Posted by Lisa Hochgraf
On Tuesday I had an excuse to talk with Gene Blishen--and what a pleasure.
My excuse was research for an upcoming CUES Tech Port article about credit unions that are patenting technology they have developed. (Get notified when this comes out by subscribing to the free e-newsletter here.) The pleasure was getting to just talk more generally with Gene, the visionary CEO of $40 million (Canadian) Mt. Lehman Credit Union, Mt. Lehman, British Columbia, and chief blogger at Tinfoiling. A question Gene asked me crystalized something I had been mulling over for a while, and I'm ever so grateful to him for asking it.
As the conversation warmed up, I told Gene about my trip to Minneapolis for CUES Experience last week. It was great greeting folks in person that I had already met previously in the blogosphere. I was grateful for their ideas about how to better use social media, but my replies to their suggestions often made me feel like a curmudgeon.
For example, at dinner one night, "the social media guys" tried to convince me to get active on Twitter. "I love you guys and I like to keep up on what you're doing," I said to these folks who talk to each other regularly in 140 characters or less, "but I need to put my energy more directly into the CUES membership. Many of our members are not on Twitter."
"You should post all the photos from the conference on flickr," another social media pro suggested, "and invite all conference attendees to upload theirs." I told Gene, "I felt badly saying I didn't really see the point for that since most CUES members are not yet actively using flickr."
But then Gene asked me the key question question I mentioned earlier: "Did you feel like you already knew the people that you met in the social media world when you met them at the conference?" I said I did.
And then it dawned on me. Blogs and social media have created a whole new network of people in the credit union world who felt connected and even akin to each other before they ever meet. While CUES Net, the CUES members-only listerve, has been creating bonds among CUES members for years, dialog with CUES staffers is more natural, even expected, on a blog. And the time for blogging seems ripe. Both CUES Skybox, an early CU industry blog, and this one are getting more visits and comments all the time.
The idea that now's the time to learn social media and blogs so you can greet members when they come seems to apply to credit unions as well. Wouldn't it be great to get to know and have some level of trust with the people who will be giving you financial advice, before you ever meet them in person?
So maybe it won't be long before I can participate in a blog dialog with a whole lot of CU executives about industry-important topics; I might even be willing to try to get started talking about those things in 140 characters or less if it means getting more connected with members. :-) And I think social media may help deepen connections among CUES members over time, too. That idea of everybody uploading conference photos to one place definitely has merit. I'm thinking of my current blogging and social media use as good training ground for what may come.
"But my members don't blog" seems a pretty fair statement for most CU executives to make today. It's the "yet" lurking silently there at the end of that phrase--and the potentially significant connections with members that social media can make--that makes me think it's time for credit unions to get their toes in the social media water. Or maybe wade in up to their necks.
For specific tips on how to get started in social media and blogging, read "Sense and Respond Marketing," "To Blog or Not to Blog" and other articles in Credit Union Management magazine's Internet marketing archive.
