Five Doses of Credit Union New Media Awesomeness
Posted by Brent Dixon on January 25th, 2008
The Credit Union Innovators Podcast
Last week Tim McAlpine from Currency Marketing launched a podcast devoted to highlighting and interviewing passionate and inspirational people from the credit union movement. His first guest is Gene Blishen, the tech-and-people-savvy General Manager of Mt. Lehman Credit Union.
One of my favorite parts is Gene discussing the future of credit union survival:
The question I would first and foremost ask any board or credit union manager is “Are you relevant to your members?” and, “Do you have passion to exist?”
Word on the street is there’s talk of an interview with the CU Skeptic. Sweet conflict!
Listen to it on the web here or subscribe to the podcast in iTunes here.
Banktastic, a social network for financial institutions
In late October of last year, the Garland Group launched this social knowledge hub for financial institutions. Now don’t get in a tizzy just because of the word “Bank.” Here are a few discussions happening in Banktastic:
- What is your favorite credit union marketing campaign of all time?
- Emerging Markets and What They Could Mean for CUs
- Using Mobile Phones to Make Remote Check Deposits (which is honestly worth a blog post of its own)
The community is currently in “semi-private beta” What does that mean? “We have no idea,” says Brad Garland. But you will need an invite to join. I have a few, and I know several others do too. Post in the comments if you’d like to join, and I bet you’ll get hooked up.
Update: The Banktastic Invite Fairy hooked me up with quite a few more invites. If you want one, email me at brent [at] trabian [dot] com.
Young & Free Alberta
If you haven’t taken time to look at the best credit union social media campaign in existence (only rivaled by ChangeEverything), please go check out CommonWealth CU’s Young & Free campaign (orchestrated by the crazy Canucks at Currency Marketing).
After running a contest to find the most charismatic and expressive person under 25 in Alberta, Canada to take a year-long gig as the CUs spokesprson, they hit a goldmine with winner Larissa (see yesterday’s post).
She blogs, she makes videos, she digs up free stuff, and she positions CommonWealth as a youth-centric credit union. And the entire campaign ties to their Young & Free Checking Account.
It’s brilliant.
Tech CU’s iPhone button
Says Gabriel Garcia in a comment on Netbanker (link added):
”...I created and iPhone icon for the Tech CU Blog. One of our members had coincidentally inquired about the same thing the day before. We tested it on his iPhone and enjoys it!”
What a cool way to engage tech-savvy members (of which I have a feeling Tech CU has many) while raising awareness of their blog.
Next stop? iBanking:
(Video of German bank Postbank’s iPhone account interface. Sorry, the video is in German…but the demo speaks for itself.)
The brass|SHOW
I’ve always dug the content Gen-Y experts brass|MEDIA put out in their made-for-gen-yers magazine, brass. It’s relevant, on-point, and an entertaining read.
In early Feb, they’ll launch the brass|SHOW. brass CEO Bryan Sims described it nicely in an email:
We developed a 3-5 minute video podcast about young adults, money and real world stuff, that credit unions can license and place on their site to begin delivering updated content rather than many of the static sites that are out there.
I’m looking forward to seeing what they come up with. And I’m especially looking forward to seeing how it is received by young members.
Check out an example of how the brass|SHOW could play out on a credit union site here
Did I miss something? Post other instances of CU New Media Awesomeness you’ve found in the comments.
Hey Brent,
Thanks for the mention brother. I just wanted to also mention that all the current members of Banktastic recently were given an additional 5 invites per person so they no longer have to hold on to those invites for that ‘special someone’. ;)
And Brent, we gave you a few extras, too, so if others request one from you, you can send them one!
Thanks again, we think we got something pretty special going especially since it’s entirely community driven.
Brad
I just checked out the link to brass|MEDIA and am very excited to see their stuff go live. I even passed a link on to my local credit union encouraging them to check it out. ;)
That could be a great way to engage young adult account holders at CUs.
Oh man, I totally want to check out Banktastic. Hook me up!
Brad -
Thanks for the extras. I’ve been passing them out like candy.
Mike -
I agree, I’m really curious to watch it play out.
I also think the same idea – if they cover topical info and questions – would eventually make for a rad and much more digestible knowledge base content.
Christopher -
Done and done.
Thanks for all of your support. Your crazy Canuck friends sure appreciate it.
Brent / Brad – have a free invite to Banktastic? I’m game to join the discussion…
Great idea from brass to create their own new media content for CUs – I can see how many might CUs might not have the in house time / talent / resources to explore new media on their own…
Tim -
Of course. Thank you for continuing to crank out awesomeness.
V -
I just sent you an invite. Hope you love Banktastic.
Brent, thanks for the shout out. As we get closer to final launch, we’ll be sending out additional updates. Its a continual work in progress and we definitely want to encourage feedback from everyone. Glad other people are as excited about it as we are!