There’s No Place Like Home
by Kristen Christian, Speaker & Consultant, Founder of Bank Transfer Day
Connecting financial cooperatives with members of the Millennial and Homeland generations will guarantee the success of credit unions, and therefore prosperity for the communities they serve, for decades to come.
Visiting Fargo for Credit Union Association of the Dakota’s New Ideas conference and to Harrisburg for Pennsylvania Credit Union Association’s Social Centric conference, I was humbled to meet those who seek to serve the credit union mission and grateful for an opportunity to offer insight into effective social media strategy in efforts to reach the next two generations of members.
Meeting with credit union representatives from diverse backgrounds and individualized approaches to serving their communities, I heard the same question several times: Will social media be effective in a community in a rural area or with a smaller population? The answer is a resounding “YES!” In fact, social media can often be most effective in such situations.
Growing up in a smaller community, I spent a significant amount of time online, despite the fact that Facebook, Twitter or even MySpace wouldn’t be conceived for nearly another decade. Growing up, my nearest childhood friend lived several miles away. Before either of us we old enough to drive, we spent the vast majority of our free time chatting with one another on AOL. She loves to tell people that we were so hopelessly dependent on electronic communication that when my parents took my keyboard away as a punishment, she sent me the alphabet via IM, and I painstakingly copied/pasted letter by letter in order to communicate with her via our preferred medium. Although the options have improved significantly in the past decade and a half, the tone hasn’t. In fact, younger members of the Millennial Generation are more “plugged in” and dependent upon instant written communication than my friends and I were.
Financial cooperatives in rural communities face a truly unique opportunity for engagement with younger generations. Too often, such communities aren’t able to offer the education, employment and entertainment that 18-30 year olds seek. Although members of this age group often leave for larger cities, they’ll typically maintain a sense of loyalty to the community that contributed to the content of their character.
Whether your credit union is big or small, urban or rural— I encourage credit unions from every background to explore shared branching and available mobile technologies, like mobile banking and electronic check deposit while continuing to cultivate a social media strategy to share your unique approach to the people helping people mission. A strong social media strategy combined with participation in shared branching and an effective use of available mobile technology and enables credit unions in smaller communities to reach and retain the next generation of members. As our youth rise into adulthood and venture off into the world, membership with a credit union that strives to offer a strong online presence, shared branching participation and evolving mobile technologies will allow these young men and women to invest in their hometown no matter where they end up hanging their hats.
