In the spirit of open source and cooperation, I thought it would be good to share a few tools and resources with readers that I have used or found recently on the web. All are free and easy to use with tremendous ROI.

Brand Monitoring and Research

“It’s about conversations, and the best communicators start as the best listeners.”
- Brian Solis, Social Media Manifesto

If you are going to embark on a social media campaign in the near future or even if you are not, you need to know what people are publicly saying about your credit union on the internet. Whether it’s news stories, blog postings (good and bad), tweets from Twitter, etc. – you need to listen…and take action if needed.

Why? Aside from being aware of press coverage, if a customer calls your call center and has a bad experience, they can blog about it for the whole world to see. And Google loves blogs. If someone Googles your credit union and related keywords, that information can very likely go to the top of the search results. Not good.

So how do you respond in cases like that? How do you even know when you need to respond? “With honesty. And if they put thought and effort into their post, it deserves a response,” says Vancity’s William Azaroff in a great blog post on the subject.

Google Alerts

Now you can Google (& Google Blog Search) your credit union name every day, but that takes time and a good memory. What you need are internet spies – meet Google Alerts. Google Alerts takes keywords that you give it and emails you any mentions of those as frequently as you want it to, searching the web, news, blogs, and even videos somehow. Many of you more savvy readers probably know about this tool already, but I was surprised recently at a recent social media presentation I was giving when only half the credit union marketers in the room raised their hands when I asked if they’ve heard of Google Alerts. And those of you that use the tool know that it’s worth repeating.

Some ideas for keywords:

• Your credit union name (in quotes so it doesn’t pick up every mention of every credit union in the world)
• Local competitors names
• Your credit union name + “sucks,” “awesome,” “customer service,” “complaints,” etc.

TweetBeep

What if someone talks about you on Twitter? You don’t have time to spend all your time typing your credit union name in Twitter Search. No worries – meet TweetBeep, which proclaims itself “like Google Alerts” for Twitter. It’s pretty neat – you can get email updates every hour and have a lot of control over what you want it to search for.

In addition to the keyword ideas above, you might also want to get a alert on TweetBeep for “credit union” + your city or surrounding area. Many people like to tweet, “Anyone know of a good credit union or bank in so and so?” What a great opportunity for you to tweet back “Check us out – we are a non-profit financial cooperative that is safe, sound & secure. Let me know if you need more info” or something similar in your own voice.

Yelp

How is your credit union being reviewed by others at yelp.com? I recommend checking the site out periodically or setting up an RSS feed to see what and how reviewers are rating your credit union. Use the feedback to amplify or retool your services.

Additional Tools

Local Business Center at Google Maps

Ever do a Google Maps search for a business and see that little pin pop up with more information? Did you know you can edit and add to that? Do it here for your credit union and any branches. Upload relevant photos and videos, web address, specify search categories, business hours, and much more. That way if someone searches Google Maps with “bank or credit union + your city,” you are ensuring accurate and relevant information is displayed.

Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide (SEO)

Here is another Google tool because, well, Google knows a little something about the internet, people use Google a lot, and almost everything they release is free. Do you want people to find your credit union and your web content in search results? Help members and non-members find you by optimizing your website and content for search engines – search engine optimization. There is a wealth of information on the subject on the web, but recently Google put together a nice little introductory .pdf with the essentials for you to download here. Once you understand the basics of SEO, you are on the road to better visibility.

Others? Tips? Tricks?

I hope you find these useful. If you have any other good free tools or have tips or tricks on the ones here, please add your thoughts. Together we are better

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Christopher Morris is the Web Manager for the CUNA Councils, a national organization for credit union professionals. Previously, Christopher was Manager of Communications & Information for the National Credit Union Foundation. As part of his marketing and public relations duties at the Foundation, Christopher built cuaid.coop, the first national online disaster relief fundraising system for credit unions. Christopher is also a blogger at the YES CU Blog: Serving 18-to-30s and a member of Filene Research Institute’s 30 under 30 group.

A few weeks ago Andrew at Jwaala took me through a screencast tour of Jwaala’s MoneyTracker. I’ve been spending the last few days cramming a little more on the other PFMs to get a better picture of the category. Here are a few bullets that stood out to me from my tour and other research. Before I get to those, let me say that I’m not going to try to drop deep, meaningful evaluations of the major PFM products and their implications for the industry. That’s a little outside the area of my knowledge.

So, without further delay, and without use of the terms “game-changing” or “added value”, here are some things I think are pretty cool about MoneyTracker:

Search Their search capabilities are incredibly intuitive. If I’m trying to find a transaction from three months ago at Costco that was around $100, any of these search terms will work:

• costco
• costco last month
• costco last month around $100
• 1/10/2008 to 2/30/2008 costco around $100

I’ve tried similar searches in other apps with less success. That isn’t a specific poo-poo on the other PFM products, I’m just rarely satisfied with any site’s search capabilities (iStockphoto, I’m looking at you. With this emoticon >:O ).

RSS Let’s take the search I just mentioned: “costco around $100.” On the search results page, right next to the search box, you’ll see a link to “make this search an ALERT” which will automatically create an email alert for any transactions meeting those terms. And to the right of that is an RSS icon (image above). MoneyTracker automatically generates an RSS feed for any wild search term you come up with that yields a result. There’s no opening a settings panel or anything. It just makes the feed for you, which brings me to the next feature.

Widgets Now let’s take the RSS feed we just got from our handy little natural language search and make it a widget. MoneyTracker offers a very Netvibes-y, iGoogle-y dashboard page of various widgets displaying the RSS feeds for your specific transactions. You can drag them and everything.

But if there are a few you really want to keep an eye on without having to always be logged into your online banking, you can just as easily plug the feeds into Netvibes, iGoogle, etc.

Ads This is the feature I got the most excited about in terms of it’s relevancy to Credit Unions: Contextual Ads.

MoneyTracker is different from Wesabe and Mint in that is it tied directly to a Credit Union’s online banking system (Surely I’m not breaking that news.). From Jwaala’s home page:

MoneyTracker is designed to deploy seamlessly with your existing online banking solutions (such as Harland and and Symitar etc…). To your members, MoneyTracker appears as a branded addon to online banking that brings a much needed set financial management capabilities.

One of the things we emphasize strongly when speaking on design and site planning is cross-pollinating the site. For example, on your CU’s Auto Auctions page, have a box of action links linking to other services that legitimately apply to the content, in this case, Auto Loans might be a good choice.

Usually all that cross-pollination ends abruptly at the online banking interface. Not with MoneyTracker. You get to continue communication with your members in your online banking software. Aside from visually branding with logos and graphics and color, you can setup contextual ads with an interface very similar to Google’s AdWords, only Google isn’t sending the ads, you are, for your CU’s services. You set ads for all of your different services and let the system serve them up appropriately depending on the content on the page.

So a member searching their statements for “auto” or “home” to see how much they are spending in those areas would pull in ads for your auto loans or refinancing info, etc. And the ads link back to your main site, no one else’s.

As I said, these are just a few of my faves from my tour. Go read more about them and a few more on Jwaala’s Better Online Banking site.

The folks at Common Craft do an awesome job of demystifying social media buzzwords through their “Explanations in Plain English” videos. Here’s their video on RSS (hat-tip to Bryan Sims for sending this our way several months ago):

They also explain blogs, wikis, and zombies.

These rock because:

• Video is a lot more engaging than a long blog post, or even an audio podcast.
• Their presentation is all about imagination and clarity over production quality.
• They don’t talk down to me, they just talk.

Are any financial institutions out there doing something similar with personal finance? I’ve seen quite a few financial literacy podcasts pop up, but honestly, most are boring – not something I’d spend time listening to if I didn’t work in this industry.

Wesabe and Mint have made managing your cash a little sexier. Can understanding your cash be interesting and simple?

I find RSS keeps me in touch with what credit union members are saying on a grassroots level. Through blog posts and comments, raw feedback hits my feeds every day. Gives me a ton of blog fodder.

Forget focus groups. Check the blogosphere to find out what people really think about you.

If you’re not subscribing to a Google Blog Search feed on your credit union’s name, what’s stopping you? (Yes, there are tons of other services out there. I just have better luck with Google.)

I’m going to echo Brent’s shout-out to the Washington Credit Union League in his last post. Of all the state leagues, they’re the first one we’ve seen looking into ways for members to post their thoughts directly to credit unions and leagues. They’re leading credit unions in the right direction.

You can see my skills demonstrated above. One day I’ll be a pro, but I fumbled that piece of sushi right after Brent snapped the pic.

Microsoft recently announced that they’ll be integrating support for RSS in the next version of Windows, currently named Longhorn.

BusinessWeek Online has a great article about the announcement:

Microsoft, which has largely been on the sidelines as RSS gained in popularity, announced plans on June 24 to bake RSS technology into the next version of its Windows operating system, dubbed Longhorn, due at the end of 2006.

Right now RSS is a relatively unfamiliar technology for most people, but as major players such as Microsoft start making it a core part of their applications, it will quickly gain in popularity and use.

What is RSS?

I enjoy having pizza, the newspaper, packages, girl scout cookies and the phone book brought right to my doorstep. I also enjoy having breakfast in bed. I regret to have missed out on the era of “the milkman.” That may just be me getting greedy though.

Now, with RSS, receiving news updates, blog updates and a variety of others is about as easy as having breakfast in bed.

RSS, short for ”Really Simple Syndication,” allows you to choose the content you like and have it delivered to you instantly.

This means no more bouncing and clicking from site to site to site to see what’s new. The goods are brought straight to your doorstep.

RSS is not offered by all sites, but it is quickly setting the pace as the new standard. Most major news sites – including CNN, Fox News, and NPR – provide it as a service. It is also offered by the vast majority of blogs, including CUES Skybox and yours truly.

The first thing you need in order to access RSS feeds is a news reader, also known as an aggregator. There are all kinds of news readers, some web-based and used through your browser, some downloaded and used on your desktop or PDA.

And I am happy to report that most of them are completely free.

A few RSS news readers…

Windows	Mac OSX	PDA	Web-Based
Awasu	NetNewsWire	FeedBurner	NewsGator
Feed Demon	NewsFire	Hand/RSS	Bloglines
RSSReader	iBlog	NewsMob	Rocket RSS Reader
See More	See More	See More	See More

Now what?

Once you’ve found a reader you like, you simply have to figure out what sites you’d like to be kept up-to-date on. To use this site as an example: notice the big orange button that says “XML” on the right side. If you click it, it will send you to our feed. You can subscribe by cutting and pasting the URL (web address) of the feed into your news reader.

Each news reader will be able to tell you in more specific detail how to make the most of its features. It is also worth mentioning that some browsers, including Firefox, Opera and Mac’s Safari have built-in readers. Expect to see this more and more.

Once you have the content you desire established and fed to your news reader, it’s a simple matter of rinse and repeat for each site you’d like to add.

And tell your clicking finger to take it easy for a while.