meeting might be of particular relevance to you; easily accessible on a mobile, you never know who will be tweeting live. Search for relevant events and watch the results as they happen. That is really Twitter at its best.
Not another login and password…
You do not have to sign up for an account in order to read and use the content on Twitter. Simply visit www.twitter.com, find the search bar, type in “compliance” or “financial services” or whatever topic is of interest to you. That will let you see whether someone in the world is broadcasting about your topics of interest. You might catch real time debates between experts, find links to free content and see relevant financial services stories you might have otherwise missed. And that is all without setting up an account.
Going pro
If you find the right content, news and information, why not sign up with your email address? Search for your favourite topics and “follow” only those respected sources that give you useful information. You can mix up your personal and work interests: FCA regulation, consumer group messages, CMC messages, football results, UK politics, gardening and lifestyle news. Your feed will only give you information you want. If it gets too much, simply delete your account.
Introductory Twitter glossary
Twitter: online social networking service and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read tweets
Tweet: text-based message of up to 140 characters
Follow: click on the “follow” button on a given Twitter user, e.g. BBC news, to easily view all their tweets
Hashtag: “#” hashtags provide a means of grouping short messages such as tweets
Trending: many Twitter users writing about the same topic
