The Power of Blogging Enhancing the Community Bank Social Media Marketing Strategy BY NEAL REYNOLDS President, BankMarketingCenter.com Time flies, doesn’t it? Yes, it’s time once again for our biannual article about blogging. Why? Content (marketing) is king. Not only that, but over the last few years, a few months in fact, social media marketing has taken on an even greater importance. The opportunities that messaging across social media platforms in particular, are enormous. The key to growing share of wallets, deposits, customers and revenues is growing relationships. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is the way consumers behave. The watershed shift from in-line to online had begun to take place well before COVID, but the pandemic certainly accelerated it. The result has been an exponential increase in the opportunities community banks have to build and solidify personal relationships. It’s this personalization, as you know, that’s at the heart of the community bank brand. It’s no surprise that banks have been working hard over the last two years to execute strategies that make social media marketing an integral part of their overall marketing. Blogging has become a major focus for forward-thinking banks. Not only can blogging connect you with your customers, build relationships, increase brand awareness and generate sales leads, but it does so efficiently, effectively and measurably. In short, blogging facilitates interaction, interaction equals engagement, engagement equals relationship, and relationship equals loyalty and, ideally, increased revenue. Let’s talk about a few of the benefits: • Establishing Expertise and Authority: Consistently publishing high-quality blog articles enables your community bank to showcase its expertise and establish itself as a trusted source of guidance, services and products. By providing valuable insights, tips and advice on topics such as personal finance, small business banking, mortgage loans and financial planning, community banks can position themselves as go-to resources for financial information and guidance. Over time, this continues to build credibility and trust among customers, leading to stronger relationships and increased loyalty. • Driving Website Traffic and Engagement: Regularly scheduled blog articles serve as valuable content assets that will drive traffic to your website and increase engagement on your social media platforms. By sharing blog posts across social channels and driving visits to your site, you’re giving visitors the opportunity to learn more about your products and services. Additionally, blog articles provide opportunities for readers to comment, share and interact with the content, fostering community engagement and conversation. A lucky side benefit? Those visits are measurable, which means your blogs are providing valuable insights into audience behaviors. • Enhancing Search Engine Visibility: Start by thinking about the size of your website. How many pages are there? Probably not that many, right? And think about how often you refresh/ update the content on those pages. Probably not that often. This is where your blog comes in. Every time you create and publish a blog post, search engines consider that yet another indexed page on your website. This means that with each post, you’re creating one more opportunity for your site to show up on the search engine results page (SERP) and drive traffic to your website in a prospect’s organic search. Utah Banker 14
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