In this episode, FI GROW CEO Meredith Olmstead sits down with inbound marketing strategist and social media expert Sophie Bawany to explore free and fast ways banks and credit unions can boost social media engagement. From leveraging stories and trending audio to embracing old-school commenting strategies in new ways, this chat is packed with practical tips that don’t require a massive ad budget—just a little creativity and consistency.
Key Takeaways:
Use Stories & Reels to Stay Top-of-Feed: Short-form content like Stories and Reels keep you visible and allow for direct audience engagement—perfect for younger members and cost-effective marketing.
Tap Into Trending Audio: Leveraging trending audio on Instagram or TikTok boosts visibility and puts your credit union or bank alongside mainstream content, expanding your reach organically.
Engage Like a Human, Not a Brand: Meaningful comments, poll stickers, and proactive interactions with local businesses make your institution feel personal—and that's what builds loyalty.
Transcription:
Meredith Olmstead:
Hi there. I'm Meredith Olmstead, CEO and founder of FI GROW Solutions. We are a digital marketing, and sales and service consulting agency. We work exclusively with banks and credit unions. And I am here with our... well, she's our inbound marketing strategist, but really she is our social media guru, is how we like to think of her, Sophie Bawany. Say hi, Sophie.
Sophie Bawany:
Hi, guys.
Meredith Olmstead:
So, Sophie and I were just having a really a fun chat with some clients earlier around a social media sub-brand that we have been creating and building for this new client of ours. And one of the fun things about this, besides just all these silly fun ideas for social media and really coming up with engaging content, but we're really trying to help this client figure out ways to create more engagement with their existing members, with their existing customers and potential new customers without having to pay all these different channels for ad dollars. Obviously ads are very important, but there are ways to drive more meaningful and authentic engagement on social channels without just spending money on ads.
So, I was like, "You know what, Sophie? Why don't we hit record on this conversation and talk about what are some fast and free ways to increase engagement with your audiences on some of these channels?" We know that younger audiences, younger members, younger potential new customers are on social media a lot. They still are. That's not changing. So, how can we authentically engage with them without just spending dollars and dollars, lots and lots of money, tens of thousands of dollars on social media ads?
So, Sophie had some really amazing ideas. The first one we were talking about was stories, or basically reels, and that's for lots of different channels. Could be Instagram. There's Stories on Facebook now. If you're active at all on TikTok, there's lots of great ways to engage with these short form videos. So, Sophie, talk to me first of all, when you say stories, you mean at the very top of Instagram where you click the plus and then you're not creating a post, you're actually creating a story, which is a little video of some kind, or you're posting a little video of some kind. And you said that really, banks and credit unions could do a lot better job of leveraging these placements in order to drive more engagement. On Instagram they disappear in 24 hours unless you save them to highlights. So, first of all, why is this placement better than just posting on some of these platforms?
Sophie Bawany:
Yeah, it's interesting because one of the most slept on aspects of banks and credit unions, because when they're creating social media they look at posts. So, they're thinking about things that are going to live on their feed. And a lot of times those stories get rejected or they get a little neglected. The best thing about a story is, stories live at the very top. So, from a user experience, when you open your social media platform like Instagram, your stories are immediately at the top of your feed. Whereas even if you've created great content, if you post it at 1:00 PM and somebody else posts something at 2:00 PM, the 2:00 PM person's post is automatically going to live higher on that person's explore page or home page. So, they may never get to your content. Whereas if it's on a story, if I'm clicking through one of my friend's stories and your FI GROW is my next one, it'll automatically play into that content. I don't have to click on it as a user, it just Instagram automatically will go through your stories.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, and leveraging those stories, I always know, I always remind clients is really important because if they skew... So, they skew with a younger audience and that's always a big priority.
Sophie Bawany:
A 100%. And besides the audience, it's a great place if you did create good content and maybe you didn't get great visibility. Something I do with our internal account, I will always post something on our main feed and I will always take that extra step to repost it in our story. Because content will live forever, but your story, 24 hours, it doesn't do you any harm to put extra eyes on something and somebody may be like, "Oh, yeah, there's a new podcast up. Let's go listen to it." And you have so many features within stories that you can use to really
Meredith Olmstead:
So, these were the ones that you were like, okay, so if you're going to try to leverage those stories, what are some of the things that promote engagement with those stories?
Sophie Bawany:
Yes, so this is something, even the client that we were speaking to, they got super excited about. We have things like polls. We have things like open-ended questions. You can put a direct URL link with custom text. You can do stickers. It's really nice because you're basically getting a free insight into exactly what your members, viewers, followers want because you're giving them the authority to say, "Hey, do you like X or Y?" And based on what they pick, you now have a direct... it's like a survey that you're not actually emailing to a thousand people. It's an engaged survey. So, it's wonderful for us for insight.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, and we also, I know we've used this in the past, share your... because you're regional, a lot of these institutions are regional or they have a very specific geographic region. So, it can be like, what's your favorite park to go explore in the spring? Or what's your favorite spot to go listen to live music on these warming up summer nights? Or whatever that might be. Where's the best place to get the most creative new flavor of ice cream? Whatever it might be. You can ask these questions and then get people.
So, it's twofold. You're reminding them to comment. You're asking a question that's really specific to their life. And then the information that they're giving you, you can use it in all kinds of ways. So, you could ask them like, okay, what are your financial priorities for the next six months? Or what's your top financial goal for 2025? And give them A, B, C or D and give them answers. Or you can ask open-ended questions and then if they share a business, you go find that business locally, do a shared social media post with them, tag the business, see if they want to do a quick contest with you or some other kind of shared content experience. So, it can be a really great way to increase your visibility for free with new audiences.
Sophie Bawany:
A 100%. And also it's another really cool feature that people sleep on on Instagram is using a comment as the post. So, if somebody comments on a picture, there's a new way to remix to where that comment actually becomes the center and you're answering that question. So, if I put a question out, "Hey, what would you do with $5,000 tomorrow?" And somebody's like, "I want to buy a new car." And we put that answer up and we're like, "Well, $5,000 might not get you a new car, but here's how we would suggest you put that towards your next car buying purchase." We've taken your answer, so it's exactly targeting them. They're going to be so invested and they're going.
Meredith Olmstead:
Fantastic.
Sophie Bawany:
And it tags that person too, which is great. So, it's easy ways to increase engagement.
Meredith Olmstead:
Yeah, that's a great idea. The other thing you mentioned that I wanted to also, because people forget about this, is countdown timers. So, if you've got a conversion coming up, if you've got a new branch opening, a new product launching, a new CEO starting, or who knows? Whatever. It could be a special event coming up that you're sponsoring at your credit union or bank, you could have a countdown timer that helps count down and those can also engage people on social. So, the other thing that you said that of course now I'm getting a little old up there in age, so I don't really know all of these features, but you talked about trending audio, and that a lot of banks and credit unions don't take advantage of trending audio. And of course I was like, what is trending audio? And so, tell us a little bit, Sophie, about what is trending audio? And why is that a great fast way to increase engagement on social?
Sophie Bawany:
So, the easiest example is as soon as a Super Bowl happens, whatever tracks are being played on the Super Bowl, literally within 30 minutes, somebody is creating content using a snippet from that music. That becomes a trend. And the best way to identify them is when you're looking for audio, there's a little arrow that's pointing upwards and that shows you that it's trending. And Instagram has gotten really great. It used to be we had to dig for it. Now Instagram actually has an entire menu that just says trending, and it shows you how many people have used the reel. If it's a red arrow, it means it's trending positive. If it's a green arrow, sorry. If it's a red arrow, that means it's being used-
Meredith Olmstead:
Turning down.
Sophie Bawany:
... less, and you can save them. And what's really great is as soon as you hit the save button, now in your save section, there's an entire file that's just going to be trending audio. So, you can go back, recycle it. And what's really awesome, I will say cautionary, trending audio does have a shelf life. So, if you see something that you like and you like that audio, don't sleep on it. Try to use it as fast as possible because we want to hop on that traction and trend.
Meredith Olmstead:
So, this is interesting, because some of the trending audio is like silly dances, or it can be lip-syncing or something saying something really weird, but then they repurpose it into a different type of scenario or whatever. So, why is that a good way to drive free engagement?
Sophie Bawany:
You are breaking a silo that we know exists for financial institutions. And for banks and credit unions, your financial content only goes so far. But if you're using a trending audio, there's somebody promoting a lifestyle brand that has a million followers using that exact same audio, and you're going to show up on the same for-you-page because you guys are using the same... it levels the playing field and it puts you in a market that you might not organically be able to get to just with your content.
Meredith Olmstead:
Gotcha. So, when you save and then repurpose that audio, it starts to increase the reach of your content almost in parallel with the trending audio itself.
Sophie Bawany:
Absolutely.
Meredith Olmstead:
So, people who are engaging with that audio in other types of content might be more apt to see your content. Okay, I get that. So, that makes it more engaging or makes people.
Sophie Bawany:
It's fun because people, if there's one trend that's for dances and they're seeing it being used in a completely unique way, that automatically captures. It's like, what is a bank doing with this trend or credit union? The algorithm appreciates it because people are going to share like, "Dude, look at what this credit union's doing." This doesn't even match any of them, but it's just, it's free and engaging.
Meredith Olmstead:
It's funny. Yeah. The other thing I'd think too is that from a production value standpoint and time to have to create it, it's so easy. It's like boom, just come up with an idea, do something silly. It doesn't have to be polished, edited, it doesn't even have to have graphics or anything. You can really do it with your phone, probably in a matter of minutes, and then upload it and you're off to the races to take advantage of it. Okay. The last one... oh, sorry. Go ahead, Sophie.
Sophie Bawany:
Some of the best content historically and everyone who's ever created content will understand this. The stuff that you do in five minutes, and you just think of something witty and you throw it up, and then there's stuff that you spend hours on, and you script it, and you make it pretty and it doesn't perform well, it's the worst feeling. So, with trending audio, a cute picture, the trending audio, maybe some text overlay, and you're good to go. You don't need to be spending hours on it.
Meredith Olmstead:
Gotcha. Okay. Last thing that you said when we were talking about this is back to the basics of commenting strategies, is really carving out with your team some capacity once or twice a day to spend 10 minutes replying to comments, replying to people's questions, replying to anything that feels relevant, or fun, or engaging or entertaining. And that used to be a big strategy and then we got away from it because ads really took the priority. And because it does take some capacity, some individual staff capacity to do that. But you're saying now you're seeing that it helping again in terms of driving engagement?
Sophie Bawany:
Yeah, it's never actually gone away. I think we scoot away from it because we prioritized with ads. But at the basic heart of social media, it's a platform for people to interact with people. So, the more social you are and the more you're showing the algorithm that you are not just there to post, you're also there to engage, the higher investment you put into that meaningful comments. And it's not just with people that have already replied to you. Maybe there's an organization that you guys want to partner with, be proactive, go comment on one of their posts. Don't wait for someone to [inaudible 00:13:01] on you.
Meredith Olmstead:
Gotcha
.
Sophie Bawany:
If you're proactive, find 10 accounts that are aspirational. Maybe they're potential partnerships that you want in the long run. Start developing that relationship. They will reply back. And that type of engagement is what's going to increase your reach and long-term, you're going to be rewarded for it.
Meredith Olmstead:
Gotcha. So, you can reply to comments on your own page, but then also even if somebody is talking about local businesses, you could go to their page and comment about, "Oh, just got a shout-out about this place for your great X, y or Z," whatever service they perform, could be a great way to reach into their audiences as well. Don't forget to show off personality. You don't have to just comment about financial stuff. You can comment about seasonal things coming up. It's okay to be silly. It's okay to be real. Just really showing the human side of your brand.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Sophie. I think these are great ideas. They're very easy, very quick, and like you said, they are free. So, appreciate all the tips. If you're interested in learning more about social media or digital marketing for your bank or credit union, please visit us at figrow.com. We have lots of other great content, we have lots of podcasts, blogs, case studies, all that kind of thing. So, we'd love for you to visit us there, and otherwise, let's just all get out there and make it happen.