Social Madness Spotlight: Vantage Credit Union

Jenn Cloud manages Vantage Credit Union's social media outreach through Young & Free, an organization put in place by the credit union to target younger clients. Cloud's car, provided by the credit union, also promotes the brand.

Editor?s note: Social Madness Spotlight entries are provided by company officials.

Social Media stats (Young and Free accounts):

• Facebook: 765
• Twitter: 721

People behind the accounts:

Fast facts:

Vantage Credit Union? ? Vantage Credit Union Latest from The Business Journals St. Louis Community Credit Union, others take national, state awardsFox Sports bumps up ad rates for Cardinals gamesCredit unions in St. Louis win at banks? expense Follow this company has a separate domain strategy and launched a separate program specifically to reach 18-to 25-year-olds. Young & Free?s YouTube channel has nearly 100 videos uploaded and over 21,000 views. The spokespeople produce one new video each week on topics ranging from money management and lifestyle tips to highlights from events across St. Louis. Young & Free?s active social media platforms are Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Foursquare, which corresponds with their ongoing and interactive ?Find The Cube? game.

Goal:

Social media is kind of like a party where your friends, your family, your coworkers, your boss, your rivals, your competitors, your exes, your high school buddies, your annoying neighbors, some random businesses, and people you don?t even know come together across different online platforms to share their thoughts.

Turning human interaction into something beneficial for your bottom line is easier said than done and the best analogy I?ve found for it is that of tending a field. It takes seeds that don?t even look like the eventual plant you are trying to grow?and then learning about all the things it needs?then actually doing these things over and over again until the plant sprouts. You need to give a lot to that little plant before it can give something really delicious back.

Social media, as a new layer of communication, is something that Vantage Credit Union really believes in nurturing. So much so that they have a sizeable, multi-part social media strategy and the largest part of it is a special program called Young & Free St. Louis. It is a project within Vantage as a whole but that functions fairly independently through its own special website and social media.

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