5 Things to Remember for Engaging Your Community on Social Media
For a community bank or credit union, social media provides an excellent method of communication with the communities you serve. However, getting caught up in a strategy centered on self-promotion can be easy. While keeping your audience up to date on your current offers is necessary, keeping them engaged during the busiest times of the year, such as the back-to-school and holiday seasons, is also essential. Remembering to add these staple content ideas to your latest strategy can help further engage those who already bank with you, attract new customers, and form stronger relationships with local organizations. Give yourself a refresh with this breakdown of tried-and-true social media content ideas to better engage with your community featuring some of our favorite client examples.
1. Celebrate Your Team Members
Your team is the face of your organization and what many customers most associate with your bank or credit union. Recognizing team members for their hard work is essential, and what better place to celebrate them than on social media! Sharing their accomplishments such as promotions, anniversaries, and more indicates a sense of pride in your team and can even help establish your bank or credit union as a great workplace. Team member birthday wishes are another great way to show appreciation for employees and can also generate additional engagement on your social media accounts. Their favorite customers and the friends they share the post with will likely drop a happy birthday wish in the comments. After all, your team members are members of the community and are a great way to form a bridge to engage the larger community.
Check out this client example of a team member appreciation in a post:
2. Hold Social Media Contests
Give back to your followers with a contest or prize drawing run through social media. The most effective prize options to generate interest within your target area are those from local businesses, museums, and attractions. This will ensure those entering will be from your community or within a certain radius to drive awareness of your location in that area. Furthermore, customers will likely share amongst friends and family, with a reported 62% of total online contest participants suggesting a friend participate. Some examples of contests that are relatively easy to run on social media include photo and trivia contests, as these produce direct engagements with your accounts. 
For photo contests, participants can post a photo with a designated theme and tag the bank or credit union and a selected contest hashtag to complete the entry requirements. Alternatively, trivia contests consist of participants submitting their guesses in the comments of posted trivia questions. Current followers can also share this post to generate further entries from those who may not follow you yet.
3. Show the Ways You are Giving Back
Giving back to a local organization is a great way to demonstrate your organization’s commitment to your community. Still, it must be shared to create a lasting positive impact on your financial institution’s image. Posts about any of your giving initiatives can help form connections with local charities online as you engage with community members offline. As a bank or credit union, there are several ways to give back to the community, whether through a team of volunteers, hosting a local drive, or making a generous donation. Creating a group of volunteers can be a great way to include customers or members in the process by posting on social media beforehand to generate a volunteer group, then followed up by a post of your best event memories or a group photo. Supporting a local drive or becoming a drop-off location for one can help generate foot traffic in branch locations. Posting about it regularly on social media is essential to get the word out. Lastly, a generous donation made by your organization is a perfect shareable moment, especially if you mention the process and hard work that went into raising or collecting the donation and tag any involved organizations.
Check out this client example of a team volunteer event post:
4. Post for the Holidays
Posting for major holidays like the Fourth of July and smaller fun ones like National Sandwich Day are about more than just capturing a hashtag audience; some are also fun conversation starters! For major holidays social media traffic can spike up to 73% more on major platforms than on other days, as many spend time sharing their celebrations online. This makes this a great time to capture the attention of the vast majority online at the time, wishing them a happy holiday and asking them to share their favorite local tradition to enjoy with guests. A similar strategy could also be used for smaller national awareness days such as National Nurses Day or National Ice Cream Day. 
With an occupation-focused holiday, thanking the nurses, mail workers, and other essential workers in your communities is a great way to position yourself as a community-centric organization. Additionally, certain holidays such as National Hairdressers Day are a great way to shine the spotlight on local businesses by asking followers to tag their favorite local hairdresser in the comments section. Finally, learning about your customers’ favorite places and organizations in the community is a great way to gain insights into local businesses and annual events to watch for future collaborations and sponsorships.
5. Share Community Events
Keep your followers updated on what’s happening in the community by sharing local events, especially any you sponsor. Regularly sharing events opens the door for repeat interactions with the hosting organizations. When a location is tagged, platforms like Facebook and Instagram will serve the post to users who may not follow you yet within that geographic area. If possible, you will also want to tag the hosting organization to let them know you are supporting them by spreading the word. In addition, as a sponsor of an event, you’ll want that event to be as successful as possible to build a reputation among the communities you serve as a great sponsor for future events for the same and other local organizations.
Check out this client example of a local event sponsorship post:
Looking to increase engagement with your community through social media? Strategis is a full-service marketing agency developing strategies proven to increase (ROI) through a wide range of methods. Contact us today!
