Teresa Morrow is the SVP of communications at Bremer Bank. Bremer is a truly unique, privately-held, $7.7 billion regional financial services company jointly owned by its employees and the Otto Bremer Foundation. Teresa leads the corporate communications/community relations department and is responsible for preserving and enhancing the banks reputation.

Brian Bierbaum: What are your team’s social media goals and what tactics have been the most effective in achieving your goals so far?

Teresa Morrow: From inception, it has been our goal to preserve, protect, and enhance Bremer’s reputation on various social media channels. We are not trying to push interest rates, products or services. We are really just trying to join the conversation in a way that will help us with our reputation. So far we have had the greatest success utilizing Twitter. As with many organizations, we have customers who talk about their service issues via Twitter. Since this is slowly becoming a customer service portal, we have been very proactive in our monitoring and response. In every case it has been amazing how our customers have responded. In most cases they are: A) surprised that we are following them, that we found them, and that we heard them, and B) that we responded with a real person who can solve their problems. Typically we respond to the whole community so they can see our proactive response and that we are not just pushing them to a call center.

At the end of the day, it is pairing the technology with a real person that has been most successful.

Additionally we have seen great success with our blog, which is much broader than our Twitter efforts. For example, non-profits in the communities we serve are often more isolated than non-profits in large communities like St. Paul or Minneapolis. Oftentimes, non-profits end up exhausting their fundraising opportunities (i.e. the car wash, bake sale, etc.) – when they open the blog, we try to connect them to hundreds of other non-profits and their best practices.

Brian Bierbaum: What was the biggest challenge you faced when rolling out your plans internally?

Teresa Morrow: Banks tend to have a more conservative business model and are rarely going to be a trend setter with social media. That being said, it was hard to sit on the sidelines when such great communication channels are available. It was a matter of addressing the risks so we could get management buy-in. We made the decision early to shut down all access to social media internally while a business case was developed for management. One of the recommendations was to create a social media council that would be responsible for putting together guidelines to use social media. The social media council had representation from marketing, legal, technology, security, and HR to ensure we had consensus across the organization. The council recommended educating employees about the risks of social media. As a result, an internal education campaign was designed and then rolled out in groups. These key steps helped management feel we were taking a very mindful, planned approach to our social media efforts, which led to their support in the long run.

Brian Bierbaum: How did you overcome the challenges of getting executive buy-in and cross-department cooperation?

Teresa Morrow: We started with a solid business case and picked one area of focus. In this case it was with utilizing LinkedIn because it has the most application for our industry. At the end of the day, we assured that access would be controlled and reviewed at a regular basis, which helped keep up our internal momentum.

Brian Bierbaum: What advice would you give to others who are launching social media initiatives in a conservative industry?

Teresa Morrow: Spend some time researching what competitors are doing in your industry. If no one in your industry is doing anything yet, it is going to be hard to make a case for being the first. Also, do a lot of listening. Listen to what is being said about your industry, competitors and your brand. Identify what is working and what isn’t, then establish clear goals. Our goal was not to go out to market products, or recruit people for jobs, or to reach a new consumer audience. It started with preserving and protecting our reputation. Take Facebook for example: who really wants to be friends with their bank? That’s a question we’re asking to determine if this is a good channel for us. That is why the blog is such a good medium as it allows visitors to get information they might otherwise have to pay for (without “friending” us) and helps Bremer to be seen as supportive of communities, as well as an information resource for non-profits. Additionally, be sure to take a strong look at the internal resources you have. You can’t do all things – make sure you identify where you can make the biggest impact and achieve your goals.