Forex Trading and Social Media: A Case Study of easy-forex

An article by Ayelet Noff    3 Comments

This post was originally posted on socialmedia.biz on August 4th.

We began working with easy-forex to combine their forex trading and social media activity back in February, 2010. We knew right away that teaming easy-forex’s expertise, vibrancy, and fresh approach to FX with our knowledge of the nuts and bolts of social media would invariably produce a winning combination. When we first took stock of easy-forex’ social media efforts, it was clear they had already recognized the value of social profiles and had already laid the groundwork for us on Twitter and YouTube. We knew too though, that easy-forex’ full potential was only beginning to be actualized, and so, we set out to create a home for their traders, a place where they could come and chat with one another regarding their trading habits, methods, tips and strategies – basically, anything and everything related to forex.

easy-forex has always made an effort to be on the cutting edge of trading innovation, and we made sure that bloggers were made well aware of this fact by letting them know all about easy-forex’ great customer service and any releases of new products, all through our blogger outreach campaign. This consisted of an extensive search and mapping effort to find the most relevant and high-profile blogs read by the target market. We created a blogger kit detailing easy-forex’ most promising products/services and set our sights on the top 90 bloggers in the tech and forex industry. Our efforts paid off and we received coverage in such tier 1 blogs as VentureBeat, as well as GoMo News and Currency Trading. We were able to reach over 500,000 unique readers with easy-forex’ compelling story of how their unique approach was impacting online trading. Our story was also heavily retweeted and shared by others, furthering its overall social ROI.

Speaking of Twitter, we worked very closely with easy-forex to procure real time actionable trading data, directly from their dealing room, to send out as tweets. This close relationship added industry relevant substance to our tweets which set us apart from the average FX tweeters and contributed to a spike in  easy-forex’s twitter following by 25% within a mere two month period.

Taking off in all these various directions simultaneously, with each venue showing an exponential growth rate, we created an easy-forex Facebook page to act as a central hub for all our forex trading and social media efforts. We use the social network as a coalescing tool with which to announce and trackback any and all forex trading and social media collateral including blog posts, videos, tweets, news feeds, and discussions, keeping the page active and alive. Our easy-forex FB page also served to replace the typical forex forum pages traditionally used as a place where traders can come to share their thoughts. By replacing the traditional forums with a Facebook style setting, the discussion is made more real and more personal. It also serves as a barrier preventing any anonymous person/competitor from writing whatever they like without taking responsibility for their words. On social networks, where one has their picture posted, their information written and is connected to friends and family, one feels a responsibility for their actions and words, and will think twice before posting something.

Since launching the easy-forex page at the tail end of February 2010, we managed to go from zilch to over 5,000 fans. An easy-forex YouTube channel features easy-forex’ Emma Andreou’s engaging and informative daily dose of FX happenings and has built a growing loyal audience. In three minutes these forex trading daily videos cover the top 10 market reports, saving hours of research for individual traders. A LinkedIn group was also opened with the same daily diligence for sparking group interaction and information sharing, within and amongst all easy-forex’s members.

We also built a blog for easy-forex where we publish forex related news and market views. Here too easy-forex became an active partner in helping us to build their brand by encouraging their own FX specialist to write and participate in the blog. Their keen insights and bold predictions have led to the blog becoming a weekly must read amongst the easy-forex community and beyond.

One of the main goals of our social media activities has been to create full transparency between easy-forex and traders via our discussions on all our social channels as well as the information we provide on our blog.  This massive online presence within social networks as well as blogs, not to mention the sharing of our content by others, has had the added effect of helping easy-forex’ SEO efforts.

It’s important to note that across all our platforms, members are by no means passive assets. easy-forex’ campaigns are highly interactive with broad open channels being kept for our various online communities on a daily basis. After all, happy members are the best ambassadors your company could ever ask for, a fact whose full reach and value is beyond measurability.

Take our first easy-forex Facebook campaign for example. The campaign was called easy-forex’s, “Fantasy Team”, and began June 8^th – 2010, designed to coincide with, and build off the internationally popular World Cup soccer games. The campaign content consisted of asking our Facebook members to create their own fantasy soccer team, using as random and as outrageous a selection of personalities that they could think of. Participants were encouraged to get even more creative by presenting their selection in the form of doctored photographs with superimposed heads, or upload video versions, or any wacky way that their imaginations could conjure up.

The results beat all expectations. In the three week duration of the campaign, easy-forex’ FB member count increased by a staggering 2,600 people, approximately 50 submissions were entered, and easy-forex received over 800 lead applications requesting more information about their company. All in all, a super successful and highly interactive campaign combing forex trading and social media efforts.

easy-forex and Blonde 2.0 have only begun to scratch the surface of the great potential waiting to be uncovered in the realm of forex trading and social media. We are hard at work thinking up new creative ideas and campaigns which can help take us to the next level of our social media activity with easy-forex. Stay tuned for what comes next. We promise to keep things interesting.