Stories, Reels, TikToks – doesn’t it seem like nearly every short word is now related to social media in some way?
With social content creation surging over the past few years (something related to how most of us were stuck at home for a lot of this time), there are new trends, best practices, and key tips that financial brands need to keep up with for social media. From the rise in TikTok to the popularity of short-form video, a lot has changed in the social landscape in the past few years. As a brand, it can be tough to know what’s worth investing your time and resources.
Social Assurance has your financial brand covered though – we recently held one of our most popular webinars ever where we discussed how financial brands can capitalize on the recent social trends. Best of all, we even included a TikTok starter guide to help your organization effectively (and compliantly) get started on this platform. Hosted by Social Assurance’s CEO Bank Pankonin and Digital Marketing Specialist Cara Brackett, this insightful, no-nonsense webinar broke down strategies for capitalizing on social trends and gave practical insights for how community banks, credit unions, and financial brands can more effectively engage with their online followers.
We recently held one of our most popular webinars ever!
Access the free webinar recording and event resource! Additionally, below is a quick recap of some of the key tips and hot takeaways from the webinar.
Focus on Interests, Not Demographics
TikTok is the platform on everyone’s mind, but it’s more than just access to pockets of different generations. “I hear from a lot of financial brands that they want to use TikTok to reach younger audiences,” said Ben, “but what’s really important to keep in mind is that these platforms are appealing for a wide variety of age ranges.”
The newest social platform is more than just a platform for trending dances and “the youths” – with more than 1 billion active monthly users, it’s popular with every age group. Only 32.5% of users are below the age of 20 on TikTok. In fact:
- 17% of users are between 30-39
- 14% of users are between 40-49
- 8% of users are over the age of 50
While it skews young, you can find creators and followers of all ages.
This diversity of age range shows why it’s more important to focus on creating content that appeals to interests. You risk aliening potential members by focusing on one age. Plus, who among us wouldn’t be interested in learning more about personal finance, savings, investments, or even local events in our community? Opportunities are more readily available through interests and provide you with richer chances for authentic community engagement.
“In my conversations with clients, I always tell them to focus on interests shared by the generations, rather than just the ages themselves,” concluded Ben.
Understand the Algorithm
Every social platform offers something unique. From short-form written content to photo-sharing, each of the major social platforms differ.
TikTok is no exception.
“It’s more than just a platform for music, singing, or dancing,” explained Cara. “It’s an avenue for connecting with audiences of all types for different businesses and industries.”
What makes TikTok unique from other social platforms is that, while you can follow your favorite topics and creators like on other platforms, it’s not meant to show you newsfeeds of what your friends or family are up to. Instead, it’s designed to show you content that appeals to your interest, whether or not you know who created it.
TikTok does this through its “For You Page” (or FYP as the cool kids say). This is the first page users see whenever they open the app (and where most of their time is spent). FYP is a “stream of videos curated to your interests, making it easy to find content and creators you love. It’s powered by a recommendation system that delivers content to each user that is likely to be of interest to them.” That means that no two FYPs are the same. Each is as unique to us as our fingerprints.
The algorithm makes it this way by weighing a combination of factors:
- Inventory – what videos are available in the recent past (typically under one week) that the user has not yet seen
- Signals – text, subject, sound, and location of a video and how it connects to content the user has engaged with in the past
- Predictions – Based on signals, what subjects and other creators should the user see
- Score – factoring and weighing inventory, signals, and predictions to provide the user content to keep them on the app for hours and hours
“The For You Page is really interesting to me because, when I open apps like Facebook or Instagram, I’m looking at a newsfeed with updates on my friends and people I’m following. On TikTok, I’m seeing content that’s selected specifically for me and my interests,” added Cara.
Form Collaborations
While this information is handy to know, how does your brand take the next step from passive observer to active content creator? Answer: by starting with interests and forming collaborations.
What is your brand known for? Personalized customer service? Take short videos for your customer-facing personnel and humanize their stories with their fun facts or hobbies. Are you the go-to-organization for local events and fundraisers? Stitch content together that showcases your work, its impact on the community, or how it brings people together.
Remember, if it’s interesting to you, it’ll be interesting to others out there as well.
Collaborations are when you and another creator come together to create unique, compelling content. “Focus on collaborations with creators that have audience segments you want to tap into or are similar to yours,” said Ben. “Plus, it’s a feel good thing to collaborate with similar accounts within your space and community,” added Cara.
The most important collaboration for your organization is, by far, between your marketing and compliance teams. While we all want to schedule and prepare for content days ahead of time, this isn’t always possible with social. If you have built the connections between these departments to be strong and efficient, you can quickly and effectively jump on trending content and join the online conversation.
Social Assurance’s Marketing Platform makes it easy and simple to upload Reels, transfer it to compliance, and obtain approval, all from your smartphone! If you’re interested in learning more about how this feature could help your brand, get in touch with us today!
Short-form content is here to stay. Furthermore, TikTok doesn’t look like it’s going to be cannibalized by Instagram’s Reels or YouTube’s Stories anytime soon. With these key takeaways from our webinar, your brand should be well-equipped to understand the shifting social dynamic and craft strategies to propel your content to the front of your target audience’s feed.
