Thrivent Financial for Lutherans is a business built for social media — they listen to their customers to make big decisions. According to Social Media Relationships Manager Stacy Eckes-Borys, their customers, or members, own the company.
So when they were considering expanding their exclusively Lutheran membership base to the broader Christian community for the first time, they asked their customers to make the vote. That’s where social media came in.
In her presentation at SocialMedia.org’s BlogWell conference, Stacy explains how they used Facebook to get the word out about the vote, answer questions, and make their members’ voices heard.
Here’s how they did it:
- Prepare your leaders: This was the first time social media played a role in such a big decision for the company — and it was bound to be a passionate topic. Stacy’s social media team helped communicate the expectations they had for this kind of move internally so no one would be caught off guard.
- Create word of mouth plans with different talkers in mind: Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and LinkedIn strategies are great — but Stacy’s team took it a step further by thinking of how each would work for their biggest advocates. They created plans for their employees, local representatives, lodges and chapters.
- Your customers have a voice, help them share it: Stacey says creating a place for their members to give their honest feedback was priceless. To make it happen, they avoided the complicated stuff and stuck with basic social marketing tactics.
Watch Stacy’s full presentation in the video below. The slides are available for download.
If you like this presentation, see more great social media case studies like it live at SocialMedia.org’s Brands-Only Summit, Dec. 9 to 11 in Orlando, Fla.