Tweet! Tweet!Social media tool has credit unions all a-Twitter.

By Diane Franklin
Jan. 29, 2010

Can your credit union build business relationships 140 characters at a time? That's the potential and promise of Twitter, the micro-blogging site that is taking the world by storm. As mentioned, Twitter has a limit of just 140 characters per message—the messages are popularly known as "tweets"—and those "tweets" taken collectively can spread information faster (and some would argue more effectively) than practically any other media outlet you are currently using.
Since its founding in 2006, Twitter has grown at a mind-boggling rate. In 2008, there were 6 million adults using Twitter on an ongoing basis, according to emarketer. That figure grew to 18 million by the end of 2009 and will reach 26 million by the end of 2010. While some have dismissed Twitter as purely a social enterprise-a way for users to tell friends what they had for lunch or what movie they are going to see-there is now a growing sentiment among marketers that Twitter can be a valuable tool for making and maintaining business connections. Credit unions are among those discovering just how powerful a tool it can be.
"People are now seeing it more as a business tool," says Mike Lawson, principal of the San Diego-based PR/marketing firm DML Communications and on Twitter at http://twitter.com/dmlcomm. "Businesses are using it for education and for information gathering. It's the ultimate form of two-way communication. With Twitter, you can get feedback right away. You can create a conversation and build on it to create a relationship."
Guidelines for Effective 'Tweeting'
Have good, quality content. "Content is king," says Stu Fisher, SVP/e-commerce at $2.2 billion/150,000-member Addison Avenue Federal Credit Union (addisonavenue.com), Palo Alto, Calif. "People follow you if you have valuable content, and they don't follow you if you don't."
Be conversational. "It's not a bad thing to throw personal observations in there from time to time," advises Mike Lawson, principal of San Diego-based DML Communications and on Twitter at html://twitter.com/dmlcomm. "It puts a face on the organization." Fisher concurs that it's important to show your personality. "We avoid a stiff corporate persona. We strive to have a voice that is genuine, relatable, intelligent, witty but humble-people tend to respond to that," he says.
Limit the number of people who tweet for your organization. "Having one person handle your main Twitter account is more cohesive than having multiple people doing it," states Tabbi VanHoutte, electronic marketing specialist for Oklahoma City, Okla.-based $200 million/25,000-member Allegiance Credit Union. Concurring with this point, Lawson observes the importance of clearly stated objectives that the individual can follow. "Have guidelines regarding what you should tweet about and what you should not tweet about."
Use URL links. "Nine out of 10 times, our tweets provide a link to something else," Fisher remarks. "But be clear about what you're linking. People are busy and don't want to waste their time. For instance, we recently posted a link on 'Five Ways to Kill Your FICO Score' from MSN Money."
Make use of handy Twitter applications. Such tools as TweetDeck and Hoot Suite will allow you to organize your followers, friends (i.e., the people you are following), mentions, direct messages, etc. They automatically shorten your URLs so they fit more easily into your 140-character limit. There are also various Web sites that will shorten URLs, such as TinyURL.com and bit.ly.
Listen before tweeting. VanHoutte recommends taking some time to understand Twitter before jumping on board. "Sit back, watch and learn all about it before you get on. Determine what you are trying to do with it and whom you are trying to reach."
Don't be overly promotional. "It will come off as negative if you use it as another promotional vehicle," Fisher states. "People see right through that." Kelsey Balcaitis, community education specialist at $750 million/85,400-member A-Plus Federal Credit Union, Austin, Texas, concurs with this sentiment. "People can smell a sales pitch a mile away. If you're too promotional, they won't follow you." Occasionally, Balcaitis will tweet about a credit union product. "We recently tweeted about our business loans, but we talked about the steps of going from an idea to a business. The message is that we are here to help. If we do market a specific product, we provide our members with information."
Lawson acknowledges that there is still a large percentage of consumers who are not quite sure what Twitter is or what purpose it serves. However, the numbers who are using Twitter make it significant enough for credit unions to pursue it. "It's an incredible tool that allows credit unions to communicate immediately with their members," Lawson says. "It's the ultimate form of viral marketing. If a consumer has an issue, you can learn about it and resolve it right away. It's a great customer service tool, and it fits in well with the credit union's mantra of people helping other people."
However, Lawson is quick to point out that Twitter shouldn't take the place of other forms of marketing, advertising and promotion. "This is something you can be doing in addition to all of that. It's all about giving members a choice and getting information to them that they can use. If you do it well, your tweets will become like the morning paper to your followers. Set yourself up as a trustworthy, credible source, and you will become a part of their day."
The Time to TweetOne fear that credit unions may have is that Twitter is too time-consuming. However, that is not necessarily the case. "On average, I spend around an hour a day on it," reports Kelsey Balcaitis, community education specialist for $750 million/85,400-member A-Plus Federal Credit Union, Austin, Texas.
Balcaitis was given the responsibility for social media by Marketing Director Muna Whitlock. The time that Balcaitis spends on Twitter is broken up throughout the day. She spends a few minutes in the morning, a few minutes at mid-day, and then checks it again right before she goes home."It's a nice way to break up the day," she says. "I finish something I'm working on, and before I go on to something else, I'll go and check Twitter."
The credit union's Twitter account can be found at http://twitter.com/APlusFCU. As of mid-December, the credit union had about 450 followers. "We have a good group of followers that mostly consists of members and credit union-related organizations," Balcaitis reports. "It's more about quality than quantity."
Through Twitter, the credit union is able to effectively engage in two-way communication with these followers. "It's all about sharing," Balcaitis says. "We feel very strongly about that. I've done a lot of research about social media, and there are a lot of statistics showing that consumers want to be engaged."As part of her Twitter responsibilities, Balcaitis reads various blogs, such as Mashable and Kiplinger and also visits various news sites so that she has relevant information to tweet. "I use (the free Twitter client) Hoot Suite which allows me to schedule my tweets. It also tracks mentions and retweets and allows me to see how many people are clicking on my links."Balcaitis' tweets include links to a variety of articles on financial topics. She also uses Twitter to link to blog entries on the credit union's Facebook page and to a site that is dedicated to the San Marcos High School Savings Challenge, sponsored by the credit union. "I try to tweet a minimum of once a day, but mostly I tweet multiple times," Balcaitis says. "If someone has a question, we reply to them or we send them a direct message."
Balcaitis had been using Twitter on her own. However, to educate herself about the latest developments with Twitter and other social media tools, she regularly attends social media workshops, seminars and Webinars. "If I learn at least one new thing, it was worth attending," she reports. "The biggest thing is to listen. Using Twitter, you can learn a lot about what people are saying about banks and credit unions and topics such as debt. If people say something negative, that's not necessarily a bad thing. It gives you the opportunity to show why they could be wrong. You can take steps to rectify problems or misconceptions."As time goes on, Twitter is becoming a recognized outlet for communication. "Everyone in our (marketing) department is starting to see just how valuable it's becoming," Balcaitis says.
Personality on DisplayTwitter allows credit unions to be informal, even personable, in their communication with members and other followers. For instance, Allegiance Credit Union www.allegiancecu.org uses its Earnie the Eagle (the credit union's mascot) as its Twitter background image.
"Twitter doesn't have to be all business-related," affirms Tabbi VanHoutte, electronic marketing specialist for this Oklahoma City-based $200 million/25,000-member credit union. "You can also show a bit of personality with it."
Allegiance CU started using Twitter in June 2008, and VanHoutte took on the responsibility for maintaining it when she joined the credit union in August of that year. She admits to being a bit underwhelmed by the potential of Twitter when she first took it on. However, she took some social media courses and began following various organizations that showed her just how useful Twitter could be.
"I retweet from lovemycu.org (a credit union advocacy site sponsored by the Michigan Credit Union League), and I also search credit unions to see what others are talking about," she reports.
The credit union's Twitter account is http://twitter.com/AllegianceCU and currently has 550-plus followers. VanHoutte has established a regular daily routine thatallows her to manage Twitter and other social media efficiently. "The first thing I do in the morning is catch up on social media-checking and responding to messages on both Facebook and Twitter," she states. "This takes about 30 minutes. Overall, I probably spend a total of an hour and a half on social media each day."
She uses free Twitter client TweetDeck to help her keep tabs on messages coming in from the people she follows. "TweetDeck is great," she says. "Messages pop up automatically, so I can see them throughout the course of my day.I subscribe to blogs via Google Reader, which gives me some interesting information to put out to my followers."
Among the blogs she monitors is www.walletpop.com, which has useful financial and money-saving advice for consumers, such as how to save money on Thanksgiving dinner or where to get a free cup of coffee.
Personal observations help followers see the credit union on a more personal level. "I want them to feel like they're connecting to a real person," VanHoutte explains.
Twitter also allows followers to gain an understanding of the credit union's connection to the community. For instance, VanHoutte recently tweeted about a fundraiser that involved credit union employees participating in a Wii Fit Challenge. "I took videos of employees doing the hula hoop and linked to the video from Twitter," she reports. "This allowed our followers to see that we are not just about promoting our credit union. We're also about having funand raising money to benefit our community."
While VanHoutte has primary responsibility for Allegiance CU's main Twitter identity, recently the credit union decided to broaden the power of tweets by allowing all employees to participate. "We originally didn't allow employees to use social media during business hours, but then we started having TweetWeek, which allowed employees to get on Twitter every month for a week," VanHoutte explains. "They could mention that we were having popcorn in the lobby or that we were offering $200 for refinancing your auto loan."
VanHoutte explains that while she remains the sole "tweeter" for the Allegiance CU brand, employees can tweet about the CU to their own followers from their personal Twitter accounts.
Based on the success of the TweetWeeks, Allegiance CU now is allowing its employees to use Twitter during work hours. "We saw this as a valuable thing," VanHoutte states. "Twitter is allowing our members to know who our employees are. We have about 80 employees, and it's another source of advertising that is essentially free. It takes up very little of their time, so it's more of a benefit than a detriment."
The power of Twitter is moving beyond online interaction and facilitating actual face-to-face contacts. For instance, A-Plus FCU invited its members to a local Starbucks for a drink of "holiday cheer" on a recent Saturday in December. The credit union publicized this event on its Facebook and Twitter pages and then followed up by tweeting from it (complete with photo links). "We had really great results from the event," Balcaitis reports. "Our fan and follower numbers increased, and we had people tweeting about the event (with a total of almost 5,000 followers seeing their tweets). Plus the comments from the people at the event made it completely worth it."
$2.2 billion/150,000-member Addison Avenue Federal Credit Union, Palo Alto, Calif., recently hosted a "Tweetup" at a local coffee shop called Philz. "Tweetup," as you can probably surmise, is a mash-up of the words "Twitter" and "meet-up."
"The purpose of the Tweetup was to show appreciation to our followers by giving them a free cup of coffee and also to see just how effective something like this could be," says Stu Fisher, the credit union's SVP/e-commerce. "We were inspired by Lance Armstrong, who sent out a tweet to his followers to meet at Griffith Park (in Los Angeles) for a bike ride and literally hundreds of people showed up. Now, we're not saying we're Lance Armstrong, but we did manage to generate some interest and excitement."
The Tweetup cost Addison Avenue FCU very little—just $150 for the coffee—and in the process, the credit union signed up two new members. "That's less expensive than our usual cost of acquisition," Fisher observes. "This is not something that every bank or credit union would do. We're seeking a higher level of engagement with our members. Our goal is for our members to take the initiative in organizing another Tweetup. We want to see if future Tweetups can be member-generated."
Addison Avenue FCU has taken to social media in a big way over the last year. In April 2009, the credit union created an e-commerce unit that has responsibility for all virtual touchpoints-i.e., the Internet, the call center, mobile phone applications and even ATM screens. Jonathan Gowins was given the newly created post of social media and e-communications manager to take on responsibilities for all social media venues ranging from Twitter to Facebook to LinkedIn to YouTube, as well as the credit union's own blog (theaddisoncafe.com) and discussion groups.
Serving these virtual needs is becoming increasingly important, according Fisher, especially considering that only 30 percent of Addison Avenue FCU's 160,000 members have ever visited a branch. "We tweet, blog, reach out through our online community groups-whatever it takes to keep in touch with them," he says. "It's been a win-win experience for us to share valuable financialinsights, hear concerns and help members get the most from their money."
Addison Avenue launched its Twitter account, http://twitter.com/AddisonAvenue, in June. By mid-December, the credit union had about 325 followers. "We view it as a resource for members to get good relevant financial information on financial topics," Fisher reports. "We scan the Internet for good content that we can link to."The ultimate advantage of Twitter for credit unions is the immediacy of the message at very little cost. "Twitter is a great resource for us to reach a lot of people with very minimal dollars," Allegiance CU's VanHoutte states. "We can put a billboard out on a highway, but we don't know how many are seeing it. We know 550-plus see us on Twitter. This is especially important, with the economy being what it is. In an economical way, Twitter allows us to let people know who we are and what we're about."
Diane Franklin is a free-lance writer based in Florissant, Mo.