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The social media landscape is growing and changing constantly. What’s popular today may be outdated next week. Most people don’t remember, but before Facebook everybody used MySpace… and before that, Friendster and Six Degrees. There are now currently over 100 social media Channels and it’s growing!

Does your financial institution need to be involved with all these? Of course not, there are specific audiences and specific purposes for many of them. But this does not mean you should ignore all of them.

What are the benefits of Social Media Marketing?

There are many benefits to using social media marketing within your organization, some including:

• Increase Brand Awareness and Exposure
• Strengthen Relationships and Expand Account Services
• Build a Loyal Community of Active Followers
• Boost Traffic to your Website and Improve SEO
• Enhance Company Trustworthiness and Image
• Monitor your Brand’s Online Reputation
• Increase Account and Sales Opportunities

What are some of these challenges of Social Media Marketing?

Before you jump in to the social media arena, you need to be aware of social media Challenges and know how to react and combat them. But just because your credit union (financial institution) is not utilizing social media does not mean these challenges are still not out there for your organization. Being involved with social media will help you be more aware and correct some misconceptions that may be out there about your financial institution.

Some challenges include:

• Brand Reputation and Misinformation. People are talking about your institution whether you like it or not. You can help control this with social media.
• Demands on your time. For most people, handling social media is not their only job. Signing up to multiple sites, monitoring, posting, commenting, reviewing, approving and reporting can be very time consuming. And if all of these things aren’t done daily or every other day then the whole process will not be effective.
• Selecting the Proper Social Media Sites. Social media is more than Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. You can’t possibly establish a presence on every Social Site or Microblog, but you need to know where people are talking about your institution and Monitor, Review, and Consolidate your reviewing and posting.
• What about Compliance? The good news is the rules are the same as with all other advertising. FFIEC social media Guidance can help with guidelines. It helps explain potential risks, expectations to manage risk and suggestions regarding social media policies and procedures for employees.
• What about Management? It is still very important to keep management informed on your financial institutions use of social media even if they don’t understand or believe in it.

How can LKCS Help?

LKCS can help your financial institution through a combination of design and marketing strategies to help leverage the potential of social media. More precise than that, we can assist in daily management, social media training, social media monitoring and community building strategies.

Contact LKCS and learn more about social media marketing, and ways you can further develop a layered social media strategy for your financial institution.