Today is World Social Media Day and further proof that you Earthlings really do have a day dedicated to or celebrating just about anything you can imagine. I discovered this while working with some of the myCUmortgage experts as they planned various exciting events for our team. A few of my favorite obscure observances include:
- Invite an Alien (Friendly) to Live with You Day
- Jellyfish Day
- National Moon Pie Day
As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, we don’t celebrate these types of holidays on Amicitia to the extent you do here on Earth. However, when I’m back home, I never pass up the opportunity to watch the celebrations of brave Amicitians narfling the garthok.
As ridiculous as some of these observances may seem to many of us, Social Media Day is legit and should be celebrated as part of your marketing communication strategy for credit union mortgage lending. Social media communications are a big part of myCUmortgage’s marketing strategy. If you don’t already follow them on social, today is the perfect day to start:
- YouTube
- Mort the Mortgage Mentor’s Blog (subscribe if you already haven’t)
How are you and your credit union using social media? To what extent is it a part of your member outreach and communications? Are you even incorporating social media into your marketing strategy?
While larger credit unions and organizations like myCUmortgage may have individuals dedicated to social media communications, most of us view it as yet another hat we wear in the always invigorating credit union space. With today’s challenging purchase market and potential borrowers who practically live on social media, it’s time to get your social media program a bigger hat!
Whether you’re a social media novice or a seasoned veteran, you need to ensure that you and your credit union have a social media plan in place and follow best practices to maximize your efforts. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been updating and expanding our social media plans at myCUmortgage – I believe it would be helpful to share with you the basic building blocks of a solid plan that will help you better utilize social media as you assist more members with homeownership.
Identify Your Audience: If you don’t know whom you’re trying to communicate with, you can’t develop effective posts and content. For most credit union mortgage lenders, primary audiences include current members, nonmember borrowers and specific subsets within (for example, millennials, first time homebuyers, members with credit union car loans, etc.). You also need to be aware of your secondary audiences because they play crucial roles in further spreading your messages. These audiences include your own credit union employees, vendor partners and mortgage and credit union associations.
Key Messages: Determine what you want to tell your audiences and incorporate these key messages into your posts. An example of a key message for credit union mortgage lenders may be, “ABC Credit Union has a wide range of mortgage products to meet the needs of their diverse membership and potential borrowers.”
Goals, Objectives and Strategies: What do you hope to accomplish with your social media presence? What specific metrics are you using to measure effectiveness and success? This is at the heart of your plan – if an item doesn’t logically connect to your goals, objectives and strategies, it shouldn’t be in your plan.
Tactics: These are the specific actions taken to meet your goal. It is not uncommon to jump right to the tactics when executing initiatives – don’t fall into this black hole. Tactics need to stem from your goals, objectives and strategies while delivering upon your key messages.
Measure and Evaluate: What has worked and what has not? Several social media platforms have analytics built-in, and there are loads of applications that can measure and evaluate your social media activity. This is a crucial step in planning and executing a successful social media campaign because it helps you capitalize upon success and minimize unsuccessful tactics.
The next question becomes, “What are some effective tactics and best practices that will help and grow my social media presence?” I have an excellent list of these that I will share with you in a future post, as it is simply too much information to include in a single post.
In the meantime, start thinking about everything discussed here, draft an outline of a plan and get prepared to build more relationships and take social media by storm.