The Importance of Building Trust in the World of Regtech

Time to read: 2 minutes

Lauren Bowden, Fintech content lead at The Comms Crowd looks at the opportunities and challenges facing Regtech firms, and the role trust plays in ensuring future success.

When the term Regtech burst onto the scene circa 2015, it was met with mixed reactions. Some were cynical. They dismissed it as spin for existing regulatory technology vendors to benefit from Fintech’s halo effect. Others saw it as a way for new start-ups to shake things up, offering more cost-effective and agile SaaS-based solutions to post-GFC problems.

Regtech is here to stay

Seven years later, with the market projected to reach around USD 33.1 Billion by 2026, countless players are thriving in all areas, from tax to cannabis. Established vendors embrace the portmanteau with open arms and invest in more flexible, forward-looking business models. Few would now dispute that Regtech is here to stay.

That said – there are still a few hurdles these firms must jump before they can realise their full potential. According to the FCA, one of the most active regulators supporting this burgeoning market, it all comes down to trust:

“The trust element is ingrained in the complex ‘business case for RegTech’ – RegTech firms need to convince firms to allow them to work with their most sensitive data assets and systems to solve their problems.”

For regtech firms, trust is everything

Policies, procedures, and – most importantly – legal documentation go a long way to ensure sensitive data assets and systems remain safe. But before anything gets signed, Regtech firms must find ways to demonstrate their trustworthiness. Of course, trust needs to be embedded internally through a solid culture. That culture must cascade from the top down and be cultivated by HR. However, it must also be demonstrable externally, especially in a crowded market. This can be achieved with transparent marketing communications.

• External communications should be planned carefully for start-ups with many moving parts. Investing in building relationships with trade journalists marks the beginning of the journey and is always time well spent. These independent and credible sources are essential conduits for getting news out when the time is right.
• For more established vendors looking to move into the Regtech space, a solid analyst relations programme should be at the heart of the product roadmap. Honest, open, and regular dialogue with the gatekeepers of those ever-important magic quadrants, waves, or rankings should be prioritised.
• Solid content marketing and a strategic social media plan should be shared directly with prospects and customers, including blogs, e-books, infographics, and whitepapers and posted to social media platforms like LinkedIn. Content must speak authentically to the right audience, be relevant, add value, and avoid the overly promotional. With the amount of change in the regulatory landscape, the opportunities for subject matter experts to demonstrate thought leadership and guidance are plentiful.

Your voice deserves to be heard

Regtech firms can employ an arsenal of comms tools at various stages of their evolution. The art is knowing when, what, how, and to whom.

Working with communications professionals who understand the nuances of this complex, jargon-filled environment and how to get messages to hit home will ensure your voice is heard.

Social Media Channels: Do I need to invest in more than one?

Time to read: 3 minutes

A persistent question for B2B companies is whether social media channels have real value. And, if so, which channels are worth the investment. Our social media expert, Simona Cotta Ramusino, shares her views on the best approach.

The outages that have impacted WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram in recent years provided an important lesson for social media managers: make sure you are on multiple platforms. However, another reason B2B firms should nurture multiple social media channels is that they fulfil different purposes.

The way I see it, LinkedIn is about describing who you are, Twitter is about doing what you are, and Facebook is about showing who you are.

Let’s hear it for LinkedIn

LinkedIn remains one of the preferred social media channels for our B2B clients.

According to some recent stats, the platform drives 46% of social traffic to B2B sites and is considered the most credible content source. Other numbers supporting the business case for having a LinkedIn presence include:

• 4 out of 5 people on the platform “drive business decisions”
• there are 61 million “senior-level influencers”
• 33% of B2B decision makers use LinkedIn to research purchases

As a fully integrated communications agency, we see LinkedIn management as a key piece of the comms plan.

4 reasons we love LinkedIn

1. You can build your company’s profile within your sector. As your competitors will also likely be on LinkedIn, it is important to be seen and promote your latest company news, updates, and wins.
2. You can promote thought leadership and highlight your company’s experts. This helps put focus on the individuals driving the business as well as your products and services.
3. You can directly engage with peers, clients, and prospects. As with many social media platforms, LinkedIn supports two-way communication, allowing followers to comment on and share your updates. You can also gather their views through polls and posts.
4. You can have a positive impact on employees and attract new hires. Understanding a company’s culture is key when deciding whether it will be the right fit for you. It is no longer a leap of faith or a ‘grass is always greener’ scenario: LinkedIn (and Facebook) can help you understand what it is or would be like working for a certain company.

LinkedIn has also added some interesting new features over the last year to improve user experience and make engagement with followers more interesting:

• LinkedIn Polls
• LinkedIn Live
• Carousels for posts

Also, not quite as new (but still worth noting) is the option to set an event under your company profile, share it with connections, and invite connections to follow your company page.

Is there life beyond LinkedIn for B2B firms?

Yes! Twitter/X is great if you attend virtual or live events and want to share snippets from presentations or keynotes. It also allows you to follow and engage with key influencers in your space, with many analysts and journalists tweeting regularly. However, whether Twitter/X is still an environment in which you want to place your brand is a different question altogether. As content moderation has been all but removed, many brands are leaving the platform.

Facebook is probably the best platform to showcase your culture, the people that make the company a great place to be, and any CSR projects you may be engaged in. It also helps to create a strong feeling of community among employees and is a powerful means of attracting new, like-minded people.

If you are a business that relies more on visual marketing, then Instagram is the place to be. The platform is optimised for videos and images so products and services can be brought to a target audience more engagingly, building trust and increasing traffic to your website. Although Instagram is often disregarded by B2B marketers and viewed mainly as a B2C channel, there are stats and business reasons that support the value of having a presence on the platform:

“B2B companies experience their largest engagement ratios on Instagram—meaning that of the major social sites, Instagram fosters the highest number of interactions per number of followers. Not only does Instagram promote engagement through commenting, but it hosts text, photos, and videos directly on the platform so your followers don’t have to click elsewhere to see the content.”

So, if you are upping your social media game or hiring someone to do it for you, establish what you want to achieve and who you want to reach. Equipped with this knowledge, selecting the right platform or platforms becomes much easier.

Follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

Can anyone be a Social Media Manager?

Time to read: 2 minutes

Simona Cotta Ramusino shares her experience and the lessons learned after years of working as a social media manager for several FinTech clients.

Many people presume that because they can curate their own feeds, the same rules apply to managing a corporate feed. I have found that this is rarely the case.

Social media can’t stand alone

Possibly because of my PR background, but for me, social media has to mirror what the PR machine does. It has to communicate a clear profile of the company, its people and its values and use the same key messages to help present a consistent image. It must also promote key spokespeople as industry thought leaders. I am lucky to have often covered both PR and social media consultant roles. This means I can reflect on the tone and type of language used in social media posts.

I know what news a client would be interested in amplifying and what owned content is coming out that we can repurpose for socials. Big global firms may have these two roles fulfilled by more than one person. If that’s the case, ensure you are only a desk or a Skype/Zoom/Microsoft Teams message away from the PR manager so you can work in synergy.

Scheduling is the perfect mix of science and art

Most scheduling tools suggest the best times to schedule a post on different social media platforms. Most of the time, these suggestions are useful. However, don’t let the robots take over. Human intervention still makes the difference.

• Who is the audience for this piece of news?
• Where are they located?
• Which channels do they favour?
• Is it a big piece of insight that may be better to read at the end of the day?
• Or is it a video that should be watched during your lunch break?
• Is this a good blog post to read as you sit at your desk in the morning?
• Where / when is this [virtual] event taking place?

That’s at least what I think when scheduling posts. Choose the right time zone to catch your audience at the right time. Pick the right social channels to post to make sure you reach the right audience.

Talk your audience’s talk

Using the correct language is key. I mainly cover corporate social media accounts, where the audience is comprised of journalists, analysts, entrepreneurs, and senior financial services figures. For me, it is paramount that the language clients use on social channels is appropriate to reach their audience.

Here are my two key rules when writing posts:

• Eats, shoots & leaves. Avoiding grammar mistakes and typos is key, particularly on LinkedIn, because this is where your peers and your clients’ peers are.
• Appropriateness of tone. You will be surprised by how many blunders are made daily, how often a brand (or an individual) has had to backtrack because a tweet thought of as a joke was offensive – see @PureGym post comparing a hard workout to ’12 Years of Slave’.
• Apply a common sense filter. For example, when deciding whether a piece of company news is for internal or external consumption. Does the whole world need to see pictures of the company Christmas party? No. Are you issuing a release about an acquisition? If you are a listed company, you may have some time restraints on when to do this, so ensure you are aligned with your PR Communications Team.

Different platform, same rules

For me, managing corporate social media channels is like any other role in communications. You must build your experience and knowledge, learn from your peers and always follow corporate communications best practices. Maybe not as much fun as you imagined, but it’s effective.

Social media: why employee advocacy is so important

Time to read: 2 minutes

The past few months have forced us all to re-evaluate our lives at home, at work and beyond. We’re spending more time on video calls, sharing more on social media and taking greater advantage of online learning to expand our skills. So it’s no surprise that we’ve seen a big uptick in messages from clients wanting to boost their online presence and employee advocacy, not least on social media. Requests vary, but most want to elevate their corporate accounts, especially the number of followers and engagement levels on Twitter and LinkedIn. 

Our social media strategist Peter Springett shares his findings from recent audits he’s conducted.

Corporate accounts

• Profile page: most look professional, but solidly corporate. Profile photos and header images are often in line with the overall brand but show little of the ‘softer edge’ you need to stand out on social media.
• Followers: somewhere between 100 and 500 (it tends to be a little higher on LinkedIn).
• Posting frequency: about twice per day (maybe twice a week on LinkedIn).
• Tone of voice/personality: varies, but in many cases this is inconsistent or non-existent.

Personal accounts

During the audit we also look at the personal profiles of the leadership team. That’s when my jaw often hits the ground. A typical CEO has thousands of followers. Thousands! Even when their profile is incomplete. Some even lack a portrait photograph. Impressive? Yes, except that most organisations fail to take advantage of the opportunity. The skill is to turn these passive LinkedIn connections into active networks that promote the business, its offering and the people who make it possible.

With a little more time I usually find at least half-a-dozen employees (at all levels) who are active on social media in a professional capacity. They post and engage regularly, sometimes about their employer, more often about what fascinates them in their industry. Bringing these people into the mix is vital too. By the way, I’m not arguing against having stand-out corporate social media accounts. They matter enormously for the credibility of your business.

The trick is to combine both personal and corporate networks in a virtuous circle that boosts followers, engagement and inbound enquiries.

With one client we assembled and trained an employee advocacy team of 50 people, including the CEO, who were active on LinkedIn and Twitter. Some had thousands of followers, some had hundreds. But with the right training, they became enthusiastic participants, with some even reaching ‘influencer’ status in their industry. At the same time, the number of corporate account followers on Twitter grew from 800 to 7,000 and on LinkedIn from 12,000 to 75,000. The engagement uptick was equally positive. This growth was entirely organic, by the way. We didn’t pay a penny to advertise for followers or sponsor external influencers.

This doesn’t happen overnight.

You need to put a plan and a consistent resource in place to generate momentum on social media. Put it another way: there are no shortcuts, but there is a direct route to social engagement and leads, and we can show you where it lies.

If you’d like to find out more about how we can support your corporate and employee advocacy social media networks, get in touch with me: peter@commscrowd.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.

What Does a Great Blog look like?

Time to read: 3 minutes

So you’re a B2B Tech firm and your marketing team has agreed that a blog is the way forward (and indeed it is). This is the blog you need to read next. Sandra Vogel, who heads up tech content for The Crowd and ghost blogs for a range of firms, passes on her advice.

So what does a great blog look like? The answer depends on what you want to get out of a blog, so for the sake of argument let’s say you run a business that sells goods or services. There’s a lot of competition for whatever it is you do, and you need to remind people you exist. You use a range of different methods to do this – a blog on your web site is part of the mix.

To meet the requirements of your business, your blog needs to keep people coming back. It’s a tool for you to deliver useful information to existing and potential customers or clients. It’s a way of showing off your organisational personality. And it’s a way of helping people understand more about your products, new launches, upgrades, exciting ideas and plans you have for the business.

That’s a lot for a blog to do. Here are some guidelines for better blogging:

• Keep it short. In general try for no more than 600 to 700 words. People will get bored if they have to read more than that, and you might easily stray off the topic at hand.
• Keep it simple. Don’t try to cram all your wisdom into a single blog. Have a point to make, make it, expand a little, maybe give some examples. Develop your point of course, but be careful not to make things too complex.
• Do you need a call to action? I see some blogs that include a call to action every single time. As a reader I know how the blog will end – it’ll be ‘now go and look at our great product’. If that happens every time readers know a blog is a glorified advertisement. They’ll get bored, go away, and maybe never come back. Calls to action are important. But you probably don’t need one in every blog.
• Connect well with the rest of the site. Do you publish white papers, news releases, new product updates? Of course you do. Tie blogs in so that there is continuity, and so you can link to other resources where possible. Don’t leave the blog out on a limb.
• It’s a good idea to have a forward plan so that you don’t get to ‘blog day’ and sit staring at a blank screen wondering what to write. If you work with an agency – and that’s a really sensible idea – then they’ll help with this.
• Be regular. It’s a good idea to have a schedule. Perhaps you want to put a new post online every two weeks. If that’s what you want to do, stick to it. When you make your plan (above), make your schedule too. Both plan and schedule can change in the light of events, but if they’re not in place a blog is the kind of thing that an organisation can let slip if it is busy. A blog that’s not up to date is arguably worse than no blog at all.
• Look from the outside in. Visitors might not use your product or service, might not know your business at all, might just be passing by. Think about it from their point of view. This can be hard to do in-house. It’s another area where an agency can be really helpful.

There’s another guideline that’s overarching on all of the above. It’s about the writing quality. The tone, writing style, grammatical accuracy and readability of your blog speaks volumes – it’s probably more important than the content. Really. You might have the most fantastic point to make, but if the message is garbled, nobody is going to get to the bottom of the screen.

If a blog is going to work for you, you need to put energy, effort and expertise into it. Writing a blog is hard work, and it is a skill people learn and hone through years of experience. Ensuring that the blog plan and schedule are well managed and that topics are spot-on can also be tricky in a busy business. There is no shame in lacking the skills or the time that’s needed in-house. Bringing them in from outside can take your business blog to the next level.

Our Top 10 Tips for live tweeting

Time to read: 3 minutes

Sandra Vogel, editor-in-residence, issues her survival guide for live tweeting.

For context:

• 500 million tweets are sent every day
• 5,787 tweets are sent every second
• 326 million people use Twitter every month

There are some more mind-blowing stats here.

Now, of course, we’re not all exposed to every tweet. But sometimes, it is necessary to tweet on behalf of a client, and these are useful stats to bear in mind.

Here are two more:

• The half-life of a tweet is approximately 24 minutes. If people haven’t read your tweet within half an hour, then the averages suggest they are not likely to get to it. A tweet gets half of all its interactions within half an hour of posting.
•  Tweets with an image get 55% more engagement. So, the image can matter even more than the words.

Nowhere is tweeting for a client quite so important and quite as stressful as when you are live tweeting an event. A lot will be riding on your work because live-tweeted events can deliver great profiles and original and interesting content. Events can be fast and furious, and staying on top of everything is difficult.  You only have one opportunity to get things right.

10 things to do before you go live

Get the detailed insider version of the event programme

Include any special announcements or launches that the public won’t be privy to till they happen. You can pre-prepare a tweet or two with appropriate images so you are not caught on the hop.

Know exactly who is speaking on stage at every moment

Prepare a file that includes their name – spelt correctly – their job title in full, and their various social media handles. Include any nuggets of info that might be useful for a tweet. Make this file easily accessible at the event so you can flick in and out of it when you need to.

Get the lowdown on any special announcements during scheduled sessions

If awards are given, get the list of winners, nominees and runners-up – whatever will be announced live. Get photos of the people in case it’s not possible to obtain live shots at the time. Pre-write your posts so they are ready to check through and fire off as announcements are made.

Get as many graphics as you can

Are there slides from presentations that will be useful in a tweet? Get them. You don’t need to have a post prepared and ready for every image, but the images may prove useful when you are live tweeting. Especially if it is tricky getting live photos.

Prepare at least one tweet for every session you are covering

You might not use it on the day, but then again, it might just be what you need to get you out of a problem moment.

Sort out your hashtags

Several hashtags will likely be used throughout the event. Agree on the list with your client and anyone you expect to be tweeting the event live from the client side. If some hashtags must be used in particular sessions, note that beforehand in the document you use to store the speaker details. Keep it structured so it’s easy to find what you need when you need it at speed.

Set some standards for language and tone

The client may already have established words or phrases. Make sure you are aware of them, and if you think you might lose touch with them in the heat of the moment during the event, put them in your handy reference document. Agree on the use of punctuation (exclamation marks are the domain of 13-year-olds, not professionals), any acceptable or non-acceptable abbreviations, any words that are never to be used and so on.

Have an open discussion with the client about logistics

Who is tweeting, what are they tweeting, and how will you divide and conquer? When are you going to get your breaks? Sometimes, a client is looking for back-to-back live session coverage. Is that practical? Plan your schedule carefully. You can’t be in two places simultaneously, so where will you be? If two or more sessions running at the same time need to be live-tweeted, how is that going to happen? Get full sign off on the schedule.

Do you need access to a backup person?

Or even two? Maybe back at the office, who you know will be on hand to do whatever you need, from double-checking facts to doing on-the-spot research or taking over from you if there is an emergency?

Set things in place to head problems off before they happen

Preparation will help you deal with on-the-day problems either because you’ve already thought of them, so they’re not problems at all, or because the process of all that preparation has given you added confidence that you can handle anything. 

Engaging with industry analysts on social media

Courtesy of Eria, our resident analyst relations guru, we look at engaging with the industry analysts via social media channels:

Things were easy in the ‘good old days’ of analyst relations. If you wanted to know what analysts thought about technology, markets or vendors, all you had to do was read their reports. Or, occasionally, get it direct when they spoke at events.

With so many channels for information exchange now, AR teams have their work cut out tracking analyst opinions. This is even more difficult considering all the ‘disruptive’ analyst firms that have sprung up over the past five years.

Lessons learned in B2B social media management

Time to read: 2 minutes

A beginners’ guide to managing B2B social media channels.

Finding out B2B does not stand for Bunny to Bunny

Most of us in this game know how to use the main social media platforms, along with measurement tools such as Sprout and Hootsuite.

If your target audience is the average Joe and you are doing social media for B2C, you can share something witty with a reasonably attractive photo of your favourite product to generate likes and build up your followers. Growing up in the social media generation, I have seen many of my PR and marketing counterparts adopt different practices. And, of course, some are better than others. Some are simply laughable.

B2B social media management is different

We all know those who send mass messages to their families and friends on Facebook, asking them to like and follow a particular company. Sure, it could work if your company sells milkshakes that appeal to everyone. However, in B2B, your friend’s aunt, who works at Asda, isn’t really going to help you spread the word about the merits of enterprise-wide trading systems. In B2B, you must know your audience and really understand their issues.

However, I’ve learned that you have to work that bit harder with social media management in B2B. You must demonstrate an understanding of your market and its needs and, most importantly – interact with your niche.

Your objectives in B2B social media must go beyond creating a buzz for your business, and you need to work towards creating a credible platform that attracts power brokers and influencers. It is also important to remember that social media is more than a communication platform; it is part of your marketing, PR, customer services, business development and sales. Therefore, managing it in a way that reaches the right people and shares appropriate insights is vital.

Clients have to find you relevant and interesting to follow and engage with. Here are some tips I’ve picked to ensure your social media comms don’t sound like a broken record but resonate with those who affect your business’s performance.

Clear messaging

Identify and clarify what you want to say about your company and how you want to say it. This can help promote the services or the products you provide and your company’s values and mission.

A targeted audience

Know your industry’s leaders, current and potential clients, and anybody in your industry who is relevant to you, and ensure you connect with them.

Relevant talking points

Identify issues, trends and regulations that impact your audience’s business and share relevant news.

Platform consistency

Ensure your platforms are up-to-date and consistent.

Listen as well as talk

They say the best way to lead is to listen more and talk less, so tune into what your followers discuss and participate when relevant.

Subsequently, you need to put some performance measurements in place. Regularly track your progress and re-evaluate. By following the steps above, you are on the road to growing your B2B social media platforms organically and sustainably and ensuring ROI.