SAN FRANCISCO — What is social media for banking today?

To answer that question, I’ll share a story told by Josh Reich, a co-founder of Simple, at last week’s Bank Innovation 2012:

On March 24, someone named Tommy Moore tweeted to the mayor of Calgary, Naheed Nenshi, “Hey @nenshi what’s the point of the ridiculously expensive bridge again? What does it signify?” To which the mayor responded, “@banthedan I think it’s to be used to cross the river.”

Moore, realizing that the actual mayor was tweeting to him, “Haha @nenshi, I get that. But why can’t we get the Doritos taco shell at the Taco Bell in Calgary?” The mayor replied that “I assure you we will be getting Doritos taco shells in Calgary soon enough.” That day, March 27, Taco Bell tweeted the following:

“Thanks to @banthedan and @nenshi Taco Bell will be introducing the Doritos taco shells into Calgary immediately.”

What followed as a waterfall of tweets proclaiming Naheed Nenshi “best mayor ever.” This is a true story.

Reich told this story as an example of how social media is a tool not for “customer service,” but for deeper one-to-one communication.

“You have to connect the brand to the employees,” said Eric Rinebold,

Industry Principal — Digital Engagement, Infosys. “There has to be a holistic strategy on building from the inside out, really listening to what consumers are saying.”

Reich put it another way.

“We do not have a social media team, yet we have more followers than Wells Fargo,” he said. “This is not something we tried to create. We grew with it. Ninety seven percent of the people who requested a relationship with Simple were referred. And that is because we have conversations. I looked through Wells Fargo’s Twitter feed; it was hard to find a real conversation in the Wells feed.”

Perhaps that is in part because Wells is focusing its social media efforts internally. Darius Meranda, VP, social business strategist in the Wholesale Social Strategy Group at Wells Fargo, who joined Rinebold and Reich on the panel, said Wells recently conducted an internal Next Big Idea competition and got 300 ideas.

“We did this internally first, to our side of the bank and with our customers,” Meranda said. “We have a lot of customers.”

The discussion on social media invariably turned to ROI, and here Reich was particularly pointed. He pointed out that 20 years ago bankers considered the ROI of their phone system, but how can that ROI be calculated today? The same holds true for social media — its value cannot be calculated.

“You can’t be afraid to test and learn,” Meranda said.