BFSI brands should think like fin-influencers for their content strategy

So, when was the last time you were extremely thrilled to see your bank or broking firm wish you with an extremely quirky social media post on World Coffee Day? Or maybe World Left Handers Day? No? How about Valentine's Day?

It's high time BFSI brands confronted a hard truth - Your social media posts? Your audience could live without them. They flock to social platforms seeking two things: entertainment and education - both served with a side of fun. This brings us to the most important question, something we always ask our social media managers in our team before they take up an account: Why will they follow our brand?

The answer to this lies in the last few slides of your strategy presentation, which is influencer marketing. We often look for it in the first few slides, that is, “competition analysis.” Most marketing strategies in BFSI are based on “what the industry is doing?” Let me tell you, most are playing a game of darts in the dark. They wish the audience on every festival possible, talk about their services and new launches, and of course, sprinkle some PSA posts about fraud awareness.

On the other hand, what do finfluencers talk about?

Finfluencers have seized the spotlight for a good reason- they address the topics that truly resonate.

From the intricacies of home loans, unraveling amnesty schemes, to choosing the right credit card or debating the merits of a term plan over a ULIP, finfluencers delve into what the audience is eager to understand. Their content is devoured from start to finish. So, when your audience grants their precious attention to a social media app, they're naturally drawn to finfluencers, not brands.

How do brands tackle this? How should they learn to steal attention from influencers towards their own pages? Easy. By thinking and creating content like one.

These are a few things I recommend being considered before creating a social media strategy for any BFSI brand - to be more creator and less brand on social.

Shortlist a cluster of topics you want your brand to talk about.

Know what your audience really wants to hear about. There are a lot of tools that help you narrow down on a content cluster topic. Create content around these topics. Tools like Google Trends, Search Console, social listening tools etc. help to understand trends and topics people are interested in. One key hack that beats all this is the comment section. Scavenging the comment section of popular YouTubers and finfluencers in your client brand’s category will help you often find people requesting certain kinds of videos to be made next. It can’t get easier than that. The audience tells you what they want; and you just need to create it for them.

To have a Face? Or be Two (or more) faced?

The debate around the persona of your content—be it faceless, a long-term face, or a rotating cast - is ongoing.

Should your finance brand anchor itself to a singular face? Or opt for anonymity or frequent change? Binding your content to one face long-term can backfire, as that individual becomes synonymous with problem-solving and as a result overshadows the brand. Also, the audience gets too used to the face, and switching in the future becomes a problem. Let’s face it, in an era where C-Suites jump ship every couple of years, we can’t expect a face to last.

I always recommend a good mix of personalities to be the various faces of content buckets the brand plans to share. A mix of mature and young faces always helps. However, I am still a big believer in faceless content as well. If created well, it can yield great results at low costs and hassles of video production. There are brilliant Instagram and YouTube communities that are thriving with just brilliant static, animated, and carousel content. There should be a healthy mix of all types of face and faceless content.

Stop obsessing over the quality of the video.

Yes, we know you’re a big brand, and there is a level of quality of a video that is expected of you. I’m not saying don’t follow the basic hygiene that goes into creating videos. Just don’t obsess over quality and scale of production and graphic design so much that it hampers the pace of execution. You need to create content by the dozen to know what's working and what's not. After all, your audience is more receptive to native looking, UGC kind of content. It’s only your boardroom that has a problem with the minor “quality detailing” of your content.

Some content needs to focus on “Saves.”

Likes, shares, comments, and? And Saves.

Brands need to focus on content that gets saved. It's a brilliant engagement metric and should be given far more weightage in the engagement calculation formula. When the audience saves your content, it means they wish to refer to it again and again. They also tend to discuss that information offline with their circle and use that post as a reference to make a point.

But what do they save? Complicated information that's broken down simply. Like an infographic with startling statistics or even an easy explanation of news that is doing the rounds in your category. E.g., Union Budget, RBI’s new rulings, SEBI’s latest circular—you get the drill.

We’ve seen success with our client partners' social presence when we switched thinking like brands to thinking like creators. Buyer beware though, it's a long process, and organic community building always needs patience, a lot of A/B testing, and consistency. Yet, the payoff in audience loyalty and engagement is immeasurable.