Summer is here, and that means some fun opportunities for social media content. With homebuying season kicking off, festivals in full swing, and communities coming together, there are tons of content opportunities. Not sure where to start? We’ve got you covered. Here are 10 creative ideas to keep social channels buzzing with engaging content.
1. Highlight Festivals & Music Events
Music is a powerful way to connect, and many community-focused financial brands sponsor, participate in, or otherwise support local festivals, concert series, and other live music events. This is a great opportunity to capture and share content showcasing how your organization is involved in and support of both artists and the people who enjoy them. For social media content, capture photos that capture the overall feeling of being at the event: A crowd enjoying a performance at sunset, an exciting moment when an artist really connected, or people otherwise enjoying their time there. Posts from events like these help align your brand with the community in an authentic way, and when you use striking photography, they can garner quite a lot of engagement. Pro tip: Be sure to tag the event, partner organizations, and pages for local artists whenever possible.
2. Employee Spotlights
Humanize your brand and establish trust by celebrating the individuals who work hard to serve your community every day. Social media is a great place to post about your employees, specifically on work anniversaries or in light of specific accomplishments like career milestones, graduations, and promotions. Brief, informal interviews are also great social posts. Outline three or four questions (some about their interests and passions and others about their professional experience), and create a Q&A-style post. Employees with substantial tenure, niche expertise, and unique professional experience might be ideal for longer-form pieces, where you have space to ask and answer specific questions about their work in agriculture lending, experience with technology startups, or decades-long career-leading commercial lending. Of course, be sure to also create social media posts about these longer-form spotlights, using interesting visuals, headlines, and links to drive traffic back to these pieces.
3. Summer Fundraisers
Promote upcoming events or projects you’re hosting or sponsoring. Share behind-the-scenes photos or videos on your social media channels leading up to the event. Create or utilize existing event hashtags and encourage attendees to share their experiences on social media and look for great content to re-share with others. After the event, publish a recap post with content captured from the event, and be sure to tag partners, vendors, and other key pages wherever possible.
4. Business Highlights
Highlight commercial clients through posts and videos that show off both their products/services and your relationship with the people behind them. Feature business owners or employees with interview-style posts, discussing their entrepreneurial journey and how your banking services supported their growth. Be strategic in determining which businesses to focus on: Pick spots that people are talking about, clients with unique offerings or spaces, and customers who have captivating founder stories that with capture attention.
5. Art-Centric Event
Unleash your community’s artistic talents by hosting a local art walk or artist-centric event at your branch or collaborating with nearby businesses. This can be a fun, interactive way to foster community spirit. One engaging activity to consider is a sidewalk chalk event. Give your branch a temporary facelift with vibrant chalk art around the building. Provide chalk and a timeframe for your community to participate. To boost turnout, offer a prize for the best sidewalk chalk art. Share photos of the different pieces on your social channels and have your community vote for their favorite!
Home Federal Bank of Tennessee based in Knoxville, Tennessee was the Entertainment Sponsor for the Dogwood Arts Festival. This annual festival features fine art vendors, live music, and entertainment for the community to enjoy. Photo courtesy of Home Federal Bank of Tennessee.
6. Throwback/History
Everyone loves a nostalgia trip. Share vintage advertisements and photographs showcasing the evolution of your institution’s banking services. Highlight significant milestones like branch openings, mergers, and community partnerships, reflecting on their impact. Posts like these attract history enthusiasts and spark conversations. They also speak to your organization’s longevity and established reputation as a fixture in the community for decades–even centuries.
7. Homebuying Highlights
Summer is the peak homebuying season, making it the perfect time to highlight your mortgage lending team and the crucial role they play in helping prospective buyers through the process. Share success stories and quotes from happy homebuyers to emphasize how your lenders go above and beyond to support and service customers during this unique and exciting time. Informational posts can also be helpful here. Consider that people outside of the banking and financial services industry are perhaps unfamiliar with terms like debt-to-income ratio, the factors that impact credit score, and other pieces of what can be a complex and multi-step process. Keep in mind that customers aren’t always ready to buy their next home, but when they are, you want them to think of your lending team. Breaking this information into digestible tips and easy-to-understand insights can help position your social channels as helpful.
8. Activate Lenders
Speaking of lenders, their social presence matters, too! Think about social media content and lenders in two ways: How your brand talks about lending products and services from a marketing standpoint, and how lenders themselves curate their personal brands and leverage social selling as an extension of your brand. Get more eyes on your institution by highlighting lenders’ success stories and key customers. Talk about the problems they helped their customers overcome and the impact their expertise and service made. At the same time, activate lenders on social by making it easy for them to use branded social content available to them from your marketing team, and by building compliance checkpoints into the content they share themselves. (Social Assurance can help with both, by the way!) When it comes to what to post, consider: educational content and tips for prepping for a home or business loan; community touchpoints like board service and nonprofit work; involvement in events and fundraisers; and ongoing financial literacy initiatives. These are easy content opportunities that convey your brand and lenders’ values and reflect positively on your organization.
9. Sports Highlights
Local content reminds your audience that you live in, serve, and care deeply for the community, and game day is a great way to highlight that. Share updates and achievements from local schools’ athletics and activities programs. Pay attention to major games and rivalries and plan for content from tailgates and other events that can be strategic in reminding your audience that your organization is a fixture in the local community. Sports are also a great way to bring people together. Post photos of employees in their favorite team’s gear to create a personal and relatable connection, or, with the Summer Olympic Games happening, consider staging some friendly competition among employees for a themed social channel series.
10. Photo Contest
A photo contest can be a great way to amp up engagement on social channels. Building a contest around a theme (such as a pet photo contest or a calendar contest featuring local landscape photos) gets people excited by aligning with things they love. A few prizes and incentives can also make a huge impact on engagement and submissions. Planning a more robust engagement campaign that spans multiple weeks and calls on the community to submit content and/or vote on content to win prizes can require some significant planning and creative execution–Social Assurance is here to help with full-service, start-to-finish campaign planning and execution designed around your specific goals.
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Whether you’re simply looking for some fresh content ideas or ready to outsource social media content creation entirely–Social Assurance offers robust software backed by expert service. The result? Streamlined content and compliance for community banks, credit unions, and financial brands. Interested in learning more? Get in touch below.
