‘Tis the season for galas, fundraisers, customer appreciation events, and holiday get-togethers. For many community banks, credit unions, and financial brands, the winter months are chock-full of great moments and opportunities to give back, volunteer, and serve. There’s no doubt about it: The work you do to serve your community is incredibly important and impactful. And you’re good at it! Your events bring together swarms of people, raise tons of dollars, and honor community members in powerful ways. But, between the planning and execution of those events, you’re not always able to take advantage of every great content opportunity they present. Maximizing content starts with engaging photos and videos, which means capturing the best moments from these events is crucial. What’s more, if you’re struggling to mobilize your team, some inspiration can help. Here are seven moments to capture and some pro tips for turning them into compulsively shareable content for social media, website content, email marketing, newsletters, and other pertinent marketing touchpoints.
1. Holiday Decorations
Grab some photos and videos of the bank or credit union’s exterior and interior adorned with festive decorations, such as twinkling lights, wreaths, and, of course, the beautifully decorated Christmas tree. Use close-ups and portrait mode to really capture the vibe. Make a snowman and adorn it with bank/credit union merch; photograph your holiday-decorated branch entrance; capture the magnificence of the stop atop your in-branch tree. When you catch a customer lining up their little one for a festive photo in your lobby, grab a shot of that moment and grab a quick signature on a photo release. These types of candid moments remind folks that your organization is here to serve families in every season and at every life stage.
2. Engage Employees & Teams
Capture candid shots of bank and credit union employees wearing holiday-themed attire (ugly sweater contest, anyone?) or participating in office festivities like decorating desks or exchanging Secret Santa gifts. Consider ways to make it fun: Ask your teams about their childhood wish lists, key memories, favorite holiday foods, and other interesting facts and use them for Reels and stories.
3. Customer Highlights
Take pictures of your team engaging with customers and members, offering small gifts or holiday treats, and thanking community members for their business. Capture photos of open houses and other events that bring your teams and customers together. The holidays are also a great time to highlight your business customers’ seasonal promotions, holiday specials, and events. Keep in mind that you don’t always have to use original content here. Simply sharing an engaging or interesting post from a business customer goes a long way.
4. Community Outreach Efforts
Showcase the bank or credit union’s involvement in community events or charity efforts, including food drives, toy collections, and volunteering. Find content inspiration outside of the standard-issue giant check photo by making a quick shot list ahead of the event and delegating some specific photos to members of your team. Show off the volume of donations (coats, gifts, food), or the people and families those donations impact to bring the meaning behind that generosity to life.
5. Lender Involvement & Relationships
Lenders can be an especially great avenue for generating authentic and relatable content. They often sit on boards, giving their time and expertise to organizations and causes that directly serve the community. They also typically have some unique and inspiring relationships with business, civic, and nonprofit leaders. Encourage them to look for opportunities to capture content at groundbreaking ceremonies, sponsored events, open houses, and other meaningful milestones. These moments create social proof around commercial lending and business products, but they also provide meaningful exposure for your brand in a context that builds goodwill.
6. Customer Experiences with Frontline Teams
A great customer or member interaction can say a whole lot about your team and the way you serve. Take an opportunity to get a photo with a long-time customer or member and provide some background on who they are and how you’ve served them. Kids coming in to open a savings account? Ask for permission to grab a photo and create a post. Doing a promo giveaway for account opens or another organized contest or giveaway? Snap a photo to show it off.
7. Commercial Clients
Look for ways to highlight your business customers. Consumer brands like storefronts, retailers, and restaurants can be the source of idyllic imagery and videos–especially during the holiday season. But don’t overlook seemingly less glamorous clients like farm and ag operations, software companies, and service providers (everything from cleaning services to veterinarians); these businesses have people and stories behind that that can really resonate, and a great story often starts with an intriguing photo of the person, product, or setting behind the business itself.
8. Financial Education
Your teams do a ton of work to help instill and cultivate crucial financial literacy skills. Look for opportunities to highlight your time in the classroom and working with schools and nonprofits. These efforts build goodwill in the context of your brand, but also between your community bank or credit union and the schools and organizations you work with.
Content Is Everywhere
The reality is that content is everywhere! The key to capturing it is to empower your teams (especially lenders, in-branch teams, and those on the frontline) to help capture moments that speak to your organization’s values and longstanding connection to the community. Struggling to capture great social content, tie it to broader marketing goals, or just need a hand overall? Social Assurance works with community banks, credit unions, and financial brands all over the country to help financial brands capture, curate, and share content across channels as part of a bigger-picture content strategy that drives deposits. Interested in learning more about how it all works together? Follow the link below to get in touch.
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