For community-focused financial brands, service and community connection are crucial differentiators. You’re local, you’re connected, and you have deep ties to the communities you serve. As such, you can identify and serve their needs in ways other lending teams, wealth advisors, and financial service providers simply can’t. Showing that community connection is incredibly important. It helps align, attract, and retain good people and teams. It’s great exposure that builds positive goodwill toward your brand. It’s also a key part of community impact management and exam/audit reporting. But, how do you extrapolate the real, human stories behind data points like donation dollars, community service hours, and tracked employee service activities? It starts with asking two key questions: Why and How.
Step One: Surfacing Stories from Data
Start with the data points you have, then take a step back by asking some deeper questions about a seemingly straightforward stat. Once you ask yourself these questions, challenge your team to reflect on their community impact work in the same way.
Example
A lender tracks the time they spend serving on a local nonprofit board each month as volunteer service related to financial literacy. Asking why and how can help your organization extrapolate from one seemingly small act of service, a deeper meaning, value, and impact–one that also resonates with other employees, community partners, customers, and potential customers.
Served on the local food bank’s board for one hour this month.
- Why Questions to Ask:
- Why the food bank?
- Why now?
- Why did you originally get involved?
- How Questions to Ask:
- How has this changed your perspective?
- How do you contribute to the board?
- How is the organization helping people right now?
Step Two: Paint a Bigger Picture
With the answers to powerful questions like why a specific organization is near and dear to an employee, or how volunteering has impacted them personally, you’re able to share more personal, meaningful, and connected stories about give-back efforts.
Example
The lender is passionate about serving families in food desserts and struggling with food insecurity because they have experienced it too. The lender received a scholarship from their local food bank that made a profound impact on their life. Today, they are committed to giving back.
Simple Storytelling Tips
- In their Own Words:
Post about the lender in a Q&A-style interview, so you can share the story in their words. - Snap a Photo:
Add a picture of the employee and others working together, at a benefit event, or working at a food distribution center. - Use Data:
Give a big-picture statistic (or two), perhaps about the organization’s aggregate volunteer hours or its long-standing partnership, then introduce an individual lender. - Give Timely Updates:
Give an update about a timely project, such as the expansion of distribution sites, then explain why this is a particularly important effort and means a lot to this specific lender.
Step Three: Share your Community Impact Story
As you collect more and more real stories from real people about the community impact work they’re doing, why they do it, and how–you can begin to curate them into a bigger brand story that shows your organization’s true, genuine commitment to community.
Tips for Spreading the Word
- Stay Active on Social:
Look for ways to consistently share snippets and highlights about real people and their give-back and volunteerism efforts with regularity–so your audience knows it’s deeply ingrained in your culture. - Use Video & Long-Form:
Complement regular social storytelling with occasional longer-form pieces, like video interviews, case studies, press release, and other highlights. - Cross-Utilize Content:
Every person in your audience (primary and secondary) won’t see every single piece of content you post; be sure to share across channels, recycling quotes, stats, and photos to get the most out of stories. - Align Stories Strategically: Rolling out a new lending initiative? Attractive mortgage or CD rates? Prioritize moments and stories about specific lenders, customers, or related community partners–so you have more opportunity to highlight the effort.
Center on Storytelling
The bottom line is that stories are a powerful tool, and an important differentiator for community-focused financial brands. Better stories make your team and organization more relatable and more visible–making it easier to acquire customers and deposits. Need a hand maximizing storytelling across channels? Social Assurance can help. Community Spark from Social Assurance is a community impact and compliance management software unlike any other–making it easier than ever to track all-things community impact in one, central place–and automating the process of surfacing the stories, photos, and content that come from them! So lending teams and marketing/communications teams can make great use out of this content gold mine!
Interested in learning more? Get in touch below.
