VANCOUVER, B.C. -
That's the question posed by "Change Everything," a social networking website started by Canada's largest CU.
And apparently the answer is "yes" for the more than 1,000 users registered at the site, who are ready to be "positive change makers," according to William Azaroff, interactive marketing and channel manager at $11-billion Vancity CU here.
"It's unusual that you would get 1,000 people to register to build community at a, quote, 'bank site,'" Azaroff said. "When we went fully live with Change Everything in September, we thought maybe no one would come to the party."
Change Everything attracts people who want to make changes in their lives and meet like-minded people, said Azaroff. They start Changes or join Changes on any range of topics, from toilet-training their children to walking to work, swearing off plastics for a year or getting a tattoo (see related story on page 19).
Vancity certainly isn't the first credit union to tap into the flow of social media on the Web. Credit Union Journal recently reported how other credit unions are trying to reach out to the online market by hosting sites at MySpace.com, talking to members and colleagues on blogs or spreading the recorded financial word through podcasts.
But Vancity stands apart from the podcasting, blogging, MySpacing credit unions in a number of ways-in fact, "Vancity is the best example of a credit union building a social network," according to Trey Reeme, one of the creators of the credit union blog called Open Source CU and executive vice president at Trabian Technology, a business application and development company in Plano, Texas.
For one, Change Everything is only loosely linked to its credit union creator.
"We built it, we pay for it and we host it, but we try not to hit the users over the head with Vancity," said Azaroff. The Vancity logo appears in the corner of every page, but there's no mention of products and services, and the CU doesn't mine user data.
Vancity also goes out on a limb to allow users to control the site and its outcomes.
"We've allowed communication at Change Everything to be wide open," Azaroff said. "We don't monitor the Changes or the blog postings. We haven't had to remove a single comment on the site, except for gobbledygook and spam. No user has ever clicked the offensive-post report button. That's because we nurtured the first users, who then set a positive tone for the community. Since then, we've grown rapidly, but the tone hasn't changed."
In addition, other credit unions aren't seeing the volume of committed visitors who register at Change Everything. And that's good for the CU's "triple bottom line," said Azaroff.
"At Vancity, the bottom line is not just economic," he explained. "We evaluate our business on social and environmental factors as well. A lot of the people who bring their financial portfolio to Vancity are community-seekers. They are values-driven, and they think about money as a voting mechanism. Change Everything gets members connected to their community and makes them feel more passionate about the credit union. They are then more likely to talk about the credit union relationship with their friends. Our hope is that the next time the person needs a financial product that we're higher on their list than we would have been."
A credit union associated with that kind of social network doesn't do so to contribute to hard ROI, Azaroff continued. "With Web 2.0 projects, a concentration on ROI just doesn't work," he said. "In fact, I refuse to count how many users become Vancity members. After all, you can't measure the ROI on a round of golf amongst colleagues, can you?"
Despite the time devoted to Change Everything, VanCity also has other, money-spinning irons in the fire, Azaroff admitted. "It's not like we can spend all our money on ROI-less schemes, but Change Everything works well for us. We're sticking with it."
FOR MORE RESOURCES
Read more about social media at cujournal.com and search the following bolded terms in the archive:
MySpace.com: The Factious Frontier, for the good, the bad, and the ugly on the CU presence at MySpace.
I Hear. I Learn. I-Pod., for story on how Financial Center CU is spreading financial advice using podcasts.
CU On The Blog, for a story about one way that employees communicate with other credit union employees on the Net.
For more info on this story:
* www.vancity.com
* www.changeeverything.ca
* www.theclientsideblog.com
* marketingroi.wordpress.com
