Is your social media working? Or are your members — and potential members — ignoring your posts? If you want more engagement, assess your posts using the criteria in this episode.
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Got questions about whether your marketing is aligned? Email me at jennifer@jennifer-roland.com or connect with me on LinkedIn.
Transcript
Hi there, and welcome to the credit union social strategy podcast and YouTube channel. I am your host, Jennifer Roland Cadiente, and I am your credit union copywriter.
Today, I want to talk about one of the biggest problems that I see with credit union social media, and it’s that it all sounds the same. Like, you know, if you look at look at social posts, from credit unions, they all, I mean, they’re generic. You know, a lot of times people spend a lot of time on the visuals, and I’ve seen some great visuals out there, where you look at that, and you know immediately which credit union is talking to you right away, but the words are still generic.
So what can you do to make your credit union social media stronger and more engaging? So one of the things is when you’re looking at your social media content, ask yourself these questions. Does it speak to real member concerns? Does it tell real stories? Does it educate? And does it sound human? If your content could be posted by any financial institution, it’s difficult for members who see those social media posts to remember why your credit union is different, and when your posts are generic like this, your members, they’re just going to scroll right past it. Your engagement is going to remain flat, even when you’re posting consistently.
So if you look at your last post and you ask yourself those questions, and also ask this question, which is the critical one, would someone recognize our unique voice if our logo wasn’t attached? If the answer to any of those is no, then you’ve got a great opportunity to make your content more relatable, more community focused, and more memorable. The good news is that it’s just small changes in the tone and the storytelling can make a big difference over time. So here are some of the things that you want to keep in mind.
You might be being too safe. So many credit unions default to like corporate sounding language or you know, they want to sound so professional that they have no personality anymore. But this is not going to get you engagement because your members, your people that are reading your social posts or watching your videos, they connect with people, not institutions.
So think about how you can get more people, more personality into every post, even if it is about a loan promotion or you know, a financial education workshop that you’re offering. How can you make it human? Not just compliant. And think about what members want.
You know, we always talk about the 80-20 rule in social media where, you know, 80% of your content should be not selling and 20% can be selling. So what do they need? What do they want? What are their pain points? You know, you can gather some real stories from the community. I’ve seen a lot of credit unions lately, you know, especially because it’s summer here in the US.
We’re out at a lot of events. We’ve got our booth. Ask people questions, record their answers, you know, have them share their stories in a really informal way, and then, you know, use those on your social media.
Obviously, get permission. If you need help with a release form, you know, your lead might have one, your compliance team might have one, or I can help you find one. You can email me at jennifer@jennifer-roland.com and make sure that you’re getting the permission to use this user content.
Then think about everyday challenges. You know, talk to your staff. What are people asking them? What are they seeing when they come in? What are they feeling themselves? You know, this year, grocery prices have been, you know, something that’s on everyone’s mind because they just seem to go up and up every time.
So, you know, tips on how to save at the grocery store. I know when I was working at Maps Credit Union, we had a coupon challenge. It was around the time that Extreme Couponing was on the television, if you remember that show.
And it also happened to be a time when grocery prices felt high. So we would share, you know, information about what we spent at the grocery store, what we saved, what we used coupons for, where we found coupons. And it was a lot of fun and people really, you know, really seemed to enjoy it.
So think about things like that. Take your phone to the store and, you know, videotape how you pick produce to get the best bang for your buck. Videotape how to, you know, look at the unit prices and decide when something is really a good value or not.
One of the things, you know, that I personally started doing again was keeping a price book where I keep track of, you know, the prices of the different grocery stores around me that I actually shot that and for the things I actually buy. And then I can compare, like, when I see a sale price, is that actually a good deal? Or is it, you know, about the same as what I could get at a different store? So it’s the tips like that that you can offer that really are helping people right now. That’s going to get a lot more engagement and it’s going to help you stay top of mind when someone has a financial question or needs a financial product.
They will come to you because they know that you’re super helpful and super personable. One credit union that I see doing things really well on their social media is Boston Firefighters Credit Union, which I believe is rebranding to First Responders Credit Union. And you always know when you’re looking at their posts who they’re serving, how they’re serving them, and how much they care about the people that are their members.
And I think that’s something, you know, that we may have lost over the years as, you know, our community has been sort of reimagined as, you know, a lot of times it’s a geographic thing. You know, a lot of credit unions have converted from said groups or employer based credit unions to a community charter. And that’s great because that makes it so much easier for people to join and for people to know that they’re eligible to be part of your credit union.
But not a lot of people think of their geography as the thing that makes a community. So if you have, you know, if you’re someone like the Boston Firefighters/First Responders Credit Union, how can you really play on that, that feeling of community? If you’re not, if you are a community charter credit union, how can you show that you are a community, not just a city on a map or a county or a state even? So think if you want your posts to be great, they need to be about you. They need to be about the people that work there, the people that you serve.
And if you think, you know, you know what your brand is and what makes your credit union memorable, think about how your content can become as memorable as your credit union. So if you have, you know, if you feel like you need help with that, that’s what I do in a social media audit is I will look at a certain amount of content on a certain number of channels and figure out where I think you’re hitting the mark and where you might be missing the mark and have some opportunities to improve. So we can look at your email content together or your social media content together.
So you can do these things yourself. You can look at your last social media posts, see where you’ve hit the mark, see where you’ve missed the mark. And I’d love to hear, you know, what you found.
So you can share your thoughts in the comments or you can send me an email. Again, it’s jennifer@jennifer-roland.com and let me know, you know, what you found and whether you think you’re going to be able to make changes to make your social media more effective and more human. So I look forward to hearing from you and I’ll be back to talk more to you about social media and email marketing soon.
See you later.
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