We all know how time-strapped today’s credit union employees are. They wear many hats to make their organizations run lean and mean which ultimately contribute to better serving their members on a daily basis. Any time they can use a tool, app or workflow to ease the workload, it is a welcomed invitation.
 
Newsletters are ideal community builders with your members to promote products, educate on finances, and enhance the image of your credit union. But as any marketer will tell you, they can be a bit laborious to produce on a consistent basis. So if there’s a newsletter answer that makes the whole production process a snap, it might be an option to try.

Heard of Paper.li?

Lifting some info from its website, Paper.li allows you to automatically find, publish and promote the articles, photos, and video you follow online. It’s a “set it and forget it” application that goes out to your audience every day, while building their trust in you. Best of all Paper.li is free – although you can sign up for a pro version that provides a plethora of additional features.

Sound like a commercial, don’t I? That’s because I have been using Paper.li for at least a couple years (The Daily DML) now and I haven’t had to mess with it once during that time. I have set it up to automatically publish marketing articles, tweets and posts that I follow so my audience can benefit from top quality content every day. And, again, I don’t have to do a thing anymore. But I could if I wanted – and probably should at some point.

Yet, the feedback and retweets I receive from this daily publication are phenomenal. Not a day goes by that I don’t get a “thanks for the mention” in my Twitter feed from somebody I follow on Twitter who was automatically included in The Daily DML. It has given me heaps of exposure with very little work. So the return has been tremendous.

For credit unions, this is a no brainer. If you want to provide your members with practical, financial content, then Paper.li is something you should consider to complement your current efforts.

To set it up, all you do is sign in via your Twitter or Facebook account, and your Paper.li publication automatically aggregates your follower’s tweets and posts the most popular ones. You can also set it up to follow certain publications.

I have set up mine to follow financial newspapers, blogs, and other financial and marketing related content. Paper.li does the rest, spitting out a daily pub with practical, timely and related content that my subscribers enjoy – and can use!

Same goes for your credit union. Why not give it a look?

For the sake of this article, I created a new Paper.li newspaper based on my CUbroadcast twitter feed – aptly named The CUbroadcast Feed. This daily publication covers finance and credit union news based on my followers’ content, which are primarily credit unions and companies that focus on serving credit unions. In addition, I set it up to follow financial news from The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNNMoney.com, Reuters Business, Harvard Business Review, and more.

It took me all of 10 minutes to create it. I’m done – until I need to upgrade to the pro version.

Once the online paper is automatically produced each day, it is sent to my email address and posted in my CUbroadcast Twitter feed for all to see and review. Any time one of my Twitter followers is mentioned in the publication, they know about it and many times reply or retweet – which bodes well for my Twitter feed, as it spreads the news even further, promoting more followers to join The CUbroadcast feed. This continued attraction only generates more financially related news for more followers, which fosters the cycle once again. It only gets better with time.

The same can happen with your credit union’s Paper.li feed. The more news it generates – including yours – the more followers it can attract and therefore create more content that draws even more interest. Again, it’s a cycle that only fosters more interest and more growth over time – ultimately building trust with your followers.

Some of the features a Paper.li provides include:

• scheduled updates;
• subscriptions;
• bookmarklet;
• editor’s note;
• tweeting;
• embeddable;
• custom background; and
• usage statistics.

So for credit unions looking for an answer to complement their current marketing efforts with very little effort and bigger returns, check out Paper.li to expand your presence and build additional trust with your audience – a.k.a. your members. Oh yeah, did I mention that it’s free?

Previously published in CUES Inside Marketing.

One of the hottest marketing trends right now, besides mobile this or that, is educational audio podcasts. Yes, these helpful, verbal productions have experienced quite the resurgence lately, as it seems more and more marketers in various industries are producing them to help educate their audiences in a very personal manner. People enjoy listening to these podcasts because they can work, travel, or relax and gain some insightful factoids at the same time. And, even better, they can listen to them when they want.

In an age when educational content is king, there are a number of credit unions pumping out this info already in a written format. That’s great, but writing nice stories about member successes aren’t enough anymore. Today, you have to do more for your member.

Sometimes doing more means doing something different. That may mean producing a financially focused podcast – which is still considered different even though this medium has been around for a while. Based on their extreme scarcity in the credit union land, they are incredibly different. Time to re-use those written member anecdotes as peer-type examples in these educational productions to complement your message and spread the word.

Expose your message to thousands

An educational business podcast is not the end all-be all, but it is another effective means in your multi-communications collection that will cost-effectively and consistently expose your message to thousands – who may share your podcast’s educational content, as well. There are overserved, underserved, and just plain served consumers out there looking for a change, looking for answers, looking for help. Your practical audio productions, conducted consistently, position you as a financial services leader with the solutions for these folks. Who doesn’t want that?

Most credit unions already host advice-laden, weekend seminars on such valuable topics as investing, debt management, mortgage lending, retirement, financial literacy, etc. These events are incredibly valuable and many members attend. But hosting a live seminar is only scratching the surface of your membership. Again, expose that same message in different channels. Create a wide-reaching, online podcast series based on the same seminar topics. Here are a few ideas you have probably already thought of:

• “5 Steps to Getting Out of Debt”
• “6 Simple Ways to Qualify for a Mortgage Loan”
• “7 Secrets to Saving for a Robust Retirement”
• “10 Vacation Tips that Won’t Sap Your Savings”

Not only do these messages resonate well with live attendees but, once more, they will resonate well with an exponentially larger audience: the thousands of members who visit your site every week – and possibly a few prospects, as well.

Since folks always seem to be short on time these days, the “series” format keeps these podcasts short and convenient. This format also creates a bit of anticipation for the next part yet to be aired, which is a good thing because it drives more traffic to your website.

But the series format is a one of many ways to generate interest for your podcast – just like any cliffhanger TV show or movie. The audio podcast’s bigger intent, however, is to create a voice for your credit union: a voice of help, education, and trust. Providing your members with this trusted voice creates future business. But don’t hide your “voice” on some remote, dusty page on your website. Post this recording on the front page where everybody can see it, listen to it, and share it.

Reasons not to do a podcast

So why isn’t your credit union producing a weekly, educational audio podcast to help your members?

We don’t have time.

We don’t have the tools.

We don’t have the staff.

We don’t have the funds to support such an endeavor.

These are excuses that stop you dead in your tracks instead of crushing them with a bold communications vehicle that generates value and interest for your credit union.

Time: A podcast doesn’t have to be 30 minutes of you articulating the virtues of proper financial responsibility. It can be a couple minutes, preferably, of you pointing out three ways to save for your child’s college education, a tip or two on teaching your kids’ the value of money, or how to get pre-approved for an auto loan. Pretty simple and short, yet highly effective and educational, financial topics.

Tools: If you have an Apple (iMac or MacBook), it comes bundled with a program called Garageband. You can easily produce your podcasts with this tool. If you have a PC, try Audacity – a free, open source, cross-platform software for recording and editing. (If you want professional quality sound, you may want to invest in a decent microphone: Sennheiser, Blue, and Rode are a few quality brands.)

Staff: All you need is one person to record, produce, and post these pieces. Again, the tools mentioned above are simple to learn and use. A requirement, however, would be that this person or people be knowledgeable about their subject matter to have credibility with your audience. It would be preferable to have multiple people doing recordings on their area of expertise to display the depth of expertise at your credit union.

Funds: Let’s see – Audacity is free for PCs or Garageband is already there if you have a Mac; the podcast is two or three minutes; the recording takes a few minutes to upload and post, a canned intro and an outro would take a few minutes to produce, and the finished product oozes with helpful coolness. Seems like a pretty minimal cost with a high return on your leadership position.

Now that you have the tools, time, and know-how, when are you going to start your podcast? If you already have one, what are doing with it?

Previously published on CUinsight.

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