“It's relatively easy to track the ROI of that.”

A credit union can go a long way spending $50 a day to boost posts.

“That would be a very solid budget,” she said.

Erin Hennessy, who recently joined United Federal Credit Union in St. Joseph, Mich., as SVP of marketing, said credit unions are still trying to figure out how they benefit from social media.

“That's the challenge we as an industry are dealing with: Where's the tie in?” she asked.

A 2013 Filene study found social media users fell into four broad categories, which researchers gave nicknames:

Sybils: Those with multiple personalities. Each social media platform had a strikingly different feel, so much so it was hard to see what tied them together. Nearly 25% fell into this category.

Integrators: 27% fell into the opposite category. Their platforms tried to look and feel identical across platforms, even when the look and feel fit poorly.

Monogamous: About 40% of organizations picked one channel and stuck with it.

MacGyvers: These can use any tool from Facebook to a Swiss Army knife to make it speak to the right audience with the right voice. Only 6% of organizations had this proficiency.

“That's the hardest one to do, and it's impossible without a strategy,” Fearing said.

Golden 1 Credit Union in Sacramento, Calif., has the fifth-largest presence on Facebook among U.S. credit unions, with 54,800 likes, and is the third-largest on Twitter with 17,600 followers.

Douglas Aguiar, chief marketing officer for Golden 1 ($10.2 billion in assets, 791,570 members), sees social media as a means to convey the personality of the Golden 1 brand, and to understand what members and others in the community are thinking and feeling.

“Being a marketing director, it's an important part of our brand,” Aguiar said. “This commitment goes right on up to our CEO to have a strong social media presence.”

At the California State Fair in Sacramento, Golden 1 sponsored a contest in which people were asked to post their favorite State Fair memories in words or pictures with the hashtag #MemoriesAreGolden. The contest drew about 3,200 entries, and 14,000 views on Facebook.

“We do a good job of posting things people are interested in,” Aguiar said. “People want to see faces in their community. It kind of puts a face on our credit union.”

Last fall, Golden 1 started an Instagram account, and it is now assessing Snapchat. Whether it chooses to use Snapchat will depend on whether:

• Snapchat is a good fit for the Golden 1 brand;

• Snapchat has a quality image in marketplace; and

• Snapchat attracts a large enough number of users to allow Golden 1 to communicate effectively with its targeted groups.

Golden 1 has the resources needed to support Snapchat with content and monitoring.

“Snapchat is definitely on our radar. It seems to be growing pretty fast with the younger set,” Aguiar said.

Facebook might be a comfortable platform to manage, but Bethpage Federal Credit Union felt it was important to push into Snapchat to reach younger members who spurn Facebook.

“Once grandma got on Facebook, they were out,” Linda Armyn, SVP for corporate affairs, said.

Bethpage ($6.8 billion in assets, 293,443 members) is one of the sponsors of the Bethpage Air Show on Long Island, one of the nation's largest air shows, drawing more than 400,000 people each Memorial Day weekend.

Last May, Bethpage spent $1,200 to have Snapchat create a special filter for its two-day event, which would put a frame around photos taken at the airshow. Nearly 5,000 people used the filter to create images seen by nearly 200,000 people.

“If you do the ROI,” Armyn said, “it's pretty good.”

Heartland Credit Union ($237 million in assets, 21,820 members) is a heavy user of Facebook and YouTube. This past summer, the Madison, Wis.-based credit union started using Instagram to promote a music series it sponsors. Heartland also considered Snapchat, but passed.

“It just isn't' right for us,” Robin Marohn, vice president of marketing and business development, said. “We can't be everywhere. We don't have the staff and manpower to manage all these different social media channels.”

Hennessy, of United ($2.1 billion in assets), is trying to make social media more relevant for its 149,211 members in Michigan, Arkansas, Indiana, Ohio, North Carolina and Nevada. It uses Facebook, Twitter and Linked In, and is evaluating Snapchat and Instagram.

The credit union works to ensure its posts will garner attention. If too many of its posts get no views or clicks, Facebook will start ranking the page lower.

“If it's not getting views, it's actually working to our detriment,” Hennessy said.

As an example of a successful post, she cited an event it co-sponsored called Girls on the Run that it featured via a live feed last May using Periscope, a live streaming service acquired by Twitter in 2015.

Rather than hiring a video crew, United's marketing team used only a cell phone and a hot spot to broadcast the race over Periscope and Twitter. Live coverage lasted two hours and 18 minutes. An abbreviated version of the race was then created and shared on YouTube and Facebook.

Despite the homespun production standards, the live stream drew 2,956 views.

Heartland competes with two larger credit unions in the Madison, Wis., market, so it chose to shape a distinctive identity, specializing in helping small business owners and farmers.

Five years ago, according to Marohn, Heartland switched from devoting 70% of its marketing budget on traditional media to spending most of its budget on social media. This year, 80% of its budget for advertising and marketing is being spent on social media.

Membership began growing three years ago, and Heartland began to attract younger members. Its median age as fallen from 47 three years ago to 40 this year.

“That's a hard number to move,” he said. “We figured we would move it a couple years.”

At the time of the switch, Heartland hired StoryBridge.tv, a husband-wife business of former television journalists Katy Sai and Jay Olsen. So far, they've produced about 70 short videos for Heartland. The company is on retainer for Heartland, also handling social media management and search engine optimization.

While Marohn didn't want to disclose the cost of each video, however he did say each video has a specific set of goals.

“The goal is for each to have an immediate, primary use, and longer-term secondary use,” he noted.

The videos are short — typically no more than two or three minutes — and emotionally engaging. One features a couple handling an adoption. Another tells the story of a widow overcoming debts.

“If we can turn these pieces into educational pieces, I think they'll have lasting impact,” he said.