President's Message
Coming to your inbox from Money20/20 this week is a guest message from Dave Hinchey looking back on the Facebook outage the world saw earlier this month. Facebook, the still juggernaut of the social media space, is facing public relations headwinds and an increasingly fractured userbase looking for alternatives. Recent reports suggest Facebook is adapting by investing in the metaverse and even looking at a name change - a fundamental shift to its existing model. As I am here surrounded by fintechs and new technology, how is your credit union adapting to your evolving membership and the outside forces changing the way consumers interact with their finances?
Bruce
Where were you on Monday, October 4th during the great social media shutdown? How did you fill the hours of downtime when Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp were down? Be honest, how much more productive were you since there was no social media to distract you?
We can debate the merits of social media and the benefits and drawbacks of having a smartphone, but they’ve become woven into our everyday fabric. The average person spends 145 minutes every day on social media.
The social media shutdown was an interesting test for people to examine their own screen time habits and for marketers who have the responsibility of posting on various social channels.
What if suddenly one of your main channels for communication (Facebook or Instagram) went offline during the middle of your biggest loan promotions or during a big community service day at your respective shop? If you didn’t have social media, how would you tell your story, promote, and grow your credit union?
Some companies were proactive and joined in on the conversation on Twitter. Even Twitter got in on the fun when they tweeted out, “hello literally everyone,” after masses of people logged on to see what they were missing out on. Some companies used the opportunity to inject humor or promote their businesses. Zoom replied to Twitter and said, “hi can everyone see my screen” and Indeed asked pointedly: “Who spent the day scrolling jobs instead of social media.” Clarks footwear remarked that the social media shutdown was uncomfortable, but that their shoes are not.
Hopefully, your credit union was able to capitalize on the downtime or at least use the time to evaluate your communications strategy.
There’s a lot of takeaways that came from the social media outage and there’s been a few articles written about this. Here’s a few observations that stood out:
Diversify your communication channels. Businesses that rely heavily on Facebook and Instagram for all of their marketing spend the time trying to figure out how to reach their audience. Having a presence on Twitter along with other social media channels will allow you to share your story and not miss a beat if one or multiple channels go down.
Act Fast and Be Resourceful—Companies with an astute marketing team were able to capitalize on the downtime by joining in the Twitter conversation. Some companies sent out a text or e-mail to their customers advertising that their website is still up and running—giving their customers a place to shop and fill the time-gap while Facebook and Instagram were down. A well-timed e-mail promotion with a nod to the social media shutdown is a great way to get some attention. However, it requires moving quickly so that you don’t miss your window.
Refresh your other public-facing channels, including your website and your e-mail list. Having these updated and ready to go will ensure that you don’t miss a beat during the next social media outage. A thorough review of your website on a monthly (or weekly basis)—making sure the links work, the blogs are current, updated images and photos—is good practice. If a consumer comes across your credit union website and sees the last article/promo/newsletter is from 2018, what message is that sending about your credit union?
Word of mouth is still important—Many credit unions rely on word-of-mouth to reach new members. Recommendations from satisfied members is still critical and carries weight. It goes back to our CU roots where co-workers on the assembly line would tell others on the assembly line to join the credit union that was housed in a room in the factory or basement.
What were your takeaways during the social media shut down?
Dave
David Hinchey, CUDE (he/him/his)
Director of Community Impact
Credit Union League of Connecticut
dhinchey@culct.coop
