Increasingly, social media is where Gen Z and millennials are migrating to find “edutainment” and news, using it an average of 2 1/2 hours a day. More than 75 percent of Gen Z prefer to watch videos on TikTok over any other platform, and 95 percent of that generation uses Instagram daily, according to a survey by marketing company Her Campus Media, which focuses on Gen Z.
This means the need and opportunity for consumer financial literacy outside the classroom has significantly expanded. Nearly 80 percent of Gen Z and millennials say they have gotten financial advice from social media, according to a 2023 Forbes survey, but only 31 percent check the reliability of those sources.
“There’s so much information out there — almost too much,” said Jacquelyn Benda, digital strategist at The First National Bank in Sioux Falls, S.D. When the bank was creating its TikTok presence, “we knew we had to be somewhat of a financial influencer” and share accurate, helpful information, she said. It appears to be working, as the bank’s videos on how to write a check and deposit a check have each been viewed more than 26,000 times.
The marketing department uses its own iPhone for creating and posting the videos, and Benda uses the bank’s larger content calendar to plan the social media calendar, which is part of its more expansive financial literacy strategy which includes emails, blog posts, employee social media posts, and school and community presentations. She then uses the HootSuite app to schedule the posts on each of the different platforms and check performance analytics.
The target audience for the bank, and therefore its content, changes depending on which social media platform they are using. “TikTok skews younger,” Benda said. “Our LinkedIn presence is slightly older but more professional. Facebook is still really our bread-and-butter audience.” Facebook has the bank’s largest social media audience, who tend to be loyal customers who interact with every single post, which helps them get more traction.
While some content might be tailored to a particular platform, the videos are all the same. Much of that content comes from the bank’s podcast.
This year, the bank is “making a more concerted effort to share things that are focused around fraud and can help consumers protect themselves,” said Renata McCain, vice president and marketing manager for the $2 billion bank. “There’s a lot of room to grow there. Many only care when it affects them. Sometimes it just doesn’t sink in — ‘it can’t happen to me or isn’t happening to me’ when it really, truly is.”
“People are getting compromised and taken advantage of in a lot of different ways online because people are afraid to talk about it,” said former banker Eric Cook, now chief digital strategist at digital marketing agency WSI in Prudenville, Mich. “I think the smaller community banks are still very well respected. And if they say something that you should be doing or a process that you should be following, I think that ends up resonating pretty well. [Banks] should definitely be posting on social media.”
Security Bank, S.B., of Springfield, Ill., is also on TikTok and gearing its financial literacy content toward college-aged students, according to Destiny Nance-Evans, senior vice president of culture and engagement for the $203 million bank.
When deciding what content would be relevant to their target audience, a viral video posted by another bank simply explaining what a debit card is proved to Nance-Evans that “financial literacy was needed on the platform.”
The bank created a focus group of younger employees to brainstorm specific questions college-aged students might ask: Do I need a credit card? If so, how do I get one? Where should I put my paycheck? What’s the best way to think about my future and prepare?
To date, the bank’s most popular videos have been on checking accounts, home equity lines of credit, and mortgages. Usually the tips are “very basic things, good little reminders” that help people, especially those who never had any kind of personal finance class, Nance-Evans said. The bank also has a series of tips on fraud, which began when it was discovered someone was using their Social Security number as their username.
To help get the videos in front of a broader audience, Nance-Evans will ask employees in departments relevant to the video topic to share the posts if they are comfortable doing so. “We don’t do a lot of paid advertising,” she said; she prefers posts be seen organically.
Overall, Nance-Evans feels the foray into building financial literacy through social media has been a successful venture, with more than 20,000 views on TikTok overall and 3,400 viewer interactions with the posts. “There is value in being in-person” to teach financial literacy, she said. But with social media, “we can reach our audience when and where they want to be reached, all hours of the day. It’s out there. It can be reposted. You can save it to revisit the information.”
While Nance-Evans began her career in banking, she spent time in other industries before returning. She brought back an outside-the-box mentality willing to take on TikTok, and she encourages other bankers to be comfortable with trying new things.
Bankers need to be creative to “break through the clutter to get noticed,” Cook said. Unfortunately, creative ideas often get vetoed because they might not “jive” with the conservative feel of traditional banking, he said, but the “70-year-old certificate-of-deposit conservative” also isn’t the TikTok audience.
Cook used as an example ThatMortgageGuy, a TikTok creator who is engaging and funny even when he’s talking about government programs, down-payment assistance, and credit scores. “You don’t realize that you’re learning a lot of really good information about what it takes to be a homeowner until you’re done scrolling all of his videos because you just think he’s hilarious,” he said.
Because money can be a sensitive topic, there may not be a lot of conversation or interaction around a post on an educational topic. People will read it, but they don’t want to admit they had no idea how to create a budget or what a credit score was, Cook said.
“If you’re primarily gauging your success based off engagement … you’re probably going to see those as being failed posts,” he said, but you still need to do them. Walking potential customers through the budgeting, planning, and applying for a home loan process now “increases the likelihood that they’ll give you a shot” down the road. Online financial literacy — getting in front of students early on — can also play a role in retaining their accounts as they head off to college, Cook said.
Although TikTok might be a newer medium for banks, the message is still most compelling when combined with the familiar hallmarks of community banking: Connection and relationships. “When it comes down to it, people care about people,” said McCain. “That’s where we see the engagement, posts, likes. That’s my banker, my teller, neighbor, someone who goes to my church.”