Visible Banking: Promote Your New Year's Resolutions on Vancity's Changeeverything - or How to Successfully Engage with your Community, Drive Member Advocacy & Increase your Traffic... for free

If you are not familiar with the award winning online community launched in 2006 by Vancity, Canada's largest Credit Union, I invite you to visit the changeeverything site today.

William Azaroff, Director Online Banking & Engagement at Vancity, is the man behind this innovative initiative. He is also a fellow blogger and public speaker.

I invite you to watch my video interview with William (NYC, October 2007)

Today, let me focus on an excellent marketing initiative on changeeverything: Viva La Resolution! (please check the recent post on William's blog)

Best practice - Buzz / WoM Marketing
This is a great example of how to engage with your community, to urge your members to contribute and promote your platform... for free.

In my opinion, the key to success in social media is to REWARD your members for the time they spend on your platform. It is the best way to drive member advocacy.

There are four main ways to reward your community. To give them: Visibility, Exclusive Content, Fun/Entertainment, a Challenge / the opportunity to Win a Contest.

With the Viva La Resolution! initiative, the changeeverything team managed to check no less than three boxes to guaranty a success: Visibility, Contest and Fun. Well done.

Please find below more information from their blog.

Here's how you enter:
1. Create a New Year's resolution by selecting one of the changes already underway at ChangeEverything.ca, or creating a new one.
2. Blog about your resolution. Write at least three (3) blog posts linked to your change on ChangeEverything.ca between December 5th, 2008 and February 28th 2009.
3. Let us know about it. Make your entry official by tagging each blog post with the keyword "2009resolution" (without the quotes). Here's how you tag a post. This is really important otherwise we will not be able to find your entry.

Their goal is to grow their member base, increase the visibility & the reputation of their platform, drive the volume & quality of their content.

Adoption
- invite your friends to comment on your progress on ChangeEverything.ca
- post your entry on your Facebook page so that your friends see it and know to come and check it out. Be sure to ask them to comment on your entry at ChangeEverything
- link to your resolution on ChangeEverything.ca from your external blog

Marketing
- ask a mentor or expert for help, and write about their advice.
- find blogs and web sites that deal with your resolution's subject, and post on them asking for help.
- find a way to make news about your resolution – in a community newspaper, on a talk radio show or the CBC national news.

Content
- video and pictures on the changeeverything site.
- find other ChangeEverything.ca members who are working on the same change, and comment on their blog posts. Get a conversation going.
- add photos to your blog posts.

Related articles on Visible-Banking.com
* Banking 2.0: the social media directory
* People First: what are your expectations from social networking in banking?
* Interview with William Azaroff, Director Online Banking and Engagement at Vancity