It seems AI is everywhere. At conferences, in boardrooms, in headlines, and just about everywhere you look, someone is talking about the impact of generative AI tools and, more specifically, their impact on sales, marketing, and creative teams. Those embracing these new technologies are undoubtedly saving time and increasing productivity. At the same time, audiences are becoming more and more skeptical and avoidant of content that appears to be AI-generated. All that to say, AI tools can certainly be helpful, but images, stories, and updates that lack a human touch are less interesting than ever. So, in a world of AI efficiency, when should marketing teams actually avoid it?
Sourcing Photos
Photography is really crucial to your content marketing mix–especially on social media. For community-focused financial institutions–the ones showing up for community events, chipping in for disaster relief, supporting local, fueling give-back initiatives, and deeply ingrained in the businesses and families that power their communities–photo opportunities abound. In fact, it’s often the case that a photo of a long-time customer, an image from a long-standing community fundraising event, or a picture of a cute puppy in the drive-thru can do more to show the way your organization knows and serves its customers than anything.
Importantly, photos often come from across your branch locations and teams–making it especially important to have compliant and streamlined systems and processes in place for sourcing and curating that imagery. And, while AI can be helpful in quickly creating some types of visuals, they’re not necessarily the kind of images you want to get into the habit of using on your social media where, instead, real photos of real people can go a long way in connecting and relating.
Stories & Updates from Lenders
When it comes to great stories, front-line teams (lenders, sales agents, and business development folks) are often a great resource. Whether they’re commercial lenders who have developed long-standing relationships with local businesses or residential teams working with local families to find the perfect home, lenders are deeply ingrained in their client relationships. As such, they can help surface relatable and memorable stories about the challenges your organization helped them overcome through clever savings tools, lending solutions, operations management, fraud prevention services, and more.
While some elements of storytelling can certainly be streamlined with generative AI tools, the core work of identifying, sourcing, and working with client-facing teams to draw out human stories and testimonials from clients, and retell those stories through strategic content requires significant human touch. One important way to do that is to empower sales agents to leverage their own social media channels. This allows them to share their own stories, showcasing their unique experiences working with clients of all types and building rapport with their audience in a way that generates future business. By the way, the right content and compliance solution can help financial brands build processes that compliantly facilitate social selling for lender teams.
Community Updates & Give-Back Initiatives
From sponsorships to volunteerism and from financial literacy initiatives to outright donations, your organization does so much to support the community. These efforts can make for powerful social media content, where people involved and impacted by this work appreciate your generosity and are looking for ways to spread the word about causes they care about. Community members also like to see these updates; they’re relatable, help people align with your company values, and generate positive sentiment and brand associations.
This is a place to dig deep and be a little vulnerable; it’s not necessarily the place to learn on AI tools. When you share about an important cause, shed some light on your organization’s tenured history in supporting it, tell a story about why your team cares so deeply about the cause, or share a story about the people this support impacts. Use photography, storytelling, and quotes from real people to bring these stories to life in meaningful ways. Keep in mind that AI can help you clean up or edit your post copy; it can even help you brainstorm, but when it comes to thinking deeply about how your organization is connected to a cause or community effort, nobody knows you commitment to community like you.
Celebrating Your People
Another important place to speak from the heart is when telling your employees’ stories and sharing the deeply human work they do to connect with customers and members. Here, again, AI can be helpful in helping you think of interview questions or providing copy edits, but it certainly doesn’t know the depth and experience of employees’ skills and service. It also just doesn’t know and care about your employees the way you do.
Make social posts about specific members of your team and their accomplishments, milestones, or career experiences. Avoid lumping posts about multiple employees together into a single post, which can take away from the individual recognition employees feel when their stories are highlighted and shared.
It’s also a good idea to include a photo of the employee. A professional headshot is ideal, but it can also be good to use a candid shot or two of the employee volunteering, working with a client, or interacting with a community member. All of these efforts show your people in a human and relatable way that distinguishes them from big banks and credit unions with brands that feel generally faceless to consumers.
Thinking Local
There are certain intangible experiences that translate especially well in marketing. Things like relatable experiences, common problems, and humor: Content that balances these concepts well can make people feel deeply understood. In short, the best marketing usually taps into insider information in a way that is highly relatable. But, AI isn’t super capable when it comes to relatable human experiences. It has lots of data inputs about what humor is, what it feels like to be in a massive crowd on game day, what frustrations certain people and businesses might face, but because it can’t feel, it just doesn’t really get it.
Tapping into the intangible elements that make your community especially unique takes your content to another level. Practically, this might look like a post the day before game day of an iconic tradition or location with a simple caption. Or, perhaps it’s the language you use to talk about local food, festivals, or seasonal events. Photography is also key here; use images of local landmarks, cultural happenings, and things that bring your community together to reinforce how deeply ingrained your organization is. This requires brainstorming and planning that AI isn’t necessarily equipped to do. It might know about top spots to eat in your city; it might know about local college football rivalries, but truly effective content is several layers deeper.
Get Started
The bottom line? Nobody knows your community and the people in it quite like you do. Certainly AI tools can help you tell that story, and certainly there are opportunities to save time and resources, but relying solely on AI is a fast-track to inauthentic content that misses the mark.
Looking for ways to amplify your financial brand’s social and digital presence (compliantly, of course)? Social Assurance is here to help. We work with community banks, credit unions, and financial brands nationwide to streamline content planning, production, and execution across channels. That includes ad buying, digital placements, long-form strategy, social selling, and certainly social media. Learn more by getting in touch through the link below.
