President Obama has made history again this week by taking transparency to a whole new level with an online town hall meeting with America.
Americans were allowed to submit questions to WhiteHouse.gov or vote on questions they wanted to see the President answer. Those questions and votes were compiled, and the President responded to those questions getting the most votes.
By 9 a.m. Thursday, the White House had already logged 70,000 questions.
I believe the same online town-hall approach could be very effective for a community bank.
Such a town hall meeting would likely generate some valuable PR for your bank as well. I believe anything a bank does in this environment to answer questions from its community regarding its stability or even questions about the government’s new role in banking would be seen as newsworthy. In fact, you could talk a number of issues related to the financial crisis and the economy, especially your own local economy.
As I reported in my last post regarding the recent Nielsen Study, PR and other brand exposure is very critical for consumer confidence in your brand right now.
The answers to the questions could be delivered by your bank’s CEO through an embedded pre-recorded video on your homepage or through written responses on a blog. Or a combination of both. And by including share widgets, users could easily share the information with their friends on Facebook and other social networking sites.
Obviously, you may have to set limits so as not to be overwhelmed by questions. You might establish 3 or 4 question categories and agree to answer the first 10 questions in each category.
The key is to be the first in your community to do it. Because once it’s been done by one bank in your community, the chances of it being seen as worthy of coverage by your local news outlets are a lot slimmer.
The White House’s online town hall meeting is just one example of how organizations are changing how they communicate with their stakeholders in this new era of social media.
It’s a strong sign that people today want answers straight from the source. When you do that, it helps people trust you. They won’t always agree with your answers, but it does at least say that you’re being accountable which helps build consumer trust. And these days, it’s more important than ever that a bank create that sense of trust.
That’s what the White House can teach your bank. To find out what a local coffee shop can teach your bank about building community, click here.
I’ve created a Slideshare presentation about the possibilities of social media for marketing a bank brand. If you would like a link to that, please email me through the contact link at the top right and I’ll be glad to manually email you the link.
–Kevin McIntosh
Kevin McIntosh develops creative branding ideas and social media strategies to help community banks differentiate from their competition.
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