LAWRENCEVILLE, Ga. — Twitter Inc. has dialed back a rule implemented late last year that restricted how financial institutions could promote themselves on the site, but some credit unions are still unsure as to what those changes mean in terms of how effective the social-networking site can ultimately be for CUs.
Late last year, Twitter changed its rules to limit what financial institutions could advertise on the site — known as "promoted posts" — stating in its rules that "Twitter restricts the promotion of financial services and related content," with banking services and banking institutions subject to that policy.
The site did allow, however, for loopholes, and financial institutions could use promoted posts by going through an approval process to ensure that none of the social network's rules were violated, such as promoting products like payday loans, short-term mortgages or other potentially harmful offerings.
A Twitter representative wrote in an e-mail at the time that "Our focus is on providing a great user experience, and we regularly review and update our ads policies to that end. We'll continue to work with our financial services ad partners on ways of reaching audiences that benefit both advertisers and users."
As of last month, Twitter appeared to have changed its policies.
Twitter didn't respond to recent requests for comment.
"I don't know what Twitter's motivation was, to be honest," said Meredith Olmstead, a social-media consultant and founding partner at Social Stairway.
"I know I saw a number of financial institutions that were allowed to advertise on Twitter over the last year. I saw promoted accounts from big banks like Chase, and I think I may have seen one from Bank of America. I also saw a promoted account for Navy Federal," Ms. Olmstead said.
"I don't know where they were drawing the line and why," she said.
Twitter's rules only prevented financial institutions from promoting posts, not from posting about those products using the site's free services.
One credit union with which Olmstead works, Peach State Federal Credit Union, based here, launched its Twitter profile last October, shortly before the revised rules went into effect. At the time, Peach State used promoted posts to expand the CU's reach on Twitter and doubled its followers in the month before the rules changed.
Kristen Patton, senior vice president of marketing and business development at the $265 million CU, said recently that while "it's a great thing that they're finally going to let us do some promoted posts... I think it's too soon for us to say whether or not it's going to be beneficial."
Part of the problem with that lies in that most of Peach State's interactions via Twitter have been "more industry-based versus member-based," she said.
A few members have contacted the CU via Twitter when they have needed assistance after regular business hours, "but the vast majority of what we're seeing is industry related," Patton said.
Olmstead concurred with that assessment, noting that much of what she has seen of CUs' Twitter usage is more about industry relationships, advocacy, and keeping up with new rules and regulations, "but not a huge tool for communicating with members and promoting their services to their members. Because with some ad dollars behind it, I think you could make more of an impact."
What now?
So now that the rules have been relaxed, will the floodgates open for CU advertising on Twitter?
That depends, observers say.
Olmstead noted that she is working with another CU that tried to get approved for promoted posts this summer but was turned down.
As of now that CU is taking a "wait-and-see approach," she said.
"Twitter has made a lot of changes and upgrades recently — I think they're trying to compete with Facebook," Olmstead said. "They've rolled out some nice new features for their ads and analytics so you can get a little bit more insight into how your tweets are faring with your followers, so they're kind of trying to mirror some of the features you see in Facebook's insights and on their back-end."
The catch to that, said Heather Griffin, Peach State's marketing manager, is that the social network limits the kind of targeting that businesses can do, making it more difficult to target individual Twitter users if the organization isn't using the e-mail service MailChimp. As a result of that, Peach State is now only doing demographical and geographical targeting of its ads.
For her part, Olmstead said that she doesn't think that the changes over the past nine months will have any significant long-term impact on how CUs use Twitter.
"I now it was a major frustration... I think it really did slow things down," she said. "I don't' think it has to be a lasting impact, but I think it will take a little bit of time to get back up to speed."
The real test will be the degree to which credit unions can build their businesses now that the site is seemingly more willing to take CUs' ad dollars, Patton aid.
"Just having that presence out there on Twitter is important so that if a member needs to reach us like the handful that have in the past, we're there," she said.
"I don't think we're going to stop doing Twitter if promoted posts don't work. We may not spend nearly as much time and resources working on tweets as we have, but time will tell if this is something that will be beneficial for us," Patton said.
