10 Deadly Social Media Sins
Social media has changed many rules of marketing, which can be especially disconcerting for those of us raised in the âtraditionalâ media world. Some of the things we have always either accepted as fundamental precepts or taken for granted are no longer true, or maybe more precisely no longer as effective as they used to be. The good thing is that there are always new marketing fundamentals taking the place of those that are fading.
One of those is most certainly social media. The one thing we can count on is that social media (and whatever it evolves into in the future) has to be a permanent feature of a comprehensive marketing plan. There are just too many people in our key target demographics (i.e., the next generation of credit union members) for whom social media is more relevant than traditional media for us not to be in it.
So how can we better understand how to integrate social media into our existing marketing programs? One way is to learn from experts in the field about not only what you should do, but also what you should try really hard not to do.
One of our favorite social media experts is Sundeep Kapur from NCR Corporation. In fact, Sundeep is going to be joining me for a webcast next week to discuss âSocial Media for Credit Unions: The 10 deadly sins.â Like I said, itâs not only knowing what to do, itâs also knowing what not to do. I wonât give away the ending, but here is the list of sins. Youâll need to join us for the webcast itself to see how to solve them, but Iâll give you a hint â you canât have a social media strategy without a content strategy â¦
- Have specials, and more specials, and specials on specials
- Be passive and wait for people to come to you
- Play games and run contests all the time
- Block negative feedback
- Launch press releases on your social media channels
- Take 24 hours to respond
- Not leverage your other channels
- Snoop on your fans and followers
- Not have any goals to measure success
- Focus on âlikesâ
Now I donât want to leave you with just the âwhat not to doâsâ, so let me tell you where you can get all of the âwhat to doâs.â Sundeep is also going to be teaching a new half-day social media workshop at NAFCUâs Strategic Growth Conference in March. The workshop is a phenomenal opportunity for anyone looking to leverage social media channels on behalf of their credit union (that should be all of you, by the way :-) ). One of the best parts is that this workshop is focused entirely on social media for credit unions, so you wonât have to weed through all the general tips to figure out what would work for a credit union. Something else I have to mention is that unlike other passive educational sessions, Sundeep has created a hands-on exercise in which attendees will walk away with a social media blueprint for their credit union that they can begin using immediately to drive marketing ROI. Here are some key takeaways that Sundeep promises heâll deliver (and weâre holding him to it!) --
- Set goals for success that include acquisition, retention, reactivation, engagement with influencers, engagement via competition and ROI
- Brand your social media
- Identify your members by building personas and creating segments
- Identify your most effective physical, virtual and social media channels
- Develop products to meet the needs of your virtual members
- Write a social media policy and procedures; and much more!
Sundeep usually charges clients thousands of dollars for this workshop. But he has agreed to offer it as part of the NAFCU Strategic Growth Conference, and the best part is that it does not require a separate registration â join NAFCU for the Conference and the half-day workshop is included at no additional charge. I know Iâm sounding like a commercial now, but I really do believe this is a GREAT opportunity for credit unions. Like I said earlier, you have no choice but to be involved in social media, so why not learn how to do it rightâ¦and how to avoid doing it wrong?
Post written by Dave Frankil, President, NAFCU Services Corp.
