Local bank earns seat on national social media panel

North Shore Bank executive Tim Gluth, webmaster and eBusiness coordinator, will join executives from EBAY, Starbucks, Fiserv and other prominent financial organizations as a panelist at the Mobile Banking and Emerging Application’s Summit in early June.
The event will be held at the M Resort Casino and Spa in Las Vegas, June 6 through June 8.
Gluth will be speaking about the practical applications of social media for banks and other financial institutions and what it can do for other institutions and why it’s important to get into the game now.
“Overall (North Shore Bank is) participating in social media and social networking to engage people and better understand the people who live and work in our communities,” Gluth said. “We have always been a big part of the community physically and with social media we are able to bring those physical communities online.”
A big part of what North Shore Bank already does is listening to the people in its communities, Gluth said.
“Social networking sites allow us to expand our reach and gives us an easily accessible way for us to answer any questions people might have about anything,” Gluth said.
According to Gluth, social networking sites act as a door opening for customers or potential customers who may have banking or financial questions. Depending on the subject, the conversations could end up being taken offline, to a direct message or an email if it is related to specific account information or other private issues. 
North Shore utilizes social media networks to promote events and happenings taking place in the community as well.
The bank has been an active participant on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, and most recently started using Foursquare.
“Last month we launched a promotion campaign to give a $5 subway card to the ‘Mayor’ of all of our bank branches,” Gluth said. “It was just another way for us to say thank you for stopping in. We plan to launch that campaign again in May, it’s a great way for us to encourage people to stop in and its nice because it kind of localizes each branch.”
The bank included its compliance department on conversations about social media practices from the beginning, Gluth said.
“We had an idea of what we wanted to do, and how we wanted to approach it and we included our compliance department in on those plans,” he said. “Because we are using it as a community awareness board to post event information, product and rate information they felt as if we were ok, but we do have guidelines and procedures in place that we must follow.”
The guidelines and procedures aren’t any different than ones the bank already has in place, Gluth said. They’ve just been adapted to fit the realm of social media.
“It’s how people are communicating now, and its where people in our communities are spending their time,” Gluth said. “It’s another are for us to let people know we’re out there and we are listening, another way for us to be a part of the community.”