Last week we talked about the importance of monitoring your credit union brand online and in social media. Despite the regulatory concerns of the financial services industry, regular brand monitoring is good practice for every industry and we laid out three key objectives in monitoring your brand online to protect your brand and prevent fraud.

Late last year the FFIEC released their findings and guidelines for credit unions and social media use. A key finding was the need for consideration around social media monitoring. While the regulatory concerns that come with the financial industry add their own ingredients to the online mix, monitoring should be high on your list regardless of regulation in an industry.

78,000 retweets in the first 12 hours of your tweet. How would you like stats like that for your social marketing program?  Not bad, eh? That’s about the total of retweets Arby’s gained from their tweet with the hashtag #Grammys on Sunday (January 26, 2014)

"Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?" asked Alice. "That depends a good deal on where you want to get to," said the Cat. "I don’t much care where--" said Alice. "Then it doesn’t matter which way you go," said the Cat. "--so long as I get SOMEWHERE," Alice added as an explanation. "Oh, you’re sure to do that," said the Cat, "if you only walk long enough." (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 6)

Marketing without direction is a lot like wandering around wonderland. Heck, sometimes marketing with direction feels like a wonderland, a world filled with things that may not always make sense, under constant change and assault. However, with a little planning and thought, direction can add a lot of clarity and you'll know which way you're going.

Seizing opportunity with a SWOT analysis

Whether you’re in planning mode for a new campaign or about to embark on a new project, a good rule of thumb is to perform a SWOT analysis on your credit union's online marketing program from time to time.

This analysis provides an opportunity to gather insights from all areas of your organization providing a clear understanding of your current market landscape so you can overcome obstacles and seize opportunities in marketing planning.

When we work with new clients at result150, one of the exercises we do is to perform a SWOT analysis together so we can set expectations and align solutions to overcome those obstacles and seize those opportunities together. If you’re curious about how to do a SWOT analysis with your team, download our free ebook. It includes a template to get you started, explanation of the benefits and instructions to get you going.

In conducting a SWOT analysis, there are three stages: Planning, Analyzing, Reviewing.

Planning for your SWOT During the planning phase, you’ll prepare your competitors list used in conducting your SWOT. You can also use a PEST analysis  to gather this information(Political, Economic, Social and Technical). Make a list of individual factors in those categories that will be reviewed during your SWOT analysis in the Opportunities and Threats section.

Analyzing with your SWOT When you get ready to conduct your SWOT, you’ll want to document the questions your team will be comparing.  Give people guidance of what topics or themes you’re looking to measure Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats in and prepare to document those. For example: are you measuring your credit union's ability to be found online, the ability for your credit union to stay present in a visitors mind etc.

Reviewing your SWOT Once you’ve completed your SWOT analysis you can either tally them up or list out your top Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats in a matrix so you can see if there are any overlaps. The information gained from this exercise will inform your marketing planning and project work going forward. For example a lot of strengths in your credit union’s ability to drive traffic to your website will inform your team to defend that, while threats to your traffic will inform your team to be offensive and increase resources in planning.

Happy New Year, here's to a stand out 2014.

Quality matters and if Google’s changes to its search algorithm wasn’t proof enough, Facebook’s recent changes to how it delivers content to a consumer’s newsfeed is affirmation that internet giants have made user experience a major priority in optimizing their content delivery and ad models.