Historically, financial institutions have been focused on product placement and have largely misunderstood the importance of brand-building in the context of digital marketing. Some, like TD Bank and Mountain America CU, understand how to leverage social media for engagement, human voice and brand value. But there are still many financial institutions both large and small that are not effectively leveraging social media.

According to the Credit Union Times, Gen X will receive $30 trillion worth of inheritance from aging Boomer parents over the course of the next 30 years. And McKinsey says retail financial institutions are expected to see more than half of their revenues coming from digital — including social media — by 2018. Credit union think tank Filene now regards social media as a standard part of a marketing department’s responsibilities. As your consumers pour into to social media platforms, your brand could be missing big opportunities by not participating.

So why have so many financial institutions been late to embrace these new channels? Partly it’s because they approach social media in the same way as they do the rest of their marketing; they think social media is a completely unique and isolated marketing medium. They lack strategy. There’s no budget. And they insist on using social as a one-way communication tool when, in fact, social media is really a completely different animal — a new way to speak to your audience. Tweets and posts are not ads. Instead, you have to think outside of marketing’s traditional approach (sell, sell, sell!), and relate to people on a human level. If you’re not speaking “human to human” and providing content relevant to your audience, then you end up spinning your wheels — no likes, no followers, no shares.

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