2015 SOCIAL MEDIA PLAN Anheuser-Busch Employees’ Credit Union | American Eagle Credit Union | American Eagle Mortgage Forum | Purina Credit Union
INSIDE // Trend Report // This year’s results // Objectives/Goals // Tactics/Strategies // Method for evaluation // Content Plan // Content Calendar // Analytics // Budget Allocation
SOCIAL TRENDS Social media helps business, period. From employment branding to advertising, organizations have generally embraced the social world. It empowers customers to make their feelings known in a public forum, challenges businesses from a transparency perspective, and generates a greater return than virtually any other advertising medium. It’s hard to remember the world when Facebook was considered an emerging platform. Social media evolved greatly in 2014, shaping and defining the trends for 2015. •
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Video: It’s no secret that image-based content kills on social, but video is what really sticks with the audience. It’s time to make a serious investment in quality video content in addition to blogging and creating other various graphics. Cross-Channel Optimization: While content and voice remain relatively consistent across platforms, users visit the different platforms for varying reasons. By optimizing posts of the same content, brands can maintain consistency while not falling flat on one platform vs. the rest. Customer Service: Quality customer service remains a trend in 2015. Big brands will likely invest in bigger social media customer service teams than 2014. For small companies, such as the credit union, offering a quick response time is key to successfully managing these relationships. Employment branding: The “Facebook at work” conundrum remains a heated topic across businesses everywhere. 2015 begs the inevitable question: How come we’re investing in social, but won’t even allow our employees to access these sites at work? Many big brands invest millions of dollars into a single Facebook page, yet don’t trust their employees to look at the sites. This is detrimental to employee advocacy, while has proven wildly effective for several big names. Audience Receptiveness: People shut brands out on social media if messaging is too pervasive. While it’s more acceptable to push an ad message on Facebook and Twitter, sites like Instagram and Tumblr prove that there’s much value in nontraditional marketing messages that spark a relationship with followers. Reporting and Analytics: You can measure anything on social. Do it. Create your own ROI and measures of success.
2014 Social Results Two Year Growth
46%
American Eagle CU Facebook fan growth
American Eagle CU Facebook fan growth
90%
American Eagle CU Twitter follower growth
480%
American Eagle CU Twitter follower growth
32%
Anheuser-Busch ECU Facebook fan growth
240%
Anheuser-Busch ECU Facebook fan growth
87%
521%
179%
Anheuser-Busch ECU Twitter follower growth
Anheuser-Busch ECU Twitter follower growth
American Eagle experience higher growth than ABECU this year. Although Twitter growth is quite close, there’s a wider gap between Facebook pages. I attribute this to the nature of our field of membership. American Eagle continues to grow and thrive, while Anheuser-Busch is more steady in terms of growth. In fact, Anheuser-Busch’s platforms have better engagement and more followers than American Eagle despite AE’s faster growth, most likely because main office employees identify with the AB page.
While American Eagle certainly spiked in 2014, growing at a much faster pace, Anheuser-Busch’s growth has far outpaced AE’s over this two year measurement span.
OUR YEAR IN REVIEW
LOOKING AHEAD 2013-2014 OBJECTIVES: ALICIA & MAGGIE When I took over as the credit union’s social media specialist in June, I noticed that the objectives from the past social specialists were already set. While these objectives are milestones we should always strive for, 2015 will bring more measurable and valuable priorities that will benefit the organization’s bottom line.
2015 OBJECTIVES Anheuser-Busch ECU | American Eagle CU • •
Here are the past social media objectives: • • • • • • •
Increase brand awareness Enhance member communication Build following Monitor and track social media campaigns for success Stay up-to-date and grow social media portfolio Reach millennials To create more goals throughout the year
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OUR YEAR IN REVIEW
Goal 1: Increase our level of exposure on social media, thus increasing our brand awareness by 10% by EOY 2015. Strategy 1: Persuade current followers and fans to engage with our content, whether it’s through sharing, commenting, retweeting or replying, thus increasing our reach to potential new connections. Tactic 1: Through creative content and original information, we can foster a stronger relationship with current followers and potential followers. KPI 1: We will measure success by tracking week-to-week engagement (comments, shares, posts to page, impression and reach) and page growth. Goal 2: Increase number of website visitors through social referral by 25% by EOY 2015. Strategy 2: Convince interested fans to visit specific website pages per credit union finance objectives and current marketing campaigns. Tactic 2: By building follower interest, crafting creative messages and utilizing paid promotion to new audiences specific to current marketing objectives, users will eventually be enticed to click a link to our website and will stay there. KPI 2: Success for this goal will be tracked using Google Analytics’ social referral function. I anticipate more clicks than successful conversion, but by carefully crafting a social media content calendar, we can build this relationship more carefully, instead of throwing around mixed messages.
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Goal 3: Increase loyal website and blog visitors by 5% per month by EOY 2015. Strategy 3: Cultivate relationships with fans, making them loyal to both our blog and our website, through paid and organic social outreach featuring offers and educational information. Tactic 3: Financial products are not attractive by nature, but by promoting the credit union difference on social media and on our blog/website, we will grow loyalty and increase our number of online conversions, from applying for new products to using online banking services. KPI 3: We will measure this goal’s success by tracking conversions through Google Analytics. Because it hasn’t been tracked before, we will hope for a 5% raise per month of the year. Goal 4: Increase total conversions from social media by 5% per month in 2015. Strategy 4: Take social media fans and make them new product holders, whether they’re current members growing their share of wallet or new members opening a free checking account by educating them on the value of our services, the benefits of a credit union, and appeal to potential savings. Tactic 4: By building relationships on social and “warming fans up” to our products and services through a mix of content (promotional, educational, event-driven), we will convert fans’ primary method of new services acquisition from in-person or over the phone to online from social media. KPI 4: This goal will be measured through Google Analytics’ conversion and referral function. We will record this value weekly, or after promotional content is posted on social, so that we may conduct additional A/B testing if necessary.
American Eagle CU Mortgage Forum •
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Goal 1: Encourage Follower Growth and Engagement among the real estate community in our field of membership-follower growth by 45% by EOY15, and engagement increased by 30% by EOY15. Strategy 1: Convince real estate agents, former mortgagees, and our real estate department to engage on our Mortgage Forum page, ultimately leading to more awareness and a greater chance of referral. Tactic 1: Create engaging, useful content advertising our excellent mortgage rates, friendly real-estate department, and purchase mortgage products. Content will be streamlined and ready-for-use. KPI 1: Measure shares, comments and average new followers per week. Goal 2: Increase number of website visitors by 60% by EOY 2015. Strategy 2: Convince interested real estate agents to click on specific links to our website, ultimately leading to a referral to a client. Tactic 2: Create engaging, useful content advertising our professional team, purchase mortgage products and excellent rates. KPI2: Measure social referrals through Google Analytics, and additionally analyze the bounce rate and how “sticky” our referral sources are on average.
Purina Credit Union • •
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Goal 1: Increase our level of exposure on social media, thus increasing our brand awareness, with specific regard to follower growth and engagement, by 200% by EOY2015. Strategy 1: Persuade new members and fans to engage with our content, whether it’s through sharing, commenting, retweeting or replying, thus increasing our reach to potential new connections. Tactic 1: Through creative content and original information, we can foster a stronger relationship with current followers and potential followers. KPI 1: We will measure success by tracking week-to-week engagement (comments, shares, posts to page, impression and reach) and page growth. Goal 2: Increase number of website visitors through social referral by 50% by EOY 2015. Strategy 2: Convince interested fans to visit specific website pages per credit union finance objectives and current marketing campaigns. Tactic 2: By building follower interest, crafting creative messages and utilizing paid promotion to new audiences specific to current marketing objectives, users will eventually be enticed to click a link to our website and will stay there. KPI 2: Success for this goal will be tracked using Google Analytics’ social referral function. I anticipate more clicks than successful conversion, but by carefully crafting a social media content calendar, we can build this relationship more carefully, instead of throwing around mixed messages.
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Goal 3: Increase loyal website and blog visitors by 30% per month by EOY 2015. Strategy 3: Cultivate relationships with fans, making them loyal to both our blog and our website, through paid and organic social outreach featuring offers and educational information. Tactic 3: Financial products are not attractive by nature, but by promoting the credit union difference on social media and on our blog/website, we will grow loyalty and increase our number of online conversions, from applying for new products to using online banking services. KPI 3: We will measure this goal’s success by tracking conversions through Google Analytics. Because it hasn’t been tracked before, we will hope for a 5% raise per month of the year. Goal 4: Increase total conversions from social media by 3% per month in 2015. Strategy 4: Take social media fans and make them new product holders, whether they’re current members growing their share of wallet or new members opening a free checking account by educating them on the value of our services, the benefits of a credit union, and appeal to potential savings. Tactic 4: By building relationships on social and “warming fans up” to our products and services through a mix of content (promotional, educational, event-driven), we will convert fans’ primary method of new services acquisition from in-person or over the phone to online from social media.
CONTENT PLANS ABECU/AECU
AMERICAN EAGLE CU MORTGAGE FORUM
Because of the low success rate the mortgage forum page has had in the past, I decided it would be best to only work one month at a time. The target audience for this page is real estate agents in our field of membership, and because they are busy and on-the-go, visual content with information they can easily apply to a variety of clients will be most useful to them while satisfying our marketing goals.
Above is the proposed content plan for Jan-Feb ‘15. Each posting type will satisfy a different social media objective for 2015. Interactive Posts, with supporting graphics, will satisfy the engagement and level of exposure on social media goal (Goal 1). Personal Finance Education, with supporting graphics, videos and blog posts, will satisfy the blog/website visitor loyalty goal (Goal 3) and eventually will lead to the satisfaction of our conversion goal (Goal 4). Promotional Blog Posts, with supporting graphics, will increase our number of website referrals (Goal 2), strengthen website loyalty through frequency and awareness of products/services (Goal 3), and increase total number of conversions through awareness and education (Goal 4).
Promotional Graphics, Personal Finance Graphics and Credit Union-centric Graphics satisfy goals 1 and 2 in different ways. Many real estate agents who like our page will engage with our posts because they’re passionate about working with credit unions, satisfying Goal 1. If they aren’t familiar with our services, they will be more enticed to visit our website to learn more about our mortgage team and what we can offer their clients, satisfying Goal 2. Very few other credit unions create meaningful content that real estate agents and buyers alike can access, so doing so will increase our engagement and brand us as a unique mortgage resource.
PURINA CREDIT UNION (LAUNCH PAGE)
Interactive Posts, with supporting graphics, will satisfy the engagement and level of exposure on social media goal (Goal 1). Personal Finance and Merger Education, with supporting graphics, videos and blog posts, will satisfy the blog/website visitor loyalty goal (Goal 3) and eventually will lead to the satisfaction of our conversion goal (Goal 4). Promotional Blog Posts and Merger Education, with supporting graphics, will increase our number of website referrals (Goal 2), strengthen website loyalty through frequency and awareness of products/services (Goal 3), and increase total number of conversions through awareness and education (Goal 4).
POSTING FREQUENCY Facebook: 5-8 posts per week optimized for our audience’s online behavior Twitter: 5 posts per day optimized for our audience’s online behavior Pinterest: Pin for 1 hour per day, with a 60/20/20 breakdown of content: 60% original blog content 20% original content from the Internet 20% repinning LinkedIn: Twice per week optimized for our audience’s online behavior Google+: 7-10 posts per week
ANALYTICS & MEASUREMENT FACEBOOK & TWITTER
BLOG ANALYTICS
PINTEREST & LINKEDIN
WEB REFERRALS
*Budget will possibly update to reflect more money in Facebook advertising and less in promotions and contests. Contest will depend upon engagement needs and marketing objectives for the credit union as a whole during Q2-Q3.