Episode 17: Content Marketing Strategies for Financial Institutions

Hey there, it's Eric over here at WSI. Just wanted to thank you for taking some time to check out this episode of my Banker Education Series webinar. On this show, I was joined by Chris Nichols from CenterState Bank in their correspondent division. Chris, if you don't know him, he is a content powerhouse, especially on LinkedIn, churning out amazing information, long-form articles, Just really doing a great job building his own personal brand but benefiting the folks at CenterState. So, I had the good fortune of co-presenting this banker education series with him, and we spent an hour on the webinar going through different ways and ideas that community bankers should be thinking about their content strategy and how to produce great content, find great content, share great content. To help build up your own personal brand and credibility, and really just be seen as a trusted resource to the folks that you're trying to influence. So I hope you enjoy the webinar, and if you have any questions or comments, please feel free to get in touch. And hopefully we'll get a chance to see you on future Banker Education Series webinars down the road. Enjoy.

Welcome. We'll go ahead and get started. I'm Chris Nichols, Chief Strategy Officer at CenterState Bank. On behalf of WSI and CenterState, we'd like to welcome everyone to our content webcast today. We wanted to kind of do a brief overview, take about 45 minutes of your time plus questions, about 60 minutes total, to just talk about how we use content here at CenterState and then We have Eric Cook, Digital Officer at WSI, to give us even a broader perspective since he works with banks across the country. We'll take questions and answers. If you look at the chat box on the right-hand side of your GoToWebinar pop-up, you'll have a place to ask questions there. So feel free to fire them off as you see fit. Unfortunately, everyone's in a listen-only mode. So that's the best way to ask questions, and we'll get to them either during the webinar or at the end, and we'll have time for questions both ways. CenterState, so we're a $12 billion bank headquartered in Winter Haven, Florida, and I can tell you that content is probably one of our most successful marketing tactics that we use. I know if you're a bank and you came to this webinar either through our blog or through our email campaign or through Eric's blog or email campaign, you've already been subject to some of that. And so the joke internally here is our blog and our content It's pretty much how I communicate with the rest of our bank, that if I have to tackle an issue right now, my readers kind of know that we've been dealing with, you know, branch transformation issues and trying to figure out a long 5, 10-year digital strategy. And so that shows up as content pieces as I research it. That's one of the things that go on out. And so hopefully the same problems that we have as a bank, other banks are having. And then we do the same thing on the commercial side and the retail side, and much of that we're going to talk about today. We're lucky that we have Eric Cook, probably one of the best in the business. Eric, I'll let you introduce yourself, but we're, we're excited to have you here today.

Cool. And just a quick reminder, change the slide so everybody can see our pretty faces.

Good call.

Yeah, there we go. That's the, that's the joy of a live webinar is we get to do things sometimes exactly the way we intended and sometimes they don't happen the way that we intended, but That's okay, 'cause that makes us genuine, right? So I consider myself a recovering banker. I was a community banker here in Michigan for 15 years, and over the last 11 years, I've been running a digital agency with a global powerhouse called WSI. We work with a lot of community institutions around the country doing web development and social media training and digital advertising, and I'm fortunate to be on faculty 5 banking schools around the country and, uh, and speak at conferences and events. And actually, kind of the, the genesis of this— and we did it in under a year, so congratulations to us, Chris— but the genesis of this idea was Chris and I were at the Michigan Bankers Senior Management Conference up in Grand Rapids last year, and I heard his session and was very impressed. And I've been a big fan of all of the content that Chris kicks out on LinkedIn for a number of years. And so I kind of threw it out there and said, hey, we should, we should do a webinar together sometime. And much to my surprise and excitement, Chris said, yeah, let's do that. And so we've been kind of bouncing back and forth, and today is the day that it actually happened. So I'm pretty excited because I do think content is one of the most important elements of a digital strategy because it's what you're saying to your customers and your prospects and your community. That really matters, and we need to shift our mindset from creating content that's just focused on stuff like product sales and interest rate information to really get into the meat of what really matters to your customer. And educational, entertaining, informational— those are the things that I think are really kind of a big deal in the world of content and making sure that your institution is is gonna be a viable option for customers that think that you're doing more than just trying to sell 'em something. So I guess to kind of follow through with the slides, cuz we did put slides together in an attempt to try to keep us on target, I'm gonna ask Chris to kind of walk through the next slide. But thinking about content as more than just doing it just because the whole gist around this is ultimately we wanna drive revenue. And so Chris has put together a list of some things that he's personally seen with his content strategy. So maybe you can walk through these 5 items and give a little insight on each of them.

Yeah, I just want to kind of set the stage as we talk about content. You know, we always talk about having a goal in mind with every content piece. What are we trying to accomplish? And not only what are we trying to accomplish, but when are we trying to accomplish it? So we'll talk about timing a little later on, but in terms of objectives, We boiled it down to really 5 main objectives that we have here at CenterState. And first and foremost, it's, you know, shorten the sales cycle. Let's use our experience as bankers, let's use our knowledge, let's use our access to our communities in order to make our prospects, our potential customers, both on the retail and commercial side, more educated and smarter in how they do business. When we do focus groups, almost every customer we bring in, retail or commercial, say, You know, I want my banker to think for me or to lead me or to give me advice, to give me insight, and so there's no better way to do that than the content piece. And, you know, I can't tell you how many times our bank was found just by people, you know, searching the web, you know, on social media, and then linking to us that way. So, you know, if you think about a commercial sales cycle, it's about 30 months is how we track it to grab a new customer from the start and to bring them in. And, you know, hopefully do a loan or deposit with them. And that's a long time. And we found we can dramatically shorten the sales cycle, dramatically being, you know, in the 20% range, by educating them with content. And we think about, we either use it for lead generation to get new ideas, to get new customers, or we use it to, you know, move someone along the prototypical sales funnel, so to speak. So shorten sales cycle, increase the number of prospects we have in the sales funnel. That's always good lead generation there. And then cross-sell. So we use content to educate our existing customers on maybe other products, the next best product. And so, you know, as that's kind of the hot topic right now on the predictive analytics front, the artificial intelligence front, is many applications out there can tell you, hey, if you already have a loan, what deposit product they might need, or if you already have a deposit product, what other treasury management product they might need. And then you can do that through education using content. Even almost equally important with that, well, cross-sell is important. One of the easiest, no-brainer places to start for banks is to use content to educate their existing customers, to upsell them. And really, when we talk about upsell, some of that is moving them to a higher-tier product, maybe more, you know, elite checking type account, or move them to a product with more bells and whistles. But really, we talk about increasing transactions and increasing balances. And, you know, I think in a banking industry, we do a great job introducing a product, but a pretty weak job overall at either keeping our employees educated and/or keeping our customers educated about a product. And health savings accounts is a classic example that do a great job introducing that product, but there's probably just 1 or 2 banks out there in the whole industry that really does a nice job at keeping that product in front of the customers day in, day out, and using content for that. to talk about coming health trends and to talk about, you know, timing issues with the calendar. A number of things like that can really go far into building balances, and we found if we use content, our balances almost double over a period of time. And so that's a great place to use it. And then finally, to reduce administrative costs. Anything you're trying to do to have a more educated customer base will most likely reduce your administrative costs. So the prototypical example is teaching someone with a video on how to reset their password or privacy or things like that. So that reduces costs that you would normally spend maybe answering phones or people coming in your branch, but it also makes the bank less risky by keeping people, you know, safe, whether it's cybersecurity or whether it's, you know, how to use your balances, your revolving line effectively. So we've done both of those. So those 5 main pieces, there are probably more subcategories with that. But let's even pull out a little bit. Eric, when we talk about content, what do we talk about there? Define content for us.

Well, it's— in the olden days when I was a bank marketer, content was really the advertising material that you put into the newspaper, and it was focused on either rate or service, and you were trying to sell a particular product. And the educational content back in the day didn't have the luxury of being electronically distributed, and even if you had a website, It maybe wasn't the best platform, so we had documentation in the lobby with brochures and flyers and handouts and statement stuffers. And now that content has evolved into the digital space and doesn't mean that you can stop doing some of that, although I think you probably could by now with some of the printed material, just because things change so quickly and digital content gives you the ability to be nimble and up to the minute as to what's going on. But really, content, we think about it as thinking like a publisher, telling a story, thinking about different ways that you can educate people in the process. In your prior slide, you were talking about, you know, making sure that your customer is an informed buyer. I remember when we bought our first car and had the ability to go onto the internet and actually do a search to find out what the sticker price and the holdback and the dealer price was. And I felt so much more empowered when I went in to buy that car because I knew more about that purchase decision than I would have a couple of years ago. And so positioning the customer to be more educated and to position yourself as the educator doesn't necessarily mean that they're always going to come to you for that product or service, or that I'm always going to go to that one dealership to buy that vehicle. But if you can be part of that educational process in the creation of the content, I think you're gonna have a much better chance of building some karma with that prospective customer and seeing you as somebody that really wants them to know and understand the process as opposed to just focused on product selling and, and other sorts of materials. So, so I see content really as the educational informational part, although there's certainly sales-related content that's out there that needs to go through the necessary compliance, and because you've got rates and fees, which is also content. But I think what really resonates, and I think what you and I are probably trying to talk more about today, is all of that educational— I don't want to call it touchy-feely, but the non-sales yet brand reinforcement. And that content can be structured either at the bank level, so the institution is actually distributing content, Or what we're talking with a lot of banks now is how you can position individuals creating content or sharing content so you build that one-on-one relationship so that your commercial lender is the individual that's sharing info and you respect that person, not just the institution, as a definitive or reliable source of helpful information and content. One of the things my father told me, who was a banker for 33 years, Said you'll find out very quickly people will choose to bank with you because you're their banker, not just because you work at the bank. And so as you can build a personal branding strategy and include the content as part of that, and that, Chris, that's one of the areas that I think you've just done an amazing job is your personal brand through your utilization of content is is out of this world. I mean, I go to your LinkedIn profile and read your articles, and I'm amazed at how you can churn out such great information on a consistent basis. And to me, that, you're kind of the poster child from a content strategy as far as I'm concerned.

So you actually bring up an interesting point. Let me just chime in. Thank you, and thank you for that. You know, most banks have it structured so there's a marketing department and they rely on this marketing department to produce content. What Eric's talking about is something radically different. Basically, it's teaching, you know, all your line officers and even, you know, more, even your back office folks, you know, call it IT or, you your loan processors, etc., how to be conversant in whether it's social media or producing content. And I'm a big fan of locating, basically blowing up your marketing department and locating those marketers. You know, take those people out of the marketing department and put them with business lines so you have them sit right next to, as Eric pointed out, you know, maybe a lender or relationship manager and teach them the ways of using content and hear firsthand what the customer is saying to be able to produce even more content. And so that's one of the things that we're pretty good at. Senator said we have a lot of flaws, but one of them is trying to locate our marketing people next to our business line, and I'm an example of that as I work with many different business lines and help educate them on how they could be doing. We're doing more and more of that, so next year I think you'll see more of our relationship managers do a better job at leveraging, producing their own content, leveraging the content that the marketers give them, and looking for other ways to find content. So maybe just something to think about.

Yeah, well said, well said. And that unfortunately is not the norm. I think more and more are going to start going towards that, but, you know, for a lot of the bankers that are listening either live or on the recording, that statement might make you somewhat and/or very uncomfortable because when we start training our employees to create content and share information There's a certain trust and loss of control that we have, and bankers sometimes don't like that because that's not how we were brought up, and it's not the environment that we are in from a regulatory and a governmental kind of oversight perspective. So it definitely requires some culture. I think at the end, when we're done with our slides, you know, one of my questions is going to be to you about, you know, exploring some of the culture obstacles that you had to overcome. To empower or allow you to be such a content powerhouse within CenterState. But we'll save that as a little teaser for the end. How's that?

All right. Cool.

So the next slide really talks about, okay, we've, we've thought about content and what sort of information we want to prepare. The next thing that I think is important that you think about is where is the individual in, in what we refer to as the buyer's journey? When you think about the buyer's journey, and there may be other steps, but the next slide Chris will pull up here has got really 3 different segments to it. When we think about where somebody is in the process of making a decision, whether that's a mortgage loan, a commercial account, a checking account, online banking, retirement, if you think about them being in 3 different areas and the type of content that needs to be available in each of those areas, And how they get access to that content and what sort of information is in that content, I think is really important. So a lot of times when using this, I'll use the analogy of a first-time homeowner. You've got somebody, you know, maybe renting or living in their parents' basement for a couple of years and they want to buy a house. You think of the awareness stage of that individual not even necessarily knowing what title insurance is, how an appraisal works. What PMI stands for. Those people are in the awareness stage and they may not necessarily want to make themselves known to an institution because they don't want to feel stupid, they don't want to ask a dumb question. So the more information that you can put out there to capture people at the early awareness stage of the process outside of any sort of a payment gate, or not a payment, but like a, you know, they have to give their name and email address, just give it to them. and let them consume that content and let you be the educator. 'Cause if you do it correctly and they see that you're providing that valuable service, they'll move into the consideration stage. They'll start thinking about, you know, well, maybe this is, you know, what's the difference between a bank and a credit union and a mortgage broker? And you've given some more information. Maybe they sign up for a webinar where they're comfortable providing you, or they come to one of your lunch and learns and they give you their name and their email or their phone number. So now you've got 'em as a lead so you can nurture them. And then at the end, They're in the decision-making process, and that's where they're interested in, you know, give me a testimonial from a happy customer. How long is it going to take? What's it going to cost me? And then once you understand those 3 stages for each of your key market segments, understand that people are going to enter the funnel in different stages. You may have somebody that has already bought 2 or 3 houses and they just need a cottage up north. You don't want them coming into the awareness or even the consideration stage. They're going to jump right into the decision. How fast can I get the loan? How much is it going to cost me? When can I close? Do you have anybody up in the up north area that can do the appraisal, or do I need to go with the local bank up there? As your content gets created, making sure that your funnel is good enough to sort those people down, because if everybody has to run through the same process, that mortgage customer that's already bought 3 houses through you and just wants to know how much and when and how is going to be pretty annoyed if they have to sit through a bunch of information about this is what PMI stands for and here's why we do title insurance. Let them pick where they are going to enter that process as well. Any thoughts on any of that, Chris, from the buyer's journey perspective?

No, I think you're right on. I mean, I'll give everyone some benchmarks that we use and can talk about the uses of both within the buyer's journey, both types of content, either lead gen or moving people along the funnel conversion, but I think it's also helpful for audiences think about, you know, what types of content to create, and we'll, we'll be talking more about that, but also you have to think about your delivery. And so I think part and parcel with having a content plan is to think about, you know, what types of content. So Eric has some great ones on this slide. At CenterState, we try to have a diverse portfolio. So just like our investment and loan portfolio, we try to do a little bit of everything. We continue to test everything to see what works and what doesn't. You know, video, you'll see in a couple seconds, but you've probably heard that it's, you know, a fantastic resource. It has the best growth of any content piece. We haven't found that to be true though. So for most of our customers and most of our prospects, video's hit or miss, and it definitely gets some traction in some areas. But sometimes, you know, we find out that some of our commercial customers in particular don't have the environment where video really works during the day, etc. So, you know, you got to try it out, keep playing with it, have a diverse portfolio, think about your delivery. I would say if there's one asset that banks underutilize, it's their website. So, you know, I think the first stop with any content piece is to probably change your website and do a blog, for example, and do some posts with some different content pieces. There are some several banks out there that do exceedingly well And I think they're great examples, and I can follow up with anybody that's interested in those banks' names. But I saw these banks both on social media and on their own website, huge traffic. And, you know, you've all heard the statistics that— and it's true for CenterState— probably about 60% of our prospects, our pre-customers, come to our website first to check us out before they engage with us. And if you think about the amount of traffic that is for a bank our size, that's huge, thousands of people a day. That's many more people that walk into a branch. And so it's kind of— I always kind of scratch my head when we argue over spending, you know, $30,000 extra on the website to build out content, but we think nothing of throwing $100,000 or a quarter million dollars to do a branch upgrade. And so, you know, I would say before any branch upgrade takes place, having your website built out and having it built out with content and to be able to capture the analytics around that is a huge first step into generating more revenue.

Totally agree. It needs to be considered a digital branch. And when you think about it, more of your customers interact with you online than any of your physical locations, probably combined to a factor of maybe 3, 4, 5, or 10. So think about that website as a digital branch office, not just a conduit to get into online banking, and how can you turn it into an educational portal that convinces them that you are indeed the best solution for what it is that they're trying to accomplish in their financial lives.

And so anytime we think customers need a kicker, a catalyst to move to action, so on the website it's easy, you know, we want traffic, we want impressions, we want to build a brand, but also, you know, if I want to, you know, collect an email address either on a website or a landing page, maybe it's about a product, I will offer, we will offer piece of content to motivate them to give us their email address or their address or their phone number or what have you as a, you know, quid pro quo, so to speak. So, you know, you all done this, you know, fill out this form and get this piece of content in your email box. So that's a great way. And then we, you know, we extend that to events. So we try whenever we hold an event, whether it's a booth or whether we're going to, you know, a doctor's trade conference or homeowners association, trade conference, we always try to have a piece of content with us. If we're speaking, you know, try to leave something on the chair or give something, a handout, something that they can remember CenterState by as they leave. And so content, while most of our work is around digital, as you pointed out, Eric, that physical piece is also still important. And again, you know, I think I would encourage everyone to have a plan and to think about, hey, what's this content? What do we need a content piece for, and then, you know, reverse engineer it. Okay, what would that look like to motivate someone to fill out a form or to, you know, get off their desk?

Well, and I know one of the, one of the jokes, quote-unquote jokes, of the conference that you and I were at in Michigan was WSI produced a book called Digital Minds, and I was chosen as an author. So I'm a contributing member of that, the second edition as well as the first, and I The running joke is the digital guy has a printed book, but it was that piece of content, educational on what are the 12 things you need to know about digital marketing. Here you go as a little handoff, but then everything's available electronically as well. So I'm realizing we're not using our slides really well, but we're having awesome discussions. So I'm looking ahead and the preferred content, I think, was coming up. That's got that statistic with regards to video and a few other Content pieces?

Yeah, so we'll send this out. So I don't want to bore anybody with some statistics, but, you know, when we talk about content, video is a natural one. There's some banks out there that do a great job at, you know, videoing their CEO or their chief technology officer and putting pieces out. So I know it's probably a dozen banks that have their CEO on talking about the economy. They do, you know, quarterly updates, and so they deliver that. Many, many banks do newsletters, so that's a form of content. White papers, case studies. Case studies, one of our favorite pieces when we, you know, figure out there's a— what a customer's doing and how they're doing things right, you know, catching them doing things right. We would love to do a case study about them. That not only, I think, helps educate your prospects, but also makes that customer feel really good as you're promoting, you know, whatever it is, the bakery or the manufacturer. So, some ideas there. Eric, anything to add?

Well, we've got one bank that we're aware of. It's a small little community bank. The CEO is getting ready to retire. He's getting up there, but he's been a frequent guest on the local radio station, and he's, I think, for a number of years, come in and done a weekly show that just offers insights on budgeting and financial tips, and they had the idea, why don't we take somebody's iPhone and connect it to Facebook Live and stream his radio show on our page as a livestream, and it reaches a completely different audience. They got the radio station's permission, of course, to make sure they were cool with it, but they've created a really interesting content stream off of the CEO's radio show that the generation that's going to be exposed to that probably isn't listening to the radio, and the radio wasn't putting it available as a replay, so you had to tune in on Thursday afternoon at whatever time. And so now that content, because it was already being done, is now being captured, streamed live. You reach a completely different audience. It's all about education, and now they've got kind of a cool gee-whiz factor to it because, you know, this little community bank is now doing Facebook Live informational sessions that otherwise, you know, thanks to technology, is now possible that, you know, a few years ago just wasn't even, wasn't even doable.

So we actually have a question on that very topic about leveraging content up and giving content quote-unquote legs. And so what Eric just talked about, doing the radio show then turning into a podcast published on the website, it's something we're big fans of. And in fact, you know, 5 Around are using a content piece, you know, 5 different times is, you know, more or less the goal. So if you think about you all on this webinar, those of you that came through, you know, a content piece that Eric and I already put out in print, we emailed it, posted on the website, we'll do a webinar, we'll turn this webinar into a video. So for those that couldn't be here, you know, a month from now or something, we'll be able to get that video out, we'll leverage that up. And so, you know, we'll have some handouts later. And so that's kind of a way that we Take a single piece of content, leveraging up, trying to get the most out of it, and then, you know, try to build on that as well. So we may go back and reference it in a future blog piece. Eric or I may do, do a different blog piece, piece of content, and then reference, hey, by the way, if you want more background information on content, check out this, you know, this video or this webinar that we recorded. And then we drive traffic backwards as well. So just kind of—

Absolutely.

As Eric was, you know, talking about, you know, he may just use part of it.

So we may—

he may cut a piece of the video up and just use, you know, one slide or something and send that out in kind of a microbite. So we're interested in how to reach our different demographics, and so this is a study that we published that we utilize internally to try to figure out how to better target content pieces, and we were actually surprised, you know, it's easy for our industry to talk about millennials and Gen Z as a primary force, particularly those that use digital channels. But really what we found is, you know, many of our Gen X and boomers and even our retirees are huge consumers of content. And so, you know, we again, we target different demographics, but what we found is, and I really try to move our bank away from talking about millennials, what we found is good content is good content is good content, and a good, you know, mobile platform, you know, is good regardless of age range. Everybody wants it easier and faster. And so as we talk about content, we also talk about, well, you know, probably radio isn't the best investment. Print has its own issues and, you know, is somewhat going by the wayside, but digital and mobile surfing websites, etc., still very, very popular across generational lines.

Yep. One of the guys that I follow pretty— I don't want to say aggressively because that's probably not the right word, but anyway, I follow him.

Makes you sound like a stalker.

Yeah, I know. And one of the guys I stalk online is a guy by the name of Eric Qualman. If anybody knows Eric, go ahead and tell him that. But Eric Qualman wrote a book a few years back called Socialnomics. And if you go to Google and just do a search for Socialnomics video, or go to YouTube for that matter, and do Socialnomics, He's put out a number of videos over the years on the state of the industry from a social perspective, and in his most recent one, one of the statistics that kind of reinforces what you're talking about, Chris, is grandparents are the fastest-growing demographic on Twitter right now. And he throws up a couple of, you know, hashtag AARP, hashtag seniors rule. But it used to be grandparents were the fastest-growing demographic on Facebook, and now they're the fastest-growing demographic on Twitter because they're starting to engage in the platforms. They're getting easier to use. A lot of grandparents are now migrating to tablets and devices that aren't as complicated to use as in the past. So just thinking that it's only the youngsters that are out there engaging digitally is certainly a fallacy that's going away pretty quickly.

Yep, and same token, the slide in front of you now gives our effectiveness ratios, and, you know, we already talked about the difference between lead conversion and lead generation and conversion. So webinars are good across the board. We're big fans of webinars like this one. You get the live aspect of it, you get ongoing Q&A, but then you can also turn into a video. So we're fans of that. In-person events, though, to your point, Eric, shouldn't, you know, shouldn't be overlooked. Yeah, it's not as sexy as doing a digital ebook, but in terms of being able to produce content and doing an in-person event and follow up with that, Still has a huge place in banking and in sales, uh, for that matter.

Absolutely. And I think the in-person events can be really powerful as the way to take somebody through that, that buyer's journey. If they're ready to start, they want to meet you. Maybe they've seen some videos, which helps them understand your personality a little bit better, but the lunch and learns in the after hours or an educational seminar, you can partner up with local, you know, vendors that support on the real estate side. You've got real estate agents and title companies. You know, you could put together a seminar that brings everybody together so they can get an idea of who the team is that's part of the process of purchasing a new home. And for a certain sector of your market area, that's going to be a very beneficial process to know who all is going to be involved throughout that entire process.

Couldn't agree more. I just want to leave everyone with a concept in terms of thinking about timing and maturity or longevity of a content piece. This is something that, you know, we really learned probably in the last 2 years to think about our content pieces, the life of the content piece. Some have very short lives. So when we do a content piece on a particular trending topic, we may just do, you know, 500 words, put it out there, do, you know, one-pager we call them all the time. And that may just have a very short shelf life. We may use it for maybe months or weeks. And then get rid of it and move on. Other— and that contrasts with maybe what we call long-form content piece, maybe something, you know, 1,500 words, 4,000, you know, an article that has a bunch of different research pieces in it, and maybe it's a case study. But whatever it is, it may be too much to consume all at once, so it gets very little traction to start. But what you find is it drives your search engine optimization. So if you put that piece on the website and someone's searching for, you know, lockbox solutions or cash management solutions, treasury management, etc., it will be found and then picked up. So if you have a long piece that's educating on, you know, how to optimize your cash balances, if you're a homeowners association, for example, that gets found, you know, years later and gets referenced, come to your bank that way. So that has a very long lifecycle. Podcast, very long lifecycle. You know, print, whenever you do that, the upside of print is that it stays around, where if we do a quick, you know, social media post, if you're using Twitter, for example, that's measured in minutes versus, you know, LinkedIn, which happens to be a little longer, Facebook, you know, kind of right in between the two. And so as we talk about different channels and different content pieces, we talk about how long it's going to be around and how often we have to repromote them or pay for promotion on that.

Yep. Yeah, one of the things we're seeing, you know, others outside of the banking industry— I attended Social Media Marketing World earlier this year in San Diego, which had nothing to do with banks, but it was all about social media utilization. Was an awesome conference. I could probably do a full hour on all the cool stuff that I learned there. But we saw that a lot of content creators are now starting to stop using dates associated with their content and trying to produce content that's more evergreen. So you think about the resource guide that talks about how to sign up for remote deposit capture and configure. You may introduce a different machine down the road, your software might get updated, you might have different utilization, but that content piece can live on and you can go back to that and make updates to it. But when you think about your website being the targeted destination that you want all of your customers to come to and prospects And then those content pieces being optimized from an SEO perspective, those are the content pieces that you want to live on and be relevant. And, and so when you were talking about, you know, having them available down the road, the word evergreen just jumped into my mind as build that information as a resource and then distribute the heck out of it and dominate your market for that as a service, as an educational piece. And then move on to the next one and do the same thing around that. So there's a— that kind of goes into a whole overall content strategy and pillar content versus supporting content, but make sure that it's relevant not just today but in 3 months, 6 months, 12 months down the road.

So Eric, we've given everyone some great tactics and strategy tips to think about, but that's not helping them actually, you know, where the rubber meets the road. Maybe talk a little about how to produce that content. Where do you, where do you get ideas, and how can bankers start to leverage those ideas and turn them into a content piece?

Well, I'm glad that you asked that question because I just happen to have some slides that talk about that. Whether it's curation, which is really finding content that's out there on the internet and then distributing it and sharing it and maybe offering your own advice, or using content out there that exists exists and using that as inspiration. So you want to be the next Chris Nichols and dominate LinkedIn with, you know, hundreds of thousands of articles. The one of the tools that I go to quite often is a website called Answer the Public. And the running joke, if you remember my profile picture, I'm somewhat lacking in hair up top. People joke that this is me in another 10 or 15 years. But if you go to answerthepublic.com and you type in key phrase, this will go and it will actually walk through and it'll generate, in some instances, hundreds of different questions that people are typing into search engines that you could answer through content— blog posts, videos, podcasts, white papers, case studies, you name it. And so if you go through the Answer the Public site and type in mortgage loans, commercial loans, online banking, remote deposit, financial planning. Just go— don't do it now because you're busy listening to a webinar, but write down someplace on a sticky note or a pad of paper answerthepublic.com. And when we're done, go there and just type in the word mortgage loan, let it do its thing, and then scroll down. You'll see these wonderful word wheels that will have all these different phrases related to the topic of mortgage loans, which are questions that people are asking online. You can click on any one of those results and that'll spawn a new tab and take you directly to Google, and you'll be able to see who's ranking for that search phrase. You'll be able to see who's actually buying advertisement to try to put promotional PPC ads in front of those search phrases, and it'll give you an idea of what your competition is doing. And then do you show up for any of those search phrases? So that's one of the ways just to get an idea of what questions people are asking when they go to Google, and those are the things that you want to answer. Now the other part around that is if you don't want to use a tool like this to come up with articles to be able to write your own, there's a platform out there that I use also on a pretty frequent basis called Footboard. So if we go to the next screen, You think about Flipboard, and usually I'll say show of hands how many people are using Flipboard when I'm doing this live, but Flipboard is a great little app that you can get a free account. You can use it on your tablet, your phone, you can use it on the desktop, on the web, and Flipboard is almost your own little digital secretary that goes out and it mines data on the web and brings it back to you, and you tell it what sort of information you're interested in knowing. Now, one of the other tools that I'll often use is a tool called Buffer, which is the item on the right, and that I use to help distribute that content. So if I found an interesting article and I wanted to push it to my Facebook page, to my LinkedIn profile, to my Twitter account, I can connect multiple platforms to Buffer and I can push it out, I can schedule it, I can get metrics that way. But from a Flipboard perspective, thinking about what sort of topics are of interest to your target audience beyond just banking, you put that key phrase or those keywords into Flipboard, and Flipboard finds you articles that you can then distribute and share out with the rest of the world. So if we continue to click through the slides, you'll get to another page where I've actually created a list. If you're looking for— let's say you're a commercial lender and And you want to influence your target market. Well, business owners are interested in these as well as other topics. So they, they want to be successful. They're maybe entrepreneurs. They like business. Maybe they're trying to figure out how to use LinkedIn better. Certainly there's never enough time in the day, so time management tips, organization. Are they taking care of themselves through health and fitness? You know, is this social media thing really something that they need to be concerned about? So I've just gone in as an example of one of the articles that I posted. You can see the red arrow shows, you know, what's your passion, so you can type in what you want to search for. I've gone and just typed the word success, but you can see I've actually got a profile. So no matter where I access Flipboard, all of my information is available to me. So if I'm sitting at the airport, you If I'm getting ready for bed, I can grab my tablet and flip through. It's consistent across the board. And yes, again, it's free, which is amazing 'cause it provides really, really good info. But I'm using success as an example. So one Sunday afternoon, I go through and I type in the word success. And one of the articles that shows up on the next screen is an article that talks about 5 things that successful people do every Sunday. So I, I open up the article, I hop over to Inc. Magazine, I read through the article, and I copy the URL. So if we do a click next, so I'm kind of walking you through my curation process. I didn't write the article, but I read the article, I've copied the actual URL, and then I go to LinkedIn and I post it. And when I post it, rather than just posting the link and sending it, What I've done is I've actually posted the link, which will then give the LinkedIn platform the ability to do a preview. So it pulls the little Sunday mug, and I then type a little kind of precursor because I think it's important when you're sharing content online, whether it's through social media or a blog, you can reference other articles and other sources, but it's important to give people some perspective as to why you're sharing it and what you thought about it. And so what I've done here to demonstrate a little bit of sense of humor and the fact that I actually read the article is number 4 in that 5-thing list was disconnect from technology. So I posted, you know, how's your Sunday going according to this article from Inc. magazine, 5 things you should be doing today and every Sunday. If you're reading this today, you've already failed at number 4, as I did. And so within LinkedIn, you can configure that to automatically send to your Twitter account, so I don't even need to use Buffer. I've now distributed it to multiple areas, which Chris talked about. And given the short attention span that Twitter has, I might go and post it a number of other times so that I catch more of an audience. But when that information goes out, I then have the ability on LinkedIn as an individual to see what sort of success that's had. So when we go to the next slide, you can actually see with your own content strategy That 325 at the time of the screenshot, individuals actually saw that. And it comes back and it shows where people were from, what their roles are. And I can use this as a strategy to refine the types of content that I'm sharing. And if it's in the market area that I'm trying to influence, and if I'm going after the right, you know, business title. So as a commercial lender, you want to see maybe some of your prospects and customers showing up in the business area to know that your content is actually resonating with the right audience. So you've got your own little micro strategy here, and the cool part about this is there was nothing that I did as a commercial lender that would have caused any sort of compliance concern to the bank because I wasn't talking about products or services or rates or any feature that would be related to a bank service. I'm merely sharing information through my content strategy for people that are likely business owners that are interested in tips to be more successful. And if I can teach my customers and prospects how to be more successful, how to be more, you know, get more out of their day, how to be better organized, then that's going to paint a better picture for them to be better at their business. And if I'm the provider of that knowledge, That increases the likelihood that when there is a business need or a banking need down the road, they're going to pick up the phone and give me a ring. So here's—

let me just interject here with some irony. And that would take Eric, I don't know, what would you say, like 2 minutes, less than 2 minutes to do that?

It took me less time to do it than to explain it. Yes.

Right. So meanwhile, while Eric's doing that, I, you know, I'm working on this piece now. It's probably taken me a year and a half to put together as we're trying to figure out how to use Yelp and Google ratings in our credit process. And so we'll be publishing that somewhere, but that's a very long piece. I got to do it anyway, but I'll work on this huge resource piece, publish it, our own, you know, our own content, and it won't get near the hits or the impressions or the likes that a piece that you're just kind of reusing from someone else. So The joke is that some people don't like to use other people's work, but really those— and just the way Eric showed you— is the way to get, you know, probably your best bang for your buck. And again, I'm a big fan of diversification, so I think you should be doing everything. But if you do nothing else, just to do that simple step that Eric just talked about is a way to start to get, you know, 325 impressions instant— almost instantaneously.

Yep, yep. So I think one of the last slides that we've got, and then we want to open up for some questions, is I put together some of the tools that I use, some more frequently than others. They're all free, or they at least provide a free version you can use to be able to come up with cool content ideas. So we've already talked about Flipboard, but, you know, if you're looking for ideas for content to share, if you're looking to create interesting inspirational images or photos, you know, you got, you know, quotes that go out. A lot of times those actually get a some pretty good engagement. It's content and then posting scheduling and interaction. You know, these are all tools that you may want to try to give a shot. I will provide my standard bank technology disclosure. If you're using bank-approved technology, make sure that you get the approval of anybody in IT before you start installing third-party apps on your bank computers or mobile devices, because I don't want any IT managers sending me hate mail. But these are all really great platforms. That can be your little ace in the hole when it comes to creating really cool content to help create your individual or on behalf of the institution, your business brand. So if, if you're watching this live or you go back to the webinar, hit your pause button so you can kind of jot all these down or get in touch with Chris or I and we can make sure we'll share the slide deck with you. We've got about 10 minutes left for questions and, you know, we've got a few of them kind of Yeah, let me, let me hit you with a question that some banker asked.

Talk a little bit about developing an editorial calendar. How important is that? You and I probably have different perspectives on this.

So an editorial calendar is important to help frame what you want to talk about on an ongoing basis. So if there's key events, activities, if you can get information, if you're going into tax time, can you find cool content that helps people with You know, tax planning and what to do with a big return. But I don't want you to feel pigeonholed. Oftentimes, we'll get the well if it's not in the editorial calendar, we can't do it. And I think one of the things that the digital world you have to embrace is the recency and immediacy of it all. And so, if something happens that you want to chime in on, or there's an event or an activity, you need to be comfortable or have the liberty to be able to break outside of that calendar to do stuff on an ad hoc basis and have a process developed internally that supports that. But certainly a calendar to help frame out what you're going to talk about and the key topics that either support loosely your product goals or community objectives. What are your thoughts on a content calendar?

You know, you got it, you got it spot on. I thought you're gonna go more traditional. So any one of my preferred said, hey, you gotta, you know, plan your work and work your plan, have a complete editorial calendar. I failed at that almost every time. And so I think, you know, you presented a great framework, you know, kind of roughly plan it out. I like to be, you know, in terms of ideas, you know, I like to pick up what's trending. And so we, you know, we call it around here Trumpian volatility. You know, say what you will about our current president, but one thing he's great at is creating volatility with ideas. And so anything, you know, as simple as tax reform or rising rates, those are just key topics to plan on. But when he talks— when the administration talks about tariffs, for example, that creates a lot of anxiety, and anxiety creates a lot of clicks.

Yep.

And so we'll maybe talk about or think about, hey, how does agricultural tariffs impact our agricultural borrowers? Or, you know, what's going to happen with, you know, overseas money? in certain times. And so we'll, you know, do some quick research, play on that, try to get that piece out as fast as possible, you know, within a day or two, and then play off the headlines as if that hits a client's prospects or clients. Yeah, they're probably more likely.

Absolutely.

So editorial calendar is great if you can pull it off. I can't, but, you know, probably half and medium.

Yep. And even from an editorial calendar, if you don't want to call it a calendar, call it a, you know, a guide or whatnot, because sometimes the calendar term makes you think like you have to schedule stuff at specific times. But go back to that buyer's journey, think about the persona of who's actually going to be that you want to influence, and then as part of your content guide, thinking about, you know, what sort of information would be important to a first-time homeowner or a small business owner or somebody getting ready to prepare for retirement, or they just had their first child and they're freaking out about college planning. Build your content strategy around that, and then it'll fall into the calendar, you know, maybe more naturally.

All right, excellent. Hey, Eric, we would be remiss if we didn't talk about compliance. One of you, um, and we gotta— you have probably 5 or 6 questions here on different aspects. Yeah, compliance. So why don't we spend a couple minutes on that?

Well, and I know that was one of the questions that I asked you about when we started thinking about this, is to what extent does content, or, you know, compliance oversee your content? Because you're churning out so much great stuff Does everything have to be approved? Have they gotten comfortable with it? Do you have an approval process? Because the banks, before they're going to let anybody produce content, they need to make sure that it's going to be compliant. So I want you to kind of tell your story of how you're doing it.

Sure. So we've done it 2 different ways, and I think, you know, it's an evolution. When I first started with CenterState, one, you know, I think CenterState has been a fantastic family. To take risks and take, you know, the appropriate risks. And so we kind of vetted the idea of using content and using our strategy piece. And, you know, we had the typical conversation— what's the upside, what's the downside, where we have to be careful of. And then, you know, I went to work on creating a policy and designed it so you had to basically be pre-approved. You know, you had to go through a certain amount of education classes, understand social media, and then if you had the certification, you could produce content, and that worked for a long time. And so, you know, there was a group of us here at CenterState that was able to produce content, and still to this day, that's somewhat in effect. Since we've been over $10 billion, we, you know, increased our compliance inside, and so now we go through a formal process. So we have an application called Candace, but it handles workflow, and so everything pretty much needs to be pre-approved. And so we now go through I'll produce a content piece, post it on Canvas, and it goes to the next person who, you know, basically an editor that reviews it both for substance and for grammar, etc. So we go through a couple editors, then it goes through a brand person to look and make sure that CenterState's being represented in the right brand. It then goes to compliance. From compliance, it may go to legal or may pull the appropriate subject matter expert in there and then gets final approval. That sounds daunting. It basically takes us 24 hours. I think our average is probably 6 to 8 hours on an average day. Some pieces get kicked back, so it may take a little longer. So we have a full robust compliance section now. And on my side as a creator, it does hurt a little bit, I'll be honest. But I think for the— it's something that's needed. And I think at least at CenterState, we've been good at trying to figure out how to make that process work. And, you know, a sore topic for me is anytime you have to change your process to meet compliance, I, you know, encourage all bankers to take a step back and say, wait a minute, the real goal is to make our customers smarter, to make our employees smarter. How do we accomplish that goal within the framework of our compliance policies? And so, you know, that's where I'd love everyone to start. At CenterState, the fantastic at that. And there are certain things, there are certain just evils of our industry, or, you know, at least requirements of our industry— I'll put it neutrally— that we have to stay away from. So, you know, as a matter of course, I do stay away from, you know, and most of our people stay away from, you know, quoting rates, talking about specific products, giving advice overall, and sticking more to generic process.

Yep. Well, and that's where the website can be a valuable tool, is that process— is rather than specifically calling it out in the article itself, you can reference back to, for current interest rate information about our products and services, please visit our website or our rate section or sign up for a rate watch function, because then the website's got that additional layer of compliance and oversight that you just simply can't get from a social media channel.

All right, I think those are most of the— we got through most of the questions. A couple other questions that we'll just follow up on. I would say, you know, in the future maybe we'll do a follow-up, but to answer one person's questions out there, anytime— with Eric alluded to telling a story— anytime you can tell a story, that is the basis, the foundation for great content. So if you can catch, you know, a customer or employee doing something right and telling that story— so we all have employees that, you know, do a lot for charity, always great content pieces. We all have customers that have had success selling their business or buying a business or creating a new product, just perfect content to put out there, perfect substance to now develop that, that, you know, everyone wants to kind of learn about, or, you know, at least you'll get some great traffic on that. So that's a plus. And then finally, I think the new trend, a couple questions on personalization. We're big— I think Eric and I both agree that, you know, customer segmentation, trying to personalize it for that individual, you know, is the ultimate goal down the road. I think many of us aren't there, and so for, you know, 2019, you know, we're fans of, you know, trying to figure out how to produce particular content for particular industries. So whether it's ag, Yeah. Ag customer, or whether it's, you know, the stay-at-home husband or wife that's homeschooling their kids, you know, that goes down to that level, but trying to figure out who your exact audience, back to your buyer persona, And then developing content specifically for them, you'll get more views, more impressions, more content, more clicks.

Yeah, I know one of the, one of the services that we were talking about before we went live was the whole concept of inbound and marketing automation technology. And at risk of freaking some people out because of the level of detail that you can get about visitors to your website, suffice to say technology exists today that if I sent Chris an email and he opened it on his iPhone or his MacBook or his iPad, or he went to my website and he filled out a form because he wanted to touch base with a commercial lender, I can identify that device with Chris. And when Chris comes back to my website, I no longer see that it's just a visitor from Florida. I know that it's Chris Nichols, and I know what areas he's spending time on. I can push dedicated and relevant personalized content to him. And then I can associate somebody within the bank as his lender or his sales representative. So as he exudes different activities or does different things on the website that denote a buyer likelihood, maybe he's lead scored, he's generated 100 points because he's reading blog posts and downloading white papers. I can send an email to the lender that's responsible for Chris and say, hey, you might want to pick up the phone and give Chris a call because he's been spending a lot of time on our financial calculator page. Which might be an indication that he's ready to do something on that loan that you've been talking about. So that's maybe a whole other webinar. I think there's probably a couple of others in the works that you and I can put together. But yeah, the possibilities are endless. But content really, it needs to start there, because if you're not producing content that people are interested in consuming, you're going to lose the opportunity for all the rest of the relationship that could come as a result of that.

And what Eric just alluded to is you get— one of the beauties of content is you get analytics on it, you get data on who's using it, who's looking at it, and that, that is head and shoulders above where this industry used to be. In this industry being both banking and marketing, you know, just 5 years ago, 10 years ago, where, you know, we do a print or billboard, radio, and we would have no idea what's going on. Now we know exactly down to the person. So for ROI, You know, it's not uncommon for us to have, you know, 300%, 500%, 1,000% returns on some of our investments using content pieces. So with that, Eric, any final words on that?

Nope. I mean, I probably a whole lot more, but I'll reserve that for a future webinar. I think we've nailed it, and I'll let you bring it to a close. I just want to thank you for joining me and the opportunity to join you, and I've really enjoyed the conversation. And hopefully everybody that was live Or has listened to this on a replay has gotten some good value and some good ideas.

Well, thank you, Eric. You've been a great, great host with me. You have where to reach us if we could— either of us could be of any help. We're standing by. What we're gonna do, we're gonna, you know, true to form, we're gonna package this up. We'll send you out the link to the video if you want to circulate it around or, you know, save it for posterity. In addition, we'll also— joining us today, we'll also give you some ideas, some content pieces that your bank can use to get you started. And if there's anything we can help with, be sure to hit us up. Thank you all for joining us. We'll talk to you soon. Take care. Thanks, Eric.

Bye.

Yep.

Thanks. Bye-bye.