How to Share a Banking Legacy: American Bank

My ongoing work with American Bank — a community bank with a 75-year history in Montana — has focused on telling their story on social media. This has required careful strategy. After all, compliance is a banker’s bogeyman. It must be taken seriously. But it can seriously inhibit sharing with the world.

So, how can a bank make social media meaningful instead of scary?

Prioritize story over salesmanship.

Regulators won’t care about a heroic German shepherd in 1932. Or a woman’s bounteous collection of hats. Or a bank lobby filled with antique — and operational! — toys.

But American Bank’s employees will, and so will the community the bank serves. These are the stories we want to tell.

How do you get leadership onboard with a new approach?

Make a playbook.

Informed by employee feedback, I created a social media strategy that emphasized a community-focused brand approach.

And learn from other brands.

I also created case studies of banking peers on social media, finding lessons to be gained from each.

What does a meaningful story about banking look like?

It looks like this.

When Claude Erickson helped found Livingston State Bank in 1947, he did not live in Livingston. He lived and worked 260 miles north, in Havre, across two U.S. Routes and a state highway — a route that was built just two years before. It was a treacherous route. Especially in winter. Frozen plains became conifer forests, flat prairie roads became winding snakes through the Little Belt Mountains. Late sunrises. Early sunsets. All while huddled in an 85-horsepower sedan.

This wasn’t considered a golden opportunity. But Claude’s can-do attitude was ready to make it one . . .

See the full post here.

And, finally, it looks like this: a print publication that brings all of American Bank’s stories together for the first time.

The AB Stories project is in progress — it will serve as a celebration of the bank’s history and the timeless wisdom within it. Employees and customers alike will have access to this book. It will be a gift to the community.