Association of Military Banks of America

Social Media Is Worth It! – 5 Tips from a Bank That Uses Social Media

Social media can be a powerful tool to access customers in today’s tech-savvy environment.  It can also be a way to resolve problems, market your bank’s community involvement and communicate in real-time with your current customers.  After gaining information from a military bank that is using social media in their marketing and communications efforts, we thought it was important to share their successes with you.

Tip 1: Improve Customer Service

Currently Broadway Bank of San Antonio, TX is using Facebook, Twitter and Linked In.  The bank is located in 12 different towns and on three military bases.  Broadway Bank is reaching over 2,500 people through social media per month; 2,000 of whom are either customers or prospective customers. In the past year, Broadway Bank of Texas has been able to respond to 19 customer issues using these social media platforms.  

Tip 2: Highlight Your Community Involvement and Partnerships

Social media can provide your bank with a great opportunity to highlight what you are doing in the local community and with whom you are doing it.  We all know that banks are providing support, monetary or otherwise, within their communities throughout the year, especially on-base.  Broadway Bank is finding that sharing this information on social media is helping customers stay informed about what the bank is doing in support of the local community.

Tip 3: Provide Up-to-the-Minute News and Information

Communication with customers is becoming more and more of a challenge.  Many customers can access information and news with the touch of their fingertips and cutting through the noise can be difficult.  However, if you are attached to your customers through social media this provides an opportunity to reach customers in real-time.  Broadway Bank has been able to use social media to alert their customers about bank closures because of weather or website issues.

Tip 4: Share a Press Release

Twitter and Facebook both provide a great opportunity to share information from a press release; the great thing about this is that you can track how many people open the link in these posts.  So, if you drop a press release you can see how many people accessed it, and how many downloaded it.  Broadway Bank found that one press release they released on Twitter had over 20 tweets written about it which resulted in an impression reach of 14,600.

Tip 5: Staff your Bank

Broadway Bank also indicated that their human resources department has begun using all three social media platforms, Linked In, Facebook and Twitter, to reach out into the community in their search for possible candidates for open positions.  Broadway Bank has found success with their implementation of social media. “We have truly increased our reach across multiple stakeholders and interested parties.” stated Sara Brouillard from Broadway Bank.  

With all these ideas and tips, the decision to begin your bank’s journey into social media must be well-thought out.  It is a good idea to create specific guidelines for social media and align those guidelines with policies and procedures already in place.  Here at AMBA headquarters we have created our own guidelines for our blog and social media.  If you would like to see those, please let us know.  We would be happy to share our ideas with you to help you on your way.

AMBA wants to thank Sara Brouillard and Mike Rowland from Broadway Bank for their help in providing stats and information for this blog.