Social Media Strategies for Credit Unions: Getting Started

Some say the first step is the hardest, but when it comes to social media strategies for credit unions, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The first step is to make sure your credit union can be found in a simple search.

The Google My Business^TM business listing service will let you set up a free profile to help people find you in search and maps. To get started, type “Google My Business” into your favorite search engine and claim your credit union on the search site. By ensuring your profile information is correct and eventually connects to your social media profiles, you’ll help customers find you. You can engage in a similar process for other business listing services, such as Yelp searches. Both are important when it comes to gathering reviews, too.

Social Media Strategies for Credit Unions: Next, choose your sites.

When planning your social media marketing strategy, there’s no need to join every platform all at once. Start with one or two places staff members feel most comfortable interacting and/or your customer base is most likely to be. Your program can always expand after you gain experience.

Facebook is the ubiquitous platform that continues to boast the highest number of users. However, the average age of users is trending upward, and many younger marketing professionals may find the platform less intuitive than others they’ve spent more time on. Still, especially with the ability to cross-post to Instagram, it may provide the biggest results for early forays into the social media marketing space.

Social Media Strategies for Credit Unions: It’s time to choose your content!

What do social media and credit unions have in common? One has a wide audience, and one has a wide range of products. That means that credit union marketers should never lack for content to post, and there’s bound to be someone out there (or lots of someones) who will find it interesting.

Here are some things to remember when planning your posts:

• Images and videos will make people pause in their scrolling at least and garner more clicks, likes and conversations at best. Mortgage memes are popular and attention grabbing, for example, but be careful to follow marketing compliance
• A call to action should be included in most posts. You might encourage viewers to follow a link, give a like, make a comment, visit your website or even ask themselves a question about their finances.
• Social media marketing is easier when you schedule posts ahead. Consider taking time once a year to schedule holiday and seasonal posts. For example, do you have a checking account that’s popular with college students? Go ahead and schedule posts in the spring and summer as high school seniors are making plans for freshman year. You might cluster auto loan content during the peak spring and fall car buying seasons or promote Christmas Club accounts during January, when everyone’s looking at December’s bills and vowing to do better next time.
• Save some space in your calendar to post timely content throughout the year. You can focus on industry topics and financial news. To show your support of the local community, post about events and promote places in the community – perhaps businesses represented by your members.

Social Media Strategies for Credit Unions: Remember marketing compliance rules!

While social media may be an escape in your spare time, it’s not a place to escape compliance regulations! Be mindful of the rules that apply in regular advertising.

If you use paid advertising on social, platforms will require you to build a special ad audience. On Facebook, for example, you’ll be able to build an audience based on browsing habits, but not on age or zip code.

For organic posts, many credit unions have their marketers and sometimes individual loan officers post through a mortgage CRM. The CRM can require an approval process before things are posted. Plus, it will maintain a record of who gave approvals and of what was posted for future audits.

A Mortgage CRM Helps Credit Unions With More Than Social Media Marketing

One of the strongest social media strategies for credit unions is to employ a mortgage CRM, which can help with scheduling, approvals, audits, and much more. Surefire has a full library of content that can be used for generic marketing (all those holidays mentioned above) or for mortgage marketing. Credit union marketers can modify the existing content, use templates, or build their own messaging from scratch to promote other products.

Surefire also helps credit unions manage customer databases, track pipelines, and more.

To see how Surefire can help your credit union succeed in social media marketing and beyond, schedule a demo today. We’d love to show you around!

 

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