In her BlogWell Chicago presentation, U.S. Bank's Social Media Director, Karen Gutierrez, explains how they created a social media strategy and playbooks to carry it out. She goes into detail about the steps they took for creating a plan that would lead to 65-page playbooks that the team uses to engage in social on a daily basis.

1. SocialMedia.org
Video Case Studies
SocialMedia.org
This video is from
Case Studies
BlogWell
San Francisco
June 20, 2011
socialmedia.org/blogwell
This presentation is from
BlogWell
Chicago
June 19, 2013
socialmedia.org/blogwell
Karen Gutierrez
Social Media Strategy:
Many Marketers, One Vision

2. Many marketers.
One vision.
U.S. Bank case study:
Social media strategy
Karen Gutiérrez
@curiousbankerSocial media director, U.S.
BankJune 19, 2013
*

3. About
Fifth-largest U.S. commercial bank by assets
Employees: 62,000
Customers: 17.6 million
Bank branches: 3,080 in 25 states
*

4. The Challenge
Decentralized marketing organization
Uneven expertise in social media
Wide variety of business objectives
Tendency towards SOS (Shiny Object Syndrome)
“Our
competitors
are…”
“We need a
Facebook
page.”
“We want to do
Twitter. How do
we get
approved?”
*

5. The solution: Agency-led journey to a guiding principle for
social media marketing at U.S. Bank.
1. Review
Digital agency
(VML) interviews
stakeholders
Evaluates current
social media efforts.
Reviews competitors.
At two-day in-person meeting….
2. Stakeholder
Summit
Hear results of
internal interviews
and evaluation.
3. Execution
*
Stakeholders get
overview of digital
landscape.
Agency & bank
complete 18month plan.
Four internal
subgroups begin
implementation.
Debate & agree
on guiding principle
& strategic pillars.
Complete playbooks
for major social
channels.

6. The Stakeholders: Social Media Council
Outer circles:
Marketing strategy
teams that meet
independently and send
representatives to twicemonthly council
meetings.
Inner circle: Strategy
team reps + reps from
Legal, Compliance,
Privacy, Info security,
Tech operations,
Employee relations
PR/Media
Relations
Wholesale
Banking
Credit Card
(recruiting)
Social Media
Council-Privacy
-Compliance
-Info security
-Tech operations
-Legal
-Employee relations
Wealth
Management
*
Human
Resources
Online
Channel
Customer
Service
Internal
Consumer
Banking
Communications

7. VML interviewed 30 stakeholders across enterprise
About 45 minutes per stakeholder
Informal, open-ended questions
Social media team not present (to encourage candor)
Stakeholders also completed anonymous survey
How is the bank doing in
social so far?
What do you see as
key objectives?
What hasn’t worked and
why?
Is our governance effective?
Why or why not?
*
Which companies are doing
things you admire?
Who do you
see as the target audience?
Are policies
well-communicated?

8. Evaluation included:
Inventory of U.S. Bank managed channels
Comparison to competitors
Metrics
Content evaluation
Recommendations
185 pages total
*

9. 30 stakeholders gathered in Minneapolis for two days
Goal: Consensus on a Guiding Principle
for social media
Agenda:
and Strategic Pillars
•Day 1: New media overview and results of internal interviews and
evaluations.
•Day 2: VML presents several options for principle and pillars.
Stakeholders break into small groups to brainstorm additions/deletions.
Final consensus reached through large group discussion.
*

10. Issues we worked through
Tension between customer care and marketing as primary role of social
Desire for evidence that social drives revenue
Debate over nature of guiding principle – Tactical versus aspirational
Concern that business lines are too different for one strategy
*

11. Result
GUIDING PRINCIPLE
Be as protective of and committed to our online social communities as we are to
every other person, audience and market we serve.
STRATEGIC PILLARS
*

12. One we rejected
Connect with customers to help them recognize
and realize their dreams through inspiration,
education and service that matters to them.
*

13. Subgroups:
•Channel strategy & execution – Playbooks for Facebook,
LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube
•Governance – Council charter, subcommittees, meeting calendar,
postmortem reviews
•Tools and resourcing – Inventory of social media/digital
resources across bank, gap analysis, selection of SM management
vendor
•Training – Inventory of existing training, development of video for all
employees, e of intranet resources
*

14. PLAYBOOK CONTENTS
•Audience and Objectives - Who are we targeting on the (xx) social network?
What’s the purpose?
•U.S. Bank Social Voice – Character, tone, language, examples of “okay” and
“better” posts
•Content Strategy – Sources, process, content themes and series, sample calendar
•Influencer Strategy – Who, how and why
•Editorial Strategy – Frequency, days of
week, times of day,
starring/pinning/backdating
•Community Management – Moderation
practices
•Measurement - KPIs
*

15. Embedding principle and pillars
Example: Content in Facebook planning calendar is checked off
against the pillars.
*

16. Example: Humanizing
*

17. Thank you!
Karen Gutiérrez
Social Media Director, Corporate Marketing
U.S. Bank
@curiousbanker
*

18. SocialMedia.org
This video is from
Case Studies
BlogWell
San Francisco
June 20, 2011
Learn more about past and
upcoming BlogWells
socialmedia.org/blogwell
This presentation is from
BlogWell
Chicago
June 19, 2013
socialmedia.org/blogwell
socialmedia.org/blogwell