Employee Feature: Kylie Panke
Our employees are an important part of our awesome culture here at Denim Social, and we want you to learn more about them! Check out some of the fun and unique facts about Kylie from our Customer Success team.

Role @ Denim Social:
Customer Success Specialist
How long have you worked at Denim Social?
I have been at Denim Social for 5 months.
What is your favorite project you’ve worked on? or What is your favorite thing you’ve accomplished?
Troubleshooting issues and coming up with lasting solutions for our customers that ensure their success.
Favorite place to travel?
I have never been there, but I just know it would be Scotland.
Best advice you’ve received?
Do what makes you happy. You’re not here to please anyone else, you’re responsible for your own happiness.
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?
I’ve been struck by lightning.
What motivates you?
Being the best version of myself I can be. And Beyonce.
Hidden talent?
I can play guitar solos on the clarinet
Favorite quote?
“I don’t like to gamble, but if there’s one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.” - Beyonce

Employee Feature: Kylie Panke
Our employees are an important part of our awesome culture here at Denim Social, and we want you to learn more about them! Check out some of the fun and unique facts about Kylie from our Customer Success team.

Role @ Denim Social:
Customer Success Specialist
How long have you worked at Denim Social?
I have been at Denim Social for 5 months.
What is your favorite project you’ve worked on? or What is your favorite thing you’ve accomplished?
Troubleshooting issues and coming up with lasting solutions for our customers that ensure their success.
Favorite place to travel?
I have never been there, but I just know it would be Scotland.
Best advice you’ve received?
Do what makes you happy. You’re not here to please anyone else, you’re responsible for your own happiness.
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?
I’ve been struck by lightning.
What motivates you?
Being the best version of myself I can be. And Beyonce.
Hidden talent?
I can play guitar solos on the clarinet
Favorite quote?
“I don’t like to gamble, but if there’s one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.” - Beyonce

Insurance leaders know the value of agents when it comes to product distribution, but smart marketers should be making the case to invest in digital enablement at the agent level. This means extending social media efforts beyond the brand and to the intermediaries building relationships at the local level.
Helping agents feel comfortable on social media and weaving it into their everyday sales mix is much different than managing a social presence at the brand or company level. But when your business goes to market through intermediaries, empowering them on social media is crucial.
Unsure where to start with a social selling program? It can feel daunting, but Denim Social can help. Learn how to set the right tone, train, create content and more in the latest guide from Denim Social: Guide To Social Selling for Insurance.

Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
In today’s competitive insurance and financial advice marketplaces, it’s impossible to deny the impact of social media on business — and, quite frankly, social media in general. A 2022 Pew Research study showed that consumers in every age group are shifting to digital, especially younger generations. Many are looking for crucial guidance online, including insurance and financial advice. In fact, Gen Z is five times likelier to get financial advice on social media than people age 41 and over.
While Millennials and Gen Zers may not dominate your book of business yet, they are the clients of the future, and every generation is increasingly digital. Social media marketing for your firm and your advisors is no longer optional -- it’s necessary. A genuine, consistent, and engaging social strategy can make your brand and team members all the more trustworthy, relevant, and reliable in the eyes of prospective and current clients.
The good news is that creating and maintaining a social strategy doesn’t have to be complicated. Follow these dos and don’ts to optimize your activity, build relationships with new and existing customers, and bring your brand to life with social selling.
Relationships are the foundation of both the insurance and financial services industries. A client has a relationship with a person and not a logo, after all. While it’s important to maintain brand social media pages that communicate your firm’s values and mission, the actual value of social media lies in the humans behind it. So…
DON’T rely solely on brand pages. Social sell instead.
If your brand is active on social media, you’re off to a great start -- but you’re leaving an opportunity on the table if you’re not empowering agents and advisors to share content on social.
Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging socials to showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
A good social selling program puts agents and advisors at the center of your social media strategy. The good news is that these intermediaries can approach their prospective clients on social media the same way they would in person: finding ways to solve their problems through informative, authentic posts that humanize your brand.
DO encourage authenticity.
Advisors and agents can help make your social media more authentic by being themselves.
Think about it this way: If an agent wouldn’t have the conversation in real life, don’t have it on social media. For instance, if an intermediary engages with a prospect and solely promotes themselves instead of learning about the client, the conversation is probably too sales-heavy; tactics like these might deter people from committing further to your brand.
Instead, encourage your agents to connect with clients and prospects on a more practical and personal level. Showing them that you’re listening and want to help solve their problems goes a long way toward building trust and conversions.
DON’T forget the basics of profile optimization.
Excited to get your agents and advisors posting? Don’t forget the social media fundamentals. Before your advisors click post, check your brand page (and social sellers’ profiles) for consistent messaging, profile images, cover images, and about sections.
Profile images should be professional and current, cover images should be on brand, and information — including hours of operation, phone numbers, and contact emails — should be accurate. Customers must view your brand and intermediaries as cohesive, consistent, and up-to-date.
DO empower agents and advisors to create content.
Social sellers not only need to post regularly but also with purpose. Agent and advisor social profiles should be an extension of who they are in real life. They should use their personal content to tell a story about what they do and why. Authenticity always wins in social media, and you’ll quickly see that your advisors’ personal stories and content garner the most engagement.
Potential clients want to know your brand’s image isn’t just a formula but genuine people — it’s your job to help intermediaries peel back the curtain (and do the same on your brand social pages!).
DON’T mess around with compliance.
Anyone in the insurance or financial services industry understands the importance of compliance. All social media must be compliant, from your brand pages to individual posts from intermediaries. If the idea of intermediaries posting themselves gives you the marketer night sweats and compliance jitters, remember that authentic content drives social selling’s success. The more transparent your sellers are, the better their outcomes will be.
If you’re unsure about what kind of posts are or aren’t allowed in your firm’s social selling strategy, work with a trusted platform that ensures compliance at every step.
DO use the best tools.
Whether you need to generate compliance-approved content, engage in social listening, or integrate your content and advertising efforts, plenty of digital partners can help your social selling and social media efforts succeed. Just be sure to find someone who aligns with your company’s values, understands your industry, and is as committed to communicating your authentic brand voice as you are.
Maintaining an effective online presence is critical for showing clients you are relevant and reliable. Showcase your authentic brand voice, empower social sellers to become active promoters (of themselves and the firm), and follow these other dos and don’ts to better engage with current and potential customers.
Reprinted with permission from the April 3, 2023 issue of PropertyCasualty360.com, ©2023, ALM Global, LLC. Further duplication without permission is prohibited. All rights reserved.

April is Financial Literacy Month, and for agents, advisors, loan officers, and all other financial professionals, it’s the perfect opportunity to share educational content on social media. As more customers look to social media for financial advice, intermediaries can speak up and be the voice of truth amidst a sea of misinformation and confusion. Combine a lack of formal financial education with the abundant get-rich schemes on social media and you get a clear picture of the need for trustworthy content online. Especially during uncertain economic times, those in the financial services industry can meet their customers where they are, and take to social media to help mitigate worry, create understanding and offer helpful insights.
In April, consider adding some extra educational posts to your existing content mix and follow these three social media best practices for Financial Literacy Month.
Establish yourself as a professional. In an age where meeting people is often through a screen rather than in person, social media can be the new business card. Use your profile to put your credibility and skills on display, so that those seeking financial input know you’re the real deal and not just another unqualified influencer. Optimizing social media profiles to showcase any skills, certifications, or licensing information is a good place to start. Simply put, you want to show up online the way you do in person!
Use reputable content sources. Not all content is created equally -- as you share news, market updates, and more, make sure that the sites you are pulling from are trusted sources. Any time you share an article, it should be well-cited and accurate. Having a curated content library that is approved by your institution is a great way to get a daily news feed that is ready to share. All content should also be relevant to your audiences – think of what your customers need and ask for regularly -- instead of just sharing to share.
Add in thought leadership. Sharing news articles without any context is not what the people need; add in your thoughts, opinions, and analysis. Why should anyone care? What are the long-term effects? Think of how you want any financial updates to come across to your customers, and show them why you are a leader in the industry. The more you are able to do this, the more audiences will come to you for the whys and hows of market ups and downs, and everything in between. People don’t know what they don’t know; that’s where you step in.
Every month is a good time to share financial education on social media, but especially for April’s Financial Literacy dedication, financial services professionals have key opportunities to build their reputation and give back to audiences in need of education and guidance for life’s most important decisions.
Want more out of your social media presence? Download our guidebook on Social Media Trends.

Doug Wilber helps financial institutions communicate through social media.
Wilber is the CEO of Denim Social, a Clayton, Missouri-based company that can help life insurers, banks, wealth management firms and other highly regulated clients reach out with ordinary posts and ads on services such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
The company has about 250 clients. In 2021, it attracted $5 million in financing from an investor group that included Fintop Capital.
Wilber has a bachelor’s degree in marketing and a master’s degree in business from Penn State University.
He has been involved with financial services marketing and startup management since 2006, when he became a prepaid card marketer at Discover Financial Services. For about 10 years, he has served on the investment committee of SixThirty Ventures, a business development program for financial technology startups.
He took over as the top executive at Denim Social in April 2020.
Wilber answered questions via email about how he thinks financial professionals should go about creating, using and sharing social media content.
The interview has been condensed and edited.
THINKADVISOR: Can efforts to reach out through social media be compatible with all of the compliance concerns that financial professionals face?
DOUG WILBER: Social media compliance keeps people up at night for a reason, but it doesn’t have to.
The right social media management tools can help ensure any post — whether it’s directly from a financial professional or a partner — is compliant.
Look for tools that offer approval workflows and keyword red flags.
What do you think, generally, about financial professionals sharing the content used in consumer awareness and outreach campaigns?
Shared content strategies can be effective, but only if the content is useful and the financial professional is being authentic.
Social media is really about relationships, and that means financial professionals need to engage with their communities online.
If partner content educates investors and showcases an advisor’s expertise, that can be a nice addition to their social feed. But shared content shouldn’t be the only thing they are posting.
Ideally, their social posts would primarily be personal, authentic content, with a measured amount of promotional and partner content.
Just like in real life, advisors need to educate first and sell second.
Are there some situations in which using shared outreach content makes more sense than others?
Shared content can be useful for broader topics, like financial education or market updates.
Financial professionals should avoid using partner content as their sole content source, though. Social media should be an extension of a professional’s real-life relationships.
Think about it this way: If you wouldn’t have a solely promotional conversation in real life, you shouldn’t do it on social media either.
Is creating a post from scratch different from sharing someone else’s post?
Whether a financial professional is creating or sharing a post, they should consider themselves and their firm responsible for the content.
One financial professional’s social media can impact the entire firm brand, after all.
Social media compliance is complex and requires marketing, compliance, and individual advisors to work together.
While we recommend every advisor be active on social media to share thought leadership and amplify the brand, they definitely shouldn’t go it alone or execute a strategy by posting natively to social media networks.
A social media management tool built for compliance can ensure every new and shared post is reviewed and approved by the right experts.
How can financial professionals avoid complaints about use of other people’s content?
Whether it’s financial information or cat videos, it’s good social media etiquette to give credit to the original creator.
The greater risk is a financial professional posting misinformation that could damage the reputation of a firm or non-compliant content that draws the attention of regulators.
What should financial professionals do if they see standard, compliance-approved social media content and want to personalize it?
Financial professionals should definitely be personalizing content. This is a great way to make social media posts more authentic, but an approval workflow in a social media management tool is essential.
Once a financial professional personalizes a post, they can submit it for approval to ensure their commentary is factually correct and compliant.
Without the right tools, scaling a review and approval process is impractical (if not impossible) and opens up a financial institution to risk.
In your opinion, are there any drawbacks to financial professionals using packaged content from outside content? If so, how can financial professionals address those challenges?
Standard and packaged content can be a great tool, but it has to be personalized and useful to be effective. Think about the value a follower is getting from the post. It needs to matter to them.
Today’s financial professionals must be social selling, not just building the brand by sharing content.
Smart financial professionals are using social media to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.

What Is Social Selling?
Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.
Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships. While this has traditionally been done in person for financial services, the digital landscape offers endless possibilities for relationship building. By now marketers and business leaders are familiar with social media and see the opportunity to build their brand, but most have only scratched the surface. To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool.
It’s called social selling and it works.
Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
Social selling is the perfect crossroads of marketing and sales. It enables intermediaries – like loan officers, financial advisors and insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity. Savvy marketing and sales teams unlock the power of relationships with social selling, enabling intermediaries to compliantly communicate, share and sell on the social channels of their choice.
Consider this: employees have 10x the reach and drive double the engagement compared to brand pages on social media. But it’s about more than likes and comments, social selling can transform social media into a revenue driver for your institution. Sales reps who regularly share content are 57% more likely to generate leads. The numbers check out, but social selling is also about building the intangible relationships that are the lifeblood of the industry.
The Intermediary is Here to Stay! Social Selling is a non-negotiable to drive a modern marketing strategy.
Products are increasingly digitized and direct-to-consumer business is on the rise, but that doesn’t mean the role of the intermediary is going away. It’s just changing. The way agents, loan officers and advisors interact with digital products will look different from the past, but the role of the advisor will always be needed. Human connection will remain a meaningful part of financial transactions. As expectations change, marketing and sales teams need to meet consumers on the channel of their choice. Social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s where consumers are interacting with each other, looking for advice, and looking for thought leadership on important life topics. This means intermediaries and producers have to be there.
My brand is on social media, so we’re social selling, right?
Not quite. If your brand is active on social media, you’re off to a great start, but you’re leaving opportunity on the table if you’re not empowering agents, loan officers, advisors and more to share on social. If you only have brand pages, you’re not social selling yet.

Watch Here: Beyond the Brand | Social Selling Best Practices
Forward-thinking marketers understand the power of social media at all stages of their marketing funnel. From awareness and consideration to loyalty and even advocacy, social and digital channels can and do inform purchase decisions. Financial institutions are catching on — more than 90% of the 50 largest banks are currently on Facebook, and 88% have active Twitter accounts — but being on social media doesn’t equate to a strong social media strategy. Today’s digital market requires an integrated strategy that meets target audiences throughout the buyer’s journey. This means investing in paid social campaigns alongside organic and driving deeper relationships with customers through social selling.
Sounds easy, right? While marketers may understand the strategies and costs associated with modern social success, senior decision makers may still need educating and persuading. That’s why it’s essential to be able to effectively communicate the benefits of integrated social media strategies. In addition to intangible benefits like building trust and humanizing your brand, both organic and paid social selling strategies offer metrics that enable marketers to prove value.


The Intermediary is Here to Stay: Products are increasingly digitized and direct-to-consumer business is on the rise, but that doesn’t mean the role of the intermediary is going away. It’s just changing. The way agents, loan officers and advisors interact with digital products will look different from the past, but the role of the advisor will always be needed. Human connection will remain a meaningful part of financial transactions.
As expectations change, marketing and sales teams need to meet consumers on the channel of their choice. Social media isn’t going anywhere. It’s where consumers are interacting with each other, looking for advice, and looking for thought leadership on important life topics. This means intermediaries and producers have to be there.

Building A Social Selling Program
Being responsible for your team’s social selling strategy can be daunting, especially if you don’t have a plan or support. We see it firsthand at Denim Social – without a meaningful strategy, users may not be eager (or downright resistant) to jump on a new platform. So, how are others getting their teams onboard? We talked to a few Denim Social customers to learn how they’re making it happen and we saw four keys to adoption success.
Activate a hybrid distribution approach.
We find that teams that utilize social selling have the most empowered associates because they are able to create personalized, engaging content. However, we have also found that a hybrid distribution approach can be a great stepping stone to social selling. This usually includes the marketing team posting brand content on behalf of associates, and associates scheduling out pre-approved industry content from a content library, plus sprinkling in their own personal content. And rest assured, that personal content still goes through approval workflows.
Build a robust content library.
If you’re going to ask associates to post content, you’ve got to make it easy and compliant. Our platform offers content libraries filled with pre-approved posts. We see that when associates have lots of content to choose from, they post more frequently.
“We have implemented several resources and training opportunities to encourage users to stay engaged. We update libraries on a weekly basis and send a weekly content digest via email to remind our users to get into the system and schedule their posts, said Amy Leonard, officer digital marketing specialist at Johnson Financial Group.
Communicate the value of social media consistently.
Your teams need to be able to answer the age-old question, “what’s in it for me?” Your teams are busy and that means you need to help them see why spending their valuable time on social media is worth it.
“Whenever you bring on a new platform, user adoption can be a challenge. Once users embrace Denim Social, they see that it actually saves them time,” said Leonard.
Seth Reeks from Evolve Bank and Trust finds that communicating the benefits of social media AND Denim Social combined are the most impactful. He uses real information from top performers to show their peers why social media can help drive relationships and business. He provides them with brand and industry focused content on an ongoing basis. Then he shows them how they can schedule out their content efficiently using Denim Social.
“I tell them if they put in just a little work at the beginning of the month, they’ll see big results,” said Reeks.
Train and Train Again
Baking social media and Denim Social training into the onboarding process is a great way to introduce new and motivated associates to a fresh way to drive their business. It is also important to keep social media top of mind for ALL associates. An ongoing training program outlining compliance/social policy, the value of social media and Denim Social is a must, whether it be monthly or quarterly. Marketing is not often top of mind for salespeople, so it is important to continuously educate them on how to get involved and optimize their strategies.
Allison Dickinson, social media specialist at AnnieMac Home Mortgage oversees the creation of their hugely successful mortgage loan officer training program, which includes a monthly new hire social media and compliance training course and Denim Social overview, a monthly Denim Social refresher training, a Quarterly Strategy Training, and ongoing 1:1 assistance for users.
“We have monthly Denim Refresh trainings to keep our users updated and knowledgeable about the platform. One thing we like to do is host one-on-one trainings to make sure they understand the workflow and that Denim is easy for them to use,” said Dickinson.
This training program is a well oiled machine, and keeps their social program growing by educating and informing users consistently.
If you’re struggling with adoption, these strategies can help. And of course, persistence pays off.
“Don’t give up! In the beginning, we had no users, no one managing their social media. Now we have over 100 users handling their own social media accounts,” said Reeks. “If we had quit back in the beginning when it was tough to get buy-in, we wouldn’t have the program that we have now.”
Social media is only as valuable as its users and that makes adoption key. If you’re struggling to motivate your team to hop on the social media bandwagon the right tools and support can make all the difference.
Watch Here: Driving User Engagement on Social Media
So you’re ready to launch a social selling program, but where do you start?
Developing a social selling strategy and launching a program can be daunting. As you know, marketing and sales teams are already juggling full plates. Adding social to the mix is a culture shift, and supporting hundreds or thousands of producers in weaving social into their everyday processes isn’t a small feat. Remember that social selling is more than marketing: It’s using social media as a digital relationship-building and sales tool. This mindset shift can take some time, and launching your strategy and program won’t happen overnight.

This is one of our favorites: LinkedIn’s 2022 State of Sales Report found the most successful sellers at large companies — those reaching more than 150% of quota — routinely use technology to build human connections with buyers.
Align with Your Team on the Definition of Social Selling
As a marketing pro, you know what social selling is by now, but what about your team? This step may sound obvious, but you need to work to define social selling in your organization and differentiate from brand social media. Intermediaries may have less experience with social selling. Take the time to talk about what social selling can do and educate your teams on using social media as a sales tool. This time spent learning a new marketing tactic is very much worth your loan officers’, advisors’ and agents’ time, too. Prove it to them by sharing meaningful stats on the benefits of social selling.
Educate Your Sales Team
Remember that social selling isn’t just marketing’s responsibility. It’s an effort that should be supported by both marketing and sales. If you’re in a marketing role looking to launch social selling for your advisors, loan officers and/or agents, take the time to educate your sales partners on social selling. Craft your elevator pitch on how social helps intermediaries meet customers where they are in the digital landscape and how enabling them on social helps amplify your brand messaging. Keep in mind that social media in a heavily regulated industry can feel risky, and adding it to the mix of sales tactics that have “always been done a certain way” can feel like a huge change. Patience is key! Own the narrative around social selling, build your group of internal champions to help with this culture shift, and invest time in change management and your communication plan.
Find Your Social Selling Technology
Once you’ve got your internal teams aligned on launching social selling for your producers, it’s important to find a tech solution to make it all easier! Seek a solution that creates efficiencies for the administrators of your program and your users. For instance, does your platform account for compliance coverage? Does your vendor understand the nuances of your industry? As you’re evaluating potential platforms, make sure to consider both the administrative and end-user experience, as well as both organic and paid capabilities. A holistic social selling platform will include all these things.
Identify Social Maturity
So you’re changing the narrative, gaining buy-in, and you’ve got the right tools to help you — what’s next? It’s time to dig into your user group to identify social maturity. You don’t have to do it all at once — a phased approach with folks of different social maturity levels will make this easier to learn and scale from. Start by simply searching for your intermediaries on social media. How easy is it to find them? Are their pages updated and on brand? Is their “about” info robust and accurate? Have their profile photos been updated in the last decade? If you are answering “yes” to a lot of these, you already have a great start. Those are your people. But if you aren’t, that’s OK — you’ll just need to start with some generalized social education and profile optimization to get your group started. Taking the time to deliver this education is critical in making social selling stick.
Train and Test Your User Group
Once you’ve identified agents, advisors or loan officers who are either already active on social or ready to be active, start communicating. Let your whole organization know that you’re launching a social selling program. The more folks who know, the more they can support your work. Then, communicate with your first user group; let them know what to expect throughout the launch, including your level of support and upcoming training to get them started. And finally... train! Depending on the level of social maturity of your launch group, this might mean starting with the basics of each social platform, as well as the basics of organic and paid social. If your users are super ready, it could mean jumping right into your social selling tech solution.
Measure Success and Optimize Over Time
Once you have momentum, fuel that success with regular content. It takes time: Start simply by creating versions of your brand content for individuals and add this content to your content planning processes (for instance, you might craft language your agents can use to share branded social posts). One of the perks of Denim Social? We curate your library with our content integration. Finally, measure your success and share it with your internal champions, teams, and leadership. Your measurement might just consist of basic content usage and engagement at first, but it will ultimately grow to measuring return on ad spend and leads generated. Take the time to celebrate small wins and educate your internal partners on the growth of your social selling program. Check in with your social sellers to make sure they’re understanding the value and celebrating with you.
Download: Social Selling Made Easy

Want to keep learning and training with your team?


Social Selling Best Practices
If you are posting the same content on every social media network, you might be missing out on key engagement opportunities for your social selling strategy. What gets the most attention and engagement on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn isn’t universal, and financial marketers would be wise to seek a more nuanced strategy than just casting a wide net and hoping for the best. While there are general best practices to posting on social, making just a few distinctions to how you approach each of your networks can help you beat the dreaded social media algorithms and build credibility and expertise at the brand and individual producer levels. Let’s take a look at each network and how banks, wealth management firms, insurance agencies, and mortgage lenders can customize their strategies to the unique needs of each network to achieve growth and success.
Facebook: This is what you should know about our financial institution.
Despite the emergence of new networks and the inevitable departure of Gen Z and Millennials, Facebook is still the most popular social media network, and it’s a non-negotiable for any business. For community banks and other smaller financial businesses, it is the perfect medium to connect with local communities. This network will be one of the first places many customers look for a business, so having updated and branded profile information is essential. It’s ideal for sharing important dates or events, announcements, or anything customers need to be in the know about. Utilize brand pages for general information, and allow your agents, advisors, or employees to curate more personalized content on their individual business pages.
How To Succeed:
- Share a wide variety of content geared towards informing and connecting with audiences
- Post content related to the local community and partnerships with other business or organizations
- Take advantage of user-generated content to build and maintain relationships with customers at the brand and producer levels
Download: Best Practices for Building Your Facebook Page
Twitter: Talking about our #financialinstitution.
Sometimes Twitter seems like a mystery with its unique format, hashtag content, and 280-character limit. Like any other network, customers and prospects will consult a company’s account to find information they need to know; but more importantly, Twitter is a network people go to in order to hear news and opinions - and share their own. It is primarily a resource for sharing thought leadership and staying informed about industry updates. To be set up for success, brands and producers should follow relevant accounts like competitors, local businesses, and industry leaders. Hashtags are a useful way to learn about the broader conversations happening- plus, they provide insight into the hashtags marketers should be incorporating as well. Like any other network, brands engaging in social selling will enjoy the benefit of more engagement and awareness opportunities.
How To Succeed:
- Prioritize engaging in existing conversations, rather than creating original content
- Retweet relevant information for your customers and your brand, and utilize the mention function to increase visibility
- Follow and use hashtags related to your industry to stay connected to current events and other thought leaders
Download: Best Practices for Building Your Twitter Profile
LinkedIn: This is what our financial institution wants you to know, and why.
Branded as the professional social network, LinkedIn is perhaps the most important place for financial services brands and employees to be when it comes to social selling. This is a great way for brands to grow their reach by tapping into the power of user connections through sharing thought leadership and need-to-know information regarding their industry. Plus, authenticity is increasingly important on LinkedIn, with customers preferring to interact with brands that seem more relatable. Marketers and individual producers can use LinkedIn to share those values and insights into company culture that make people feel connected: photos, videos, and important awards or achievements can help boost engagement and brand awareness. With the power of a brand page combined with employee advocacy through social selling, LinkedIn should be a main focal point for any financial institution.
How To Succeed:
- Share images of community and in-person interactions and events with context on what it means to your business
- Follow local businesses from your actual business page (such as: local library, schools, industry competitors, local figures) and engage with their posts from your business page
- Share high-performing posts from industry thought leaders and other local businesses; this boosts their engagement and gets visibility for both of you
Download: Best Practices for Building Your LinkedIn Profile
Instagram: Here’s a photo or video of what our financial institution values.
As a highly popular and visually-appealing social media network, Instagram is ideal for demonstrating a more human side to any financial brand, which is especially important for connecting with younger customers. This network is meant to be fun and entertaining for followers, while also staying on brand for financial companies and still informative. Of all the networks, Instagram is going to be the easiest way to reach younger audiences and get creative with content. For brands engaging in social selling, it’s a fun way to give producers a chance to show their personality and connect with customers on a more casual level. Instagram is also very dynamic and visual: the Reels and Stories functions provide alternative ways to share and engage quickly with video, which provides more opportunities to get in front of audiences within the platform than image posts alone.
How To Succeed:
- Post images from community or in-person interactions; share important posts to brand and producer Stories, then save to Highlights
- Use emojis in copy and keep text light and fun; it’s all about the visuals on this network
- Follow other businesses/industry thought leaders; engage with their content and share posts to your own stories
Download: Best Practices for Building Your Instagram Profile
While every network has its own charms and best practices, there are a few overall things to keep in mind when launching a social selling program: stay authentic and non-salesy; keep compliance matters in mind; know how to maintain a balanced and informed feed; and finally, don’t forget that paid advertising can boost organic efforts on any network. Knowing what to post on each social media network can be overwhelming, but understanding the best way to approach social selling at the brand and individual levels on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn will translate to more engagement, better brand awareness, and increased trust from industry leaders and customers. With a little fine-tuning and support for your team, you can see the difference a network-based content approach can make for your financial institution.
Check Out These Social Media Network Best Practices for Social Selling:




Let’s talk about social media compliance for financial institutions.
In today’s digital landscape, marketers know that social media is a key element to any successful strategy. Social selling is a smart approach to empower financial advisors, loan officers and associates in social media, but it comes with risks. After all, just one rogue post could land your financial institution in regulatory hot water. Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your employees from making the most of social media. Think your team is ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions:
Do I know who has social media access and control?
Your social strategy won’t be compliant unless it’s properly governed, so start by clearly documenting who has access to and control over what social media channels. According to the FFIEC, your social media policy needs to clearly outline individual roles and responsibilities on social. When roles are clearly defined, you’ll eliminate authorization confusion and avoid regulatory trip wires
Is my social media policy well-documented?
If you don’t already have a social media policy in place, then it’s time to put one together. If you already have one, check that it is up-to-date. Ensure the policy is easy for all employees to digest, understand and implement.
Am I tuned-in to what’s happening on my social channels?
You should be monitoring all activity across your brand’s and employees’ social media channel to ensure posts and engagement is compliant.
Am I prepared for an audit?
Surprise! You’re being audited. Be sure you’re ready with a social media archive that captures all postings and engagement activity.
Do I have a clear picture of my social media risks?
You could be fined for a mistake that slipped through the cracks if you don’t have fail-safes, like approvals and compliance checks, in your workflows. Start with a social media risk assessment, and if you already have one, consider re-reviewing it regularly.
Trend Report: A Marketer’s Guide to Social Selling
As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions. Surely every marketer has found frustration in the often slower-than-average pace of digital adoption and change in the financial industry, but there can be benefits. Namely, financial marketers can look to more forward industries (like consumer brands and tech), to see what’s catching on and evolving. Even if you’re not quite ready to dive-in, as new trends emerge, financial marketers can begin to lay the groundwork with leaders for the future. Whether you’re in banking, mortgage, insurance or wealth management, we see a few key trends that every financial institution should begin preparing for.
But why change what’s working? If your institution hasn’t already come around to digital first marketing, let us put this gently – it’s time. In practice, this looks like moving marketing dollars from traditional media to social media centric digital strategies. Consumers in every age group are shifting to digital and it becomes more pronounced the younger the consumer. Younger generations are digital natives and their use of technology is rapidly increasing. In fact, about half of teens say they use the internet almost constantly, up from only about a quarter of teenagers who said the same less than 10 years ago.
We get it, teens aren’t big revenue drivers for your institution… yet. Believe it or not, younger generation buyers now dominate the housing market, with Millennials representing 43% of home buyers. Housing is only the tip of the iceberg with younger audiences too. A massive generational transfer is underway as Baby Boomers age. Experts predict that $84 trillion will change hands in the next 25 years. All of this is to say, financial marketers need to be where their consumers are. Today, that means social media. Digital marketing and social media show no signs of slowing down, so financial institutions need to invest accordingly.
Growth of Short-Form Video Content for Financial Services
Growth in short-form video is both changing what consumers watch and how they watch it. Even on other more traditional social media networks, attention spans are getting shorter. For example, short-form videos were just 21% of YouTube views in Q2 2021, but jumped to a whopping 57% of views in Q2 2022. Social media users are favoring videos in the 30 second to 1-minute range.
The Rise of Financial Advice Influencers
Whether institutions like it or not, people are getting financial advice on social media. And it’s a trend that’s unlikely to change – Generation Z are almost five times more likely to get financial advice from social media platforms than people aged 41 or over. While this may feel like a challenge for financial marketers, at Denim Social, we see it as a massive opportunity.
Increase in Personal Content and More Authenticity on Professional Channels
As more and more institutions adopt social selling strategies that put their people front and center, we’re seeing an increase in personal content. User-generated content is at the heart of a good social selling strategy because it is authentic.
Enhanced Marketing Automation Connections
As institutions build out bigger social selling programs that include both paid and organic strategies, scale is always a challenge. Smart marketers are looking to increase marketing automations to help them effectively and efficiently manage digital marketing strategies. In fact, 63% of marketers plan to increase their marketing automation budgets.
Social Media as Search Engine
Social media has long been viewed as an excellent brand-building tool, but today, financial institutions need to consider the value of social profiles for search discoverability. Increasingly audiences – especially younger ones – are using social media as a search engine. Recent Google research shows that nearly 40% of Gen Z prefers using TikTok and Instagram for search over Google.
The future of social media for financial institutions is bright and marketers who continue to advocate for increased social resources will reap the rewards. Whether you’re launching a social selling program or building your marketing automations, thinking long-term will help your team build toward a more connected and successful future. Remember this: You don’t have to be ready to dive into the next big thing right now, but it’s important to stay current with the social media trends of today so that you don’t get left behind tomorrow.
Content Strategy
Watch: Marketing Mix for an Informed & Healthy Social Media Feed

Organic social media should still have a place in your strategy, especially in a social selling program. Cultivating organic posts from your associates' accounts is a great way to add context, richness, and humanity to your brand. For current customers, organic social media posts can be a way to demonstrate the heart and culture of your company as you provide “behind the scenes” and in-office content that speaks to the personalities and values of your employees and institution.
For prospective customers, organic social can serve as a "verifier." A strong social media presence signals to prospects that your company and employees are legitimate and lends more insight into your value proposition.
However, what’s missing in this social media marketing strategy is the value for top-of-funnel leads — those who don’t know anything about your institution yet. According to a recent study, only 2.2% of your followers see your posts on Facebook, 5.5% on LinkedIn, and 9.4% on Instagram. Paid social media advertising is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, loan officers, or advisors to your institution at the right place and the right time.
Organic and Paid: Better Together
Organic and paid social have a symbiotic relationship. Organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, while paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
For instance, if you’re working for a wealth management firm, your top-of-funnel leads are unlikely to find your firm by searching Facebook, but if they happen to be scrolling and see your Facebook ad for a financial advisor's retirement planning services, they are more likely to navigate to your social and landing pages. There, your organic posts, which have been building over time, can show off the legitimacy of your brand and your advisor's expertise.
The question, then, is how to marry existing organic strategies with paid campaigns in your social media strategy for the highest return. Start here:
1. Amplify what works (and drop what isn't).
With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results, which makes them great for testing. If a post is underperforming, use A/B testing to experiment with different images, copy, and calls to action to make improvements for the future. A/B testing helps you isolate what elements of your ads need to change by showing which ones resonate and which don’t.
This method can even be applied to previously organic content: Did an employee's post have unexpectedly high engagement? Use it as a blueprint to try to isolate why. A paid ad will bring the post in front of greater audiences, and changing a few aspects can help identify why it was so successful in the first place.
As you see what’s performing, invest more dollars into posts that convert while cutting or changing content that doesn’t. With paid social media ads, you can see immediate results versus organic’s longer-term commitment. That makes paid ads well-suited to testing.
2. Expand your audience base.
Both organic and paid social media can help increase your reach on social media, and it starts with activating advisors in addition to brand pages. A social selling approach can increase your results tenfold and drive higher engagement. Facebook ads reach 1.95 billion average monthly users, and an average user clicks 12 ads per month, so significant reach is up for grabs.
With an organic social selling strategy, you can reach more people in your existing social and professional communities. But with a complementary paid ad strategy on top of that, you can break through your first-degree social connections to reach second- and third-degree connections, who will include important professional referral sources.
Utilize paid amplification of employee posts to benefit. Your advisors should be your brand's ambassadors, so up your social selling game by maximizing the reach of their posts.
3. Drive leads into conversions.
Don't let your marketing funnel lead to dead ends. Make sure employees are linking back to your site or other relevant brand content. A well-crafted organic post that drives to a landing page can be the start of a meaningful digital experience that creates business results. Combine this with paid social media ads, which can generate leads by offering call-to-action options that get attention and clicks.
For instance, an organic post can drive a prospective customer to a first-time homebuyer guide. But a paid social post lets you experiment further with a call-to-action button that makes taking the next step easy for potential customers.
General Social Selling Advice




Download: Denim Social Holiday Content Calendar
Above all else, social selling content should be personal, authentic, and tailored to both the community an institution serves and the audience they hope to reach. An institution’s or intermediary’s social outreach should illustrate not a provider-to-customer relationship but a human-to-human relationship — after all, people buy from people. As the marketer, it’ll be your responsibility to help intermediaries understand how to do this. But your efforts will pay off in your social metrics: Content shared by employees receives eight times the engagement of posts from brand pages.
Social Selling Examples + Success Stories
Watch: Social Sellers in the Wild
Financial Institution Social Media Examples









Financial Institution Social Selling Case Studies

Evolve Bank & Trust
Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. Recognizing the importance of social media in their overall marketing strategy, the team came to Denim Social to improve social media performance metrics across their brand, local Home Loan Centers and individual Home Loan Consultant and Advisor Facebook pages.
Like so many financial institutions, Evolve had begun organic social media efforts, but lacked sufficient resources to scale a robust social media strategy that drove meaningful results.
Denim Social helped Evolve activate HLC Facebook pages over the course of just a few months. But page launches were just the beginning of our full-service onboarding. Denim Social’s dedicated Customer Success team trained users on how to use (and make the most of) the Denim Social platform. Our social media experts provided content strategy guidance and curated content libraries made it easy for the Evolve team to post across numerous pages with limited resources.
Bolstered by stellar results in organic, Evolve continues to expand their strategy with paid social media. In addition to offering a platform that fully integrates organic social media management, Denim Social’s team also provides weekly strategy support. Paid social media continues to drive more likes, higher engagement and increased reach and impressions for Evolve.
“Our sales team wants to be selling, and they don’t want anything to get in the way of selling. With Denim Social they can schedule everything to post and the engage when the time is right. They can easily schedule content and get back to selling.” - Seth Reeks, Digital Marketing Coordinator at Evolve Bank & Trust


BOK Financial: Scaling Social to Deepen Community Connection
BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform. In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.
Geographically dispersed across midwest and southwest, BOK Financial saw an opportunity to use loan officer social media to build their regional presence and community relationships. Recognizing the potential in a local-focused strategy, BOK Financial wanted hyper-local custom content to inspire follower engagement.
Sounds simple, right? Like many financial institutions, the team faced competition for internal priority and a lack of support resources. Further, many seasoned loan officers didn’t understand the power of social media or functionally how to grow their followings. “The marketing team knew social media was a huge opportunity to engage local communities,” said Tiffany VanZandt, social media manager.
“We noticed that loan officers were hesitant to post because of their lack of experience using social media networks. Finding time to schedule posts and coming up with content ideas was challenging for them, too.” BOK Financial found success in a two-pronged strategy to fire up loan officers’ feeds and local community engagement:
Posting on Behalf of Mortgage Loan Officers + Rallying Loan Officers to Get Active on Social
Recognizing the schedule crunch for mortgage loan officers, BOK Financial leveraged regional administrative teams to consistently schedule regional, company and industry content on behalf of mortgage loan officers. With Denim Social as its social media management platform, one administrative team member could easily post on behalf of many mortgage loan officers, all while staying in compliance. Localized content libraries made it simple for the central marketing team to distribute regionally relevant content to mortgage loan officers.
While marketing support went a long way to getting loan officers active on social media, the BOK Financial team knew loan officers still needed to understand the potential in social media and how to personalize their feeds with hyper-local individual posts. Regional teams established a regular market leader communication that shared content ideas, examples of monthly top producers posts and showcased positive client reviews.
“Denim Social has drastically improved social media results for our mortgage team. Before we had this platform, only a few [loan officers] were actively using social media for business but today we have much more interest as the platform makes it less intimidating.” - Tiffany VanZandt, Social Media Manager at BOK Financial

AnnieMac Home Mortgage: Streamlining Social Selling
AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. The team came to Denim Social looking to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers. With significant national reach and scale, the brand sought to produce consistent and compelling content for the field. Recognizing the value of social media, AnnieMac saw an opportunity to stand out in the hyper-competitive mortgage market. But AnnieMac’s top priority? Staying in compliance. With an eager and dispersed field of loan officers, the lender needed tools that would make compliance easy every step of the way
Denim Social helped AnnieMac activate Facebook pages for more than 200 team members in just four months. The full scope of the project eventually encompassed social selling pages for 175 loan officers and 47 branch-level brand pages across 25 states. Once the pages were live, Denim Social provided curated content to fuel the social selling strategy. Denim Social set-up loan officers with success through customized training and today, still provides monthly new user trainings for the growing group of social-savvy loan officers.
With a deeply-integrated social strategy that activates at the brand, branch and loan officer levels, AnnieMac is driving significant results. In its first year, the AnnieMac brand Facebook audience increased its social following by more than 11% and followers are engaging with its social media content more than ever before. The Denim Social platform has empowered AnnieMac to unlock the power of social selling and followers are noticing.
Every post whether from the brand, branches or loan officers is compliance approved, significantly reducing risk. What’s more, AnnieMac reports an anecdotal “compliance by osmosis” effect. Thanks to the tools provided by Denim Social, employees and loan officers are continually learning what does and doesn’t meet compliance standards.
“Denim Social has allowed me to efficiently and effectively manage multiple social media channels. I no longer have to spend hours researching and creating posts that are relevant to my followers. With Denim Social, it now only takes a few minutes to have a month’s worth of fresh content that is inspiring, timely and informational.” - Alexis Zwiesler, Branch Marketing Assistant at AnnieMac
Download: How Six Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media
What are other financial institutions looking like on social media?

Your Social Selling Future is Bright
Unlimited Measures of Success
Your measures can evolve over time to include top performing agencies, agency highlights, highest performing content (based on engagement or adoption)
Ongoing Education
Consider hosting regular internal webinars on best practices, how to optimize content, how to start using paid advertising, and agency highlights and more.
Merchandise Success Internally
Invite a social top performer to share relevant, real-life stories on how social has helped them grow their businesses and build and foster relationships
Drive Adoption
Check in, check in, check in! Set up regular check ins with your social sellers to make sure they’re seeing the value and keeping up with posting and responding to their audiences.
Fuel Success with Content
Include intermediary content in your brand content planning. Start simple by tweaking your brand posts to sound like they’re coming from the voice of the agent.
Measure Your Success
Start small! Sometimes this just means basic adoption of your program. Are agents using it? Are their platforms connected to the technology you’ve invested in? Are they posting?
Download: Social Media Analytics Enhance Your Financial Institution’s Marketing Strategy
As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. While the “spray-and-pray” approach may have worked a decade ago, consumer
expectations for personalized experiences and C-suite demands for measurable results have raised the bar to a whole new level.
The good news is every social media post you publish is generating meaningful data about the audiences you are trying to connect with and convert. Indeed, social media marketing can have a huge reach — 83% of people say they discover new products on Instagram, and 54% of Gen Z say social media is their top influence channel. With the personal networks offered on the organic side and the advanced targeting of paid ads, social media is tough to beat as a customer acquisition tool.
Why is it, then, that so many digital marketers feel uncomfortable evaluating metrics and measuring ROI in social media marketing? Well, for starters, all the social media data in the world means nothing if you can’t transform it into meaningful insights in relation to business objectives.
Identifying meaningful insights around business objectives begins with setting specific, measurable goals for your campaigns. A great place to start is with your customers. You can easily develop goals when you ask questions like these:
- Which of my customer segments am I most likely to reach on social media?
- What types of content and experiences will resonate with them?
- What motivates them and makes them tick?
With questions like these in mind, it’s easier to know what data to collect and how to begin analyzing it to make meaningful decisions.
1. Efficiency
Social media measurement in itself is nearly impossible to do manually. If you’re trying to get telling analytics with a spreadsheet, you won’t have much luck. Social media measurement, like most analytics, requires the right tools.
Quantify the time you spend on measurement to appeal to management. The right analytics tools can help you collect valuable marketing data faster and easier. Data shows that simplifying workflows with technology can free up 20–30% of employees’ time, so show leadership that with the right tools, you can up your efficiency to do more faster.
Another reason leaders might shy away from the idea of a robust social media marketing strategy is compliance. Financial services is a heavily regulated industry, and electronic communication is certainly not exempt from regulatory scrutiny. Again, the right tools can help. Denim Social’s platform, for example, enables marketers to keep social media compliant in an efficient way. Among other compliance features, the platform automates approval workflows so the right people can sign off on the right social content with ease before it ever goes live.
2. Targeting
As algorithms change and organic social media is no longer a promising strategy on its own, marketers need to persuade leadership teams to invest in paid social media. Not only will paid get your messages in front of the right people with direct targeting capabilities, but it can also provide more data to help you understand what your target audience groups want and need.
By tracking paid performance by target audience group, you can better understand who’s connecting with what content and hone your social media strategy to connect with more prospects. Show leadership teams that when every message lands in front of exactly the right people, you’re maximizing social media marketing budget dollars — instead of wasting them on irrelevant or unengaged audiences.
3. Competitor tracking
Help leaders understand that, while measuring your own social media performance offers valuable insights, measuring your competitors’ performance can take your marketing game to the next level.
With social listening tools that enable you to track competitors’ social media activity, leaders can see your organization’s performance benchmarked against competitors and get a clear picture of where social needs more investment to stay competitive.
What’s more, social listening tools offer financial institutions a clear line of sight into how other brands are resonating with customers and encouraging engagement on social. Your brand can use those insights to craft even more relevant messaging and keep a leg up on the competition at all times.
4. Conversion opportunities
Landing page linking strategies on social media drive conversions, and nothing is more compelling to a leadership team than a direct line from marketing spend to sales. Track form completion rates to present a clear picture of how many viewers have deemed your content valuable enough to exchange their information for. Then, tie that to sales data to see how many prospects who submitted their information and received follow-ups from sales teams eventually signed on.
When you can draw that clear line from social post all the way to conversion, the bottom-line impact is clear to see. Compare that to traditional marketing tactics — has your leadership team ever seen a recorded, data-backed customer conversion metric from a billboard? Not likely.
Marketers know that staying relevant in today’s digital world requires a strong approach to social media marketing. Show leaders how upping efficiency, performance metrics, and competitive insight can empower your marketing team to elevate a data-driven social media strategy that delivers clear, measurable results.

Most of all, remember, you can do it! However, you don’t have to go it alone; we can help!
We believe social media is a very powerful sales tool and want to help you make social selling easy for your organization to implement.
Ready to learn more? Book a demo today.

Connect & Convert on Social
Employee Feature: Kylie Panke
Our employees are an important part of our awesome culture here at Denim Social, and we want you to learn more about them! Check out some of the fun and unique facts about Kylie from our Customer Success team.

Role @ Denim Social:
Customer Success Specialist
How long have you worked at Denim Social?
I have been at Denim Social for 5 months.
What is your favorite project you’ve worked on? or What is your favorite thing you’ve accomplished?
Troubleshooting issues and coming up with lasting solutions for our customers that ensure their success.
Favorite place to travel?
I have never been there, but I just know it would be Scotland.
Best advice you’ve received?
Do what makes you happy. You’re not here to please anyone else, you’re responsible for your own happiness.
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?
I’ve been struck by lightning.
What motivates you?
Being the best version of myself I can be. And Beyonce.
Hidden talent?
I can play guitar solos on the clarinet
Favorite quote?
“I don’t like to gamble, but if there’s one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.” - Beyonce

Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.
It’s called social selling and it works.
The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.
As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.
Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.
Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.
In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.
As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.
Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.
Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.
Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.
To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.
The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.
In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.
As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.
It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:
- Scale your social selling program
- Plan your content strategy
- Train your loan officers
AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.
Find out how more than 400 financial institutions across asset classes, geographies, and more used social media in 2020 to effectively support their business objectives. We’ve also outlined key trends to inform your social media future.
As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.
So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.
Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.
Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:
- Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
- How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
- What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?
In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram
Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.
How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media
Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.
Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.
Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:
- Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
- Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
- Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
- Build trust within the community
Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:
- Who does what
- The right structure to execute strategy
- How compliance software can help
Enjoy!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media
See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:
COVID-19 & Bank Social Media
Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.
Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.
Employee Feature: Kylie Panke
Our employees are an important part of our awesome culture here at Denim Social, and we want you to learn more about them! Check out some of the fun and unique facts about Kylie from our Customer Success team.

Role @ Denim Social:
Customer Success Specialist
How long have you worked at Denim Social?
I have been at Denim Social for 5 months.
What is your favorite project you’ve worked on? or What is your favorite thing you’ve accomplished?
Troubleshooting issues and coming up with lasting solutions for our customers that ensure their success.
Favorite place to travel?
I have never been there, but I just know it would be Scotland.
Best advice you’ve received?
Do what makes you happy. You’re not here to please anyone else, you’re responsible for your own happiness.
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?
I’ve been struck by lightning.
What motivates you?
Being the best version of myself I can be. And Beyonce.
Hidden talent?
I can play guitar solos on the clarinet
Favorite quote?
“I don’t like to gamble, but if there’s one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.” - Beyonce


Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.
It’s called social selling and it works.
The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.
As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.
Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.
Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.
In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.
As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.
Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.
Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.
Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.
To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.
The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.
In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.
As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.
It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:
- Scale your social selling program
- Plan your content strategy
- Train your loan officers
AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.
Find out how more than 400 financial institutions across asset classes, geographies, and more used social media in 2020 to effectively support their business objectives. We’ve also outlined key trends to inform your social media future.
As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.
So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.
Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.
Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:
- Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
- How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
- What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?
In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram
Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.
How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media
Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.
Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.
Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:
- Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
- Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
- Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
- Build trust within the community
Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:
- Who does what
- The right structure to execute strategy
- How compliance software can help
Enjoy!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media
See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:
COVID-19 & Bank Social Media
Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.
Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.
Employee Feature: Kylie Panke
Our employees are an important part of our awesome culture here at Denim Social, and we want you to learn more about them! Check out some of the fun and unique facts about Kylie from our Customer Success team.

Role @ Denim Social:
Customer Success Specialist
How long have you worked at Denim Social?
I have been at Denim Social for 5 months.
What is your favorite project you’ve worked on? or What is your favorite thing you’ve accomplished?
Troubleshooting issues and coming up with lasting solutions for our customers that ensure their success.
Favorite place to travel?
I have never been there, but I just know it would be Scotland.
Best advice you’ve received?
Do what makes you happy. You’re not here to please anyone else, you’re responsible for your own happiness.
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?
I’ve been struck by lightning.
What motivates you?
Being the best version of myself I can be. And Beyonce.
Hidden talent?
I can play guitar solos on the clarinet
Favorite quote?
“I don’t like to gamble, but if there’s one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.” - Beyonce


Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.
It’s called social selling and it works.
The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.
As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.
Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.
Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.
In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.
As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.
Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.
Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.
Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.
To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.
The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.
In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.
As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.
It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:
- Scale your social selling program
- Plan your content strategy
- Train your loan officers
AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.
Find out how more than 400 financial institutions across asset classes, geographies, and more used social media in 2020 to effectively support their business objectives. We’ve also outlined key trends to inform your social media future.
As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.
So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.
Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.
Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:
- Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
- How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
- What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?
In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram
Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.
How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media
Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.
Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.
Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:
- Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
- Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
- Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
- Build trust within the community
Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:
- Who does what
- The right structure to execute strategy
- How compliance software can help
Enjoy!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media
See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:
COVID-19 & Bank Social Media
Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.
Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.
Employee Feature: Kylie Panke
Our employees are an important part of our awesome culture here at Denim Social, and we want you to learn more about them! Check out some of the fun and unique facts about Kylie from our Customer Success team.

Role @ Denim Social:
Customer Success Specialist
How long have you worked at Denim Social?
I have been at Denim Social for 5 months.
What is your favorite project you’ve worked on? or What is your favorite thing you’ve accomplished?
Troubleshooting issues and coming up with lasting solutions for our customers that ensure their success.
Favorite place to travel?
I have never been there, but I just know it would be Scotland.
Best advice you’ve received?
Do what makes you happy. You’re not here to please anyone else, you’re responsible for your own happiness.
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?
I’ve been struck by lightning.
What motivates you?
Being the best version of myself I can be. And Beyonce.
Hidden talent?
I can play guitar solos on the clarinet
Favorite quote?
“I don’t like to gamble, but if there’s one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.” - Beyonce


Social selling is just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales.
It enables intermediaries – like insurance agents – to add value to the customer journey where there wouldn’t otherwise be an opportunity.
This guide will help financial services marketers understand why social media should be a core component of their marketing strategy and showcase how the collective reach of their intermediaries’ social media presence can be harnessed to more deeply connect with prospective clients, position producers as thought leaders in their communities, and, ultimately, build trust with clients that translates to positive business results.
It’s called social selling and it works.
The spring 2023 buying season has arrived and with it – you guessed – uncertainty. Spring has long been make-it or break-it season for lenders and loan officers, and despite present conditions, the same holds true this year. But 2023 holds unique challenges and opportunities.
As the season opens, there are a few key considerations the Denim Social team sees as critical for mortgage marketers.
Paid social is one of the most effective ways to introduce people who aren’t yet following your producers, agents, loan officers, or advisors to your financial institution at the right place and the right time.
Paid social is complementary to organic. While organic social builds first-degree connections and facilitates awareness, engagement, and branding, paid social allows you to reach larger, more tailored audiences.
BOK Financial is a financial services partner for consumers, businesses and wealth clients with more than 150 users on the Denim Social platform.
In addition to building brand credibility and establishing loan officer expertise, Denim Social enables their mortgage loan officers to cultivate relationships in social media and organically source leads.
As financial marketers look to the coming year, most are wondering, “what’s next?” While no one can say for sure, our team of experts here at Denim Social are keeping a pulse on what’s new in digital marketing for financial institutions on social media. This guide will not only educate you on the latest trends, but help you make the case for increased investment in social selling and digital marketing strategies at your institution.
Evolve Bank & Trust (“Evolve”) is an $700M+ asset institution with nearly 40 Home Loan Centers (HLC) and nearly 500 employees nationwide. See how Denim Social helped Evolve activate Home Loan Center Facebook pages over the course of just a few months.
Whether you’re in banking, wealth management, insurance or mortgage, relationships are the bedrock of your business.
Considering clients in these industries are handing over the keys to their personal kingdoms, it’s no surprise that trust and connection matter. That’s why successful sales strategies for these industries are focused on building long-term, trusted relationships.
To truly unleash the potential of social, financial institutions need to use social media as a sales tool. It’s called social selling and it works.
The power of social media is undeniable. The ability of banks to engage with and influence customers and prospects via interactive digital channels is an essential tool and a cornerstone of marketing. Gone are the days when it was “nice to have” a presence on platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram. Today, these pathways are helping banks to build relationships that were historically cultivated by tirelessly walking up and down Main Street, shaking hands and leaving behind business cards.
In this case study by Denim Social and American Bankers Association, we take a look at how banks are using social media to ramp up digital engagement and build sales.
As any marketer worth their salt will tell you, analytics should drive your social strategy. The key to success is understanding how to link social media efforts to ROI metrics. Read this guide to learn how to gain insights that matter, optimize your strategy and prove your social success.
It’s no surprise that social media can help drive results for your mortgage business. In fact, the question for most marketers at mortgage lending institutions isn’t IF they should be doing more social media marketing - it’s HOW. Download to learn how to:
- Scale your social selling program
- Plan your content strategy
- Train your loan officers
AnnieMac is one of the fastest-growing mortgage loan providers in the U.S., serving clients in 42 states. Learn how Denim Social helped their team to streamline its brand’s social media strategy and activate social selling for hundreds of loan officers in just four months.
Find out how more than 400 financial institutions across asset classes, geographies, and more used social media in 2020 to effectively support their business objectives. We’ve also outlined key trends to inform your social media future.
As mortgage demand surges to historic highs, home purchase and refinance markets remain hot. This is excellent news for loan officers, but it also means the environment is more competitive than ever.
So how can marketers ensure that their loan officers stand out? The answer is social media.
Read this guidebook from Denim Social to learn how you can help your loan officers build strong relationships, stand out from the crowd and win more business using social media.
Every Mortgage Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Read this guide if you’re asking yourself:
- Is my social media policy current and comprehensive?
- How do I ensure social media compliance during M&A?
- What do I need to consider for direct messaging compliance?
In this guide we will help you think about your all important social media policy and thoughtfully consider how changes in social media tech and even your bank’s structure may impact compliance.
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
Every Financial Services Marketer Should Ask Themselves
Compliance is complicated, but don’t let it stop your lending team from making the most of social media. Think you’re ready to start social selling? Ask yourself these five questions!
Stronger Customer Relationships on Instagram
Financial Services companies should be marketing and advertising on Instagram. We break down why, and help you create a strategy to reach new customers- while continuing to build trust in your brand.
How 6 Financial Marketers Are Creating Value in Social Media
Ever wonder what everyone else is doing in social media? We talked to six leading financial marketers about how they’re succeeding today and planning for the next big thing.
Get their insights on strengthening your social strategies, unlocking the power of employee networks and creating next-level content that drives engagement.
Download this guidebook to learn how 3 mortgage lenders are using social media to:
- Position themselves in a place the community is already looking ... their social media
- Empower loan officers to engage in local conversations
- Turn their institution's loan officers into the voice of their brand
- Build trust within the community
Which roles do you fill when building your bank's marketing dream team? This guide will show you the following:
- Who does what
- The right structure to execute strategy
- How compliance software can help
Enjoy!
Download this guidebook to learn how marketers are using social media to:
- Drive business with the lowest digital spend compared to traditional media
- Position employees as thought-leaders while leveraging their collective reach of their social media presence
- Ultimately, build trust with their communities and customers that translates to positive business results
ABA Study: The Current State of Social Media
See what nearly 430 bank marketers had to say when asked questions such as:
COVID-19 & Bank Social Media
Times are different and how you connect with customers and potential customers has changed drastically. In a socially distant world, learn to still build lasting relationships.
Download and learn the guiding principles for using social media to serve both your customers and communities in the midst of a pandemic.
Employee Feature: Kylie Panke
Our employees are an important part of our awesome culture here at Denim Social, and we want you to learn more about them! Check out some of the fun and unique facts about Kylie from our Customer Success team.

Role @ Denim Social:
Customer Success Specialist
How long have you worked at Denim Social?
I have been at Denim Social for 5 months.
What is your favorite project you’ve worked on? or What is your favorite thing you’ve accomplished?
Troubleshooting issues and coming up with lasting solutions for our customers that ensure their success.
Favorite place to travel?
I have never been there, but I just know it would be Scotland.
Best advice you’ve received?
Do what makes you happy. You’re not here to please anyone else, you’re responsible for your own happiness.
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?
I’ve been struck by lightning.
What motivates you?
Being the best version of myself I can be. And Beyonce.
Hidden talent?
I can play guitar solos on the clarinet
Favorite quote?
“I don’t like to gamble, but if there’s one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.” - Beyonce

Employee advocacy is past; social selling is now. Whatever you call it, brands have long relied on employees to promote their offers, whether by word of mouth or incentive programs. But modern employee advocacy tactics that rely on employees sharing preapproved content fall short in one crucial arena: trust and authenticity.
Reposting brand content isn’t enough. Sure, it gives clients and prospects access to reliable financial advice from trusted sources. Still, it’s no way for financial advisors or wealth managers to build relationships on social media. Reposting is better than nothing but lacks the human connection to transform everyday transactions into meaningful exchanges. Today’s social media users know better.
Half of investors say social media influences who they hire as their financial professionals. Advisors need to post purposefully and make their social profiles an extension of themselves, not just a brand repost feed. The solution? Increase your reach, humanize your brand and build relationships with clients and prospects with social selling.
What Is Social Selling?
Social selling is a savvy marketing strategy where brand intermediaries (financial advisors and wealth managers) post authentic content on their social media accounts. Social selling lets you leverage associates’ networks to showcase thought leadership, engage with clients and build trusting relationships. These authentic touchpoints increase the chances of lead conversion by making the most of advisors’ relationship-building skills online.
You get it: In financial services, products go to market through intermediaries. The same goes for social media. Consider this: Employees have 10 times the reach and double the click-through rate than brand pages have. Social selling can humanize your brand and transform social media into a revenue driver for your institution.
Moreover, social selling enables clients and prospects to meet your advisors on whichever social channels they prefer. They don’t have to take time out of their day and come into an office just to get to know their advisor or start financial planning. Social media has no office hours, so advisors and clients can interact on their terms and time.
At this point, you might be wondering how to pull off social selling in a heavily regulated industry like wealth management. Compliance is the key, not just to staying open for business but also to building trust with your prospects and clients. Luckily, compliant social selling is manageable at scale with supportive tech, teamwork and training.
So, how do you develop and scale a social selling program for your financial institution?
1. Push social selling internally.
Social selling is everyone’s responsibility, not just marketing. It’ll take a group effort to get the initiative started. Unless you win the support of others—including leaders and intermediaries—your social selling vision won’t thrive. Prepare your pitch by gathering data that proves intermediaries can reach your audience. Offer examples of how social selling can amplify your messaging. Create a test group of intermediaries, then gather data to bolster the case.
Compliance is another top concern. Your pitch must clarify that you’ve considered the risks/rewards and the guardrails needed to maintain compliance. Building support for your social selling venture will be the foundation for any momentum going forward. Marketing and compliance teams must work together to get early buy-in.
2. Find the right technology.
Once you’ve got buy-in from internal teams, start finding the right social selling tech. When searching, find a platform that creates efficiencies for your people. Does it leverage organic and paid capabilities? Look for a partner that understands your industry and all its nuances and regulations.
Compliance should be another top priority when considering tech options. How do you ensure content is compliant? Manual labor is an option, but it’s slow. To ensure complete compliance, look for a tech solution to streamline approvals and offer compliance protection at every step. The right tech should support your compliance needs, increase efficiency and empower users to make an impact through social selling.
3. Train and launch.
Once your group of social sellers is ready to go, it’s time to train them. Depending on skill, training could mean starting from the basics or jumping right into strategy. A solid social selling platform will include training on the basics of social selling and how to maximize its potential.
Training intermediaries to understand their role in compliance is another priority that shouldn’t be ignored. Instruct your intermediaries on responding to messages, getting content approval and archiving communication. (Hint: The right tech will help support your training.) Compliance is key to trust-building, so every associate should be empowered to participate.
Next, it’s time to launch. Alert everyone in your institution that your social selling program is live and tell them how they can help. A simple like, share, or follow can help boost your social selling efforts. With the organization behind you, you can start creating and posting branded content with support and momentum.
It might look different, but social selling includes the best parts of employee advocacy. Where it differs is how much farther it can take you toward meaningful relationships with clients and prospects. Social selling allows organizations (like yours) to leverage authenticity, grow thought leadership, ensure compliance and get to know clients on a new level. Don’t wait to get started.
This article originally appeared in Wealth Management on April 27, 2023.

As social media becomes more important for financial services, employee advocacy has become a buzzword for many marketers and their tech providers. Simply put, employee advocacy means the promotion and awareness of an institution by the employees who work there. For example, an employee could share a post on LinkedIn about why they love working at their bank or insurance agency. The focus is at the brand level, and often marketing teams provide their employees with pre-written messages or graphics to share on the company’s behalf.
However, employee advocacy is only surface level and does not truly get to the heart of human interactions and customer relationships that drive the industry. As consumers spend more time online and their expectations evolve, social media is quickly becoming a main channel for interactions with financial professionals. This is particularly true with young people, as Generation Z are almost five times more likely to get financial advice from social media. Instead of employee advocacy, marketing teams should be empowering their agents, loan officers, and advisors with a social selling strategy to drive real, authentic relationships.
What is social selling? It’s just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product
or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales. Social selling offers a better, more effective solution that empowers producers like loan officers, agents, and advisors to have a voice on social and build their networks.
Not sure how to tell the difference? Let’s take a look at a few reasons why social selling is more effective than employee advocacy.
- Social selling gives intermediaries a voice. With social selling, loan officers, agents, and advisors can find their voice and create authentic relationships with their customers. It means much more than a marketing team putting words in their mouth or posting generic brand content. Financial professionals have the opportunity to build thought leadership and even become financial influencers in their communities with social selling. For the marketers that run social selling programs, it also takes the pressure of constantly generating content off their shoulders, giving their teams room for individuality.
- Social selling fosters real relationships. Essentially, social selling is just bringing those all-too-important in-person human connections online. In an age where financial professionals have to meet customers where they are, they can stay in close touch and communicate on multiple channels. All of those interactions work together to build trust and showcase authenticity. It all adds up, too: for instance, half of investors say that social media plays a vital role in who they choose as an advisor. The more that intermediaries get comfortable with social media, the more community they will be able to grow. The opportunity is there, too: 80% of young adults get financial advice from social media.
- Social selling puts a focus on sales. At the end of the day, closing business is the top priority for professionals. It’s called social selling for a reason: intermediaries can engage with prospects at various touch points to move them along the customer journey from start to sale. Social media can be a powerful catalyst for that next step. Over time, institutions can clearly see how much revenue and business social media can bring in based on social growth. Don’t believe it? See how this bank drove a 230% increase in its audience in just a few months of activating a social selling program. The more successful an institution’s agents, advisors, or loan officers are, the stronger it will be as a whole. Social selling is truly a win-win for intermediaries, their institutions, and the customers that will feel valued and heard as a result.
While employee advocacy can be an important first step in getting employees excited about and comfortable with social media, it’s just one part of the puzzle. To truly unlock the power of social media and build relationships that matter online, institutions should look to social selling as a more robust option. Though it can seem overwhelming to take on, building a social selling program can be done with the right tools and resources. See how it works with our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Institutions.

Every social circle contains a few people whose ideas seem to carry more weight and gravitas. These people are influencers. They just seem to know what they’re talking about, and others actively seek their thoughts and opinions.
The same goes for digital social circles. If loan officers from your institution can establish themselves as thought leaders—specifically in loan origination—they can become sought-after sources for financial advice. Thought leadership demonstrates to readers that the person is knowledgeable and trustworthy, which will influence current and prospective clients.
When done right, a thought leadership strategy can be incredibly impactful. In a 2021 LinkedIn-Edelman survey, 65 percent of respondents said a piece of thought leadership content changed their perception of a company for the better, and 64 percent said thought leadership is a more trustworthy basis for gauging capabilities and competencies than marketing materials and product sheets. For banks especially, financial services thought leadership is a powerful way to foster trust and rapport with prospective clients.
The combination of thought leadership and social media augments these effects considerably. Unfortunately, banks tend to use social channels solely for marketing purposes and basic customer service.
Social selling is the use of social media to sell a product or service. It leverages social channels to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers and ultimately build sales-encouraging trust and rapport. It’s not enough to just “be online;” social selling empowers loan officers to become thought leaders, share with their networks and add humanity and authenticity to branded content.

Why should social selling techniques matter to your bank?
There’s a lot of bad financial advice online. Building thought leadership (especially in finance) allows loan officers to demonstrate that they are trusted, credible experts with clients’ best interests at heart. Prospective clients want to know they can trust your loan reps as human beings. Providing helpful, educational content is a great way to show them your business cares about delivering real value and connection. As a marketer for your brand, it’s your job to empower loan officers to start building those relationships through social selling.
Here are three tips for how to leverage social selling in your bank’s thought leadership strategy:
1. Build trust with prospects
Finance is a deeply personal business, and prospects want to know they can trust loan officers before feeling comfortable talking financial situations and goals. Social selling allows the brand’s loan officers to build direct, personal relationships with customers and prospects.
In times of market volatility or transition within a client’s life, the right thought leadership strategy can really connect. For instance, a blog post or LinkedIn video about debt consolidation loans could resonate with prospective clients who need help organizing their expenses. Or a reassuring Instagram reel about taking out a mortgage in a time of rising interest rates could be just what a first-time homebuyer needs to hear. Empowering your officers to start building these relationships via social selling content is one of your most important jobs in marketing for a banking brand.
2. Stay top of mind with clients
Financial services thought leadership helps your bank stay top of mind and engaged with existing clients. While there aren’t enough hours in the day for your brand’s loan officers to check in with every single client, social selling techniques can help them stay connected and deepen relationships without overworking. Social selling content can provide value to customers while loan officers are doing other vital work to close more loans.
Plus, when marketers help loan officers continually demonstrate their expertise online, the chances of gaining client referrals just increases. For example, offering services for business owners might encourage a social seller to post a guidebook about business loans and prompt an existing client to consider a loan to cover expansion. This guidebook can then serve as a handy piece of content for referrals.
3. Help intermediaries build expertise
While it’s not easy to confront, there is significant personnel movement in every industry today. Loan officers are concerned about their long-term career plans, and thought leadership is a great way to build your team’s reputation—regardless of where they work. Thought leadership content retains its value, even if employees move to another bank or financial institution. You might not be able to allow them to take their book of business, but their expertise and social media networks are intangible.
For these reasons (and more), thought leadership is essential to remaining competitive in today’s marketplace and building trust with clients. By leveraging social selling for loan officers, you’ll amplify your brand-building efforts with prospective clients, other industry experts and even potential employees. A solid thought leadership strategy through social selling will help build brand recognition, support lending teams, and establish lending officers as industry experts. Don’t wait to get started.
This article was originally published in ABA Banking Journal.
It’s not easy out there this spring – for lenders or for buyers. As you consider your marketing strategy, don’t underestimate the potential in social media.
Between market volatility, ever-changing rates and low inventory, there’s plenty of uncertainty. But one thing is certain; market conditions are making it that much more competitive. That means investing in relationships matters more than ever. And today, that means loan officers need to be proactive and stay in touch via social media.
Considering 77% of borrowers move forward with the first lender they speak to when they’re looking for a loan, showing up in a prospect or existing clients’ social media feed can not only build trust, it can help you close more deals.
After months of economic headlines and the break-neck pace of rate change, loan applicants are discouraged. This is a critical time for loan officers to educate prospects about loan options and the realities of today’s market. By doing so, you can strengthen relationships, build trust and communicate your expertise, all of which can create short and long term ROI.
Social media is an essential channel to create connectivity and trust with prospects. Whether you’re just getting started with social selling or are a well-oiled social selling team, it’s important to be aware of present market conditions and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Here are a few tips to stand out on social this spring buying season:
Be an empathetic person, not a brand
This is not an easy market for buyers or sellers. Homebuying is inevitably emotional and as many buyers navigate complexity and uncertainty, they may be understandably frustrated. This is why it’s so important that loan officers show up as humans on social media, not just logos.
Relationships are the heart of the business – people buy from people, after all. You should be a friendly face and trusted confidante on social media.
It’s about more than having a social media profile. Loan officers need to be their authentic selves when posting too. It’s not enough to share brand content, you need to post personalized content. In other words: be a real human on social.
You should extend the same humanity and empathy on social media as you would to applicants in real life. Acknowledging their frustrations is a great place to start. Ask about their concerns. Provide reassurance.
Educate applicants
Use social media content as an opportunity to educate applicants. While you might hang on every rate update, everyday applicants are likely confused and overwhelmed by changing mortgage news. Social selling can help establish loan officers as thought leaders.
You should be on social talking about what’s happening in the market this spring, but remember to use plain, conversational language with the aim to educate followers. In doing so, you’re not only providing value to followers, but also showing off your expertise.
In practical terms, this could mean posting a current news article on Facebook with a “what it means” POV in the caption. Alternatively, you could share a commentary on a rate change in a quick Instagram video. Regardless of the format, loan officers will have success on social media when you personalize the content and simplify complex concepts for followers.
Consistently be part of the conversation
If the past few years in the housing market have taught us anything, it’s that things change fast. The same holds true this spring and that means you need to be there for all the ups and downs on social media too. Consistency has always been key for social media success, but when navigating changing market news, it’s more important than ever.
Social media algorithms favor those who post often and with consistency. That doesn’t mean you have to post every day or try to time the algorithms, but does mean you should stay active and in the conversation. It’s not a set it and forget it kind of thing.
Don’t be afraid to try something new
The marketplace is unpredictable and social media can be too. When it comes to your social selling strategy, don’t be afraid to try something new. This season may be the perfect time for loan officers to adopt a new social media network, like Instagram for example, or try out new post formats. If you’re not seeing the desired results, try mixing it up.
Social selling is a critical strategy to keep loan officers competitive in a tight lending environment. Not sure where to start with social selling? Check out our Denim Social guidebook, How to Launch a Social Selling Program for a Financial Institution.
This article was originally published in MBA Newslink.
Our team recently attended the Global Insurance Symposium in Des Moines, Iowa, which is an educational and networking opportunity that brings together over 500 insurance and financial professionals, along with technology solutions. It was clear that tech-enablement is top of mind for insurance leaders and providers, as the demand for tools and resources that enhance digital customer communications increase.
As a compliant platform that empowers insurance intermediaries on social media, Denim Social is a perfect solution for carriers and agencies that are ready to take the next step toward a modern marketing strategy. As their expectations shift to digital, so should the industry .
Coming out of the GIS conference, our team saw three big trends at the intersection of insurance and technology.
- Uncertain economic conditions are creating new challenges for the industry at large. Now more than ever, agents need to be equipped to be resilient and available to their clients across multiple communications channels.
- Client education is vital. With more and more prospects looking to social media for financial and planning advice, agents have a unique opportunity to educate their communities on basic financial literacy.
- As online insurance transactions grow in popularity, agents must double-down on relationships to avoid losing out.
Despite these changes, insurance agents and agencies that make the client experience their top concern will thrive. No technology can replace the human interaction and care between an agent and their client. To counteract an impersonal approach, agents can find a solution in meeting clients and prospects where they are, when they need it. Social media is essential for doing this in an ever-connected world. By creating personal (and helpful) networks, agents can find that their relationships are stronger than ever.
See how to give agents a voice on social media with this practical guide on Social Selling for Insurance. It’s a non-negotiable for any modern marketing strategy.

Insurance leaders know the value of agents when it comes to product distribution, but smart marketers should be making the case to invest in digital enablement at the agent level. This means extending social media efforts beyond the brand and to the intermediaries building relationships at the local level.
Helping agents feel comfortable on social media and weaving it into their everyday sales mix is much different than managing a social presence at the brand or company level. But when your business goes to market through intermediaries, empowering them on social media is crucial.
Unsure where to start with a social selling program? It can feel daunting, but Denim Social can help. Learn how to set the right tone, train, create content and more in the latest guide from Denim Social: Guide To Social Selling for Insurance.

Connect & Convert on Social
Employee Feature: Kylie Panke
Our employees are an important part of our awesome culture here at Denim Social, and we want you to learn more about them! Check out some of the fun and unique facts about Kylie from our Customer Success team.

Role @ Denim Social:
Customer Success Specialist
How long have you worked at Denim Social?
I have been at Denim Social for 5 months.
What is your favorite project you’ve worked on? or What is your favorite thing you’ve accomplished?
Troubleshooting issues and coming up with lasting solutions for our customers that ensure their success.
Favorite place to travel?
I have never been there, but I just know it would be Scotland.
Best advice you’ve received?
Do what makes you happy. You’re not here to please anyone else, you’re responsible for your own happiness.
What’s something that most people don’t know about you?
I’ve been struck by lightning.
What motivates you?
Being the best version of myself I can be. And Beyonce.
Hidden talent?
I can play guitar solos on the clarinet
Favorite quote?
“I don’t like to gamble, but if there’s one thing I’m willing to bet on, it’s myself.” - Beyonce

Employee advocacy is past; social selling is now. Whatever you call it, brands have long relied on employees to promote their offers, whether by word of mouth or incentive programs. But modern employee advocacy tactics that rely on employees sharing preapproved content fall short in one crucial arena: trust and authenticity.
Reposting brand content isn’t enough. Sure, it gives clients and prospects access to reliable financial advice from trusted sources. Still, it’s no way for financial advisors or wealth managers to build relationships on social media. Reposting is better than nothing but lacks the human connection to transform everyday transactions into meaningful exchanges. Today’s social media users know better.
Half of investors say social media influences who they hire as their financial professionals. Advisors need to post purposefully and make their social profiles an extension of themselves, not just a brand repost feed. The solution? Increase your reach, humanize your brand and build relationships with clients and prospects with social selling.
What Is Social Selling?
Social selling is a savvy marketing strategy where brand intermediaries (financial advisors and wealth managers) post authentic content on their social media accounts. Social selling lets you leverage associates’ networks to showcase thought leadership, engage with clients and build trusting relationships. These authentic touchpoints increase the chances of lead conversion by making the most of advisors’ relationship-building skills online.
You get it: In financial services, products go to market through intermediaries. The same goes for social media. Consider this: Employees have 10 times the reach and double the click-through rate than brand pages have. Social selling can humanize your brand and transform social media into a revenue driver for your institution.
Moreover, social selling enables clients and prospects to meet your advisors on whichever social channels they prefer. They don’t have to take time out of their day and come into an office just to get to know their advisor or start financial planning. Social media has no office hours, so advisors and clients can interact on their terms and time.
At this point, you might be wondering how to pull off social selling in a heavily regulated industry like wealth management. Compliance is the key, not just to staying open for business but also to building trust with your prospects and clients. Luckily, compliant social selling is manageable at scale with supportive tech, teamwork and training.
So, how do you develop and scale a social selling program for your financial institution?
1. Push social selling internally.
Social selling is everyone’s responsibility, not just marketing. It’ll take a group effort to get the initiative started. Unless you win the support of others—including leaders and intermediaries—your social selling vision won’t thrive. Prepare your pitch by gathering data that proves intermediaries can reach your audience. Offer examples of how social selling can amplify your messaging. Create a test group of intermediaries, then gather data to bolster the case.
Compliance is another top concern. Your pitch must clarify that you’ve considered the risks/rewards and the guardrails needed to maintain compliance. Building support for your social selling venture will be the foundation for any momentum going forward. Marketing and compliance teams must work together to get early buy-in.
2. Find the right technology.
Once you’ve got buy-in from internal teams, start finding the right social selling tech. When searching, find a platform that creates efficiencies for your people. Does it leverage organic and paid capabilities? Look for a partner that understands your industry and all its nuances and regulations.
Compliance should be another top priority when considering tech options. How do you ensure content is compliant? Manual labor is an option, but it’s slow. To ensure complete compliance, look for a tech solution to streamline approvals and offer compliance protection at every step. The right tech should support your compliance needs, increase efficiency and empower users to make an impact through social selling.
3. Train and launch.
Once your group of social sellers is ready to go, it’s time to train them. Depending on skill, training could mean starting from the basics or jumping right into strategy. A solid social selling platform will include training on the basics of social selling and how to maximize its potential.
Training intermediaries to understand their role in compliance is another priority that shouldn’t be ignored. Instruct your intermediaries on responding to messages, getting content approval and archiving communication. (Hint: The right tech will help support your training.) Compliance is key to trust-building, so every associate should be empowered to participate.
Next, it’s time to launch. Alert everyone in your institution that your social selling program is live and tell them how they can help. A simple like, share, or follow can help boost your social selling efforts. With the organization behind you, you can start creating and posting branded content with support and momentum.
It might look different, but social selling includes the best parts of employee advocacy. Where it differs is how much farther it can take you toward meaningful relationships with clients and prospects. Social selling allows organizations (like yours) to leverage authenticity, grow thought leadership, ensure compliance and get to know clients on a new level. Don’t wait to get started.
This article originally appeared in Wealth Management on April 27, 2023.

As social media becomes more important for financial services, employee advocacy has become a buzzword for many marketers and their tech providers. Simply put, employee advocacy means the promotion and awareness of an institution by the employees who work there. For example, an employee could share a post on LinkedIn about why they love working at their bank or insurance agency. The focus is at the brand level, and often marketing teams provide their employees with pre-written messages or graphics to share on the company’s behalf.
However, employee advocacy is only surface level and does not truly get to the heart of human interactions and customer relationships that drive the industry. As consumers spend more time online and their expectations evolve, social media is quickly becoming a main channel for interactions with financial professionals. This is particularly true with young people, as Generation Z are almost five times more likely to get financial advice from social media. Instead of employee advocacy, marketing teams should be empowering their agents, loan officers, and advisors with a social selling strategy to drive real, authentic relationships.
What is social selling? It’s just what it sounds like: using social media to sell a product
or service. It’s leveraging social to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers, and ultimately build trust and rapport that will eventually lead to sales. Social selling offers a better, more effective solution that empowers producers like loan officers, agents, and advisors to have a voice on social and build their networks.
Not sure how to tell the difference? Let’s take a look at a few reasons why social selling is more effective than employee advocacy.
- Social selling gives intermediaries a voice. With social selling, loan officers, agents, and advisors can find their voice and create authentic relationships with their customers. It means much more than a marketing team putting words in their mouth or posting generic brand content. Financial professionals have the opportunity to build thought leadership and even become financial influencers in their communities with social selling. For the marketers that run social selling programs, it also takes the pressure of constantly generating content off their shoulders, giving their teams room for individuality.
- Social selling fosters real relationships. Essentially, social selling is just bringing those all-too-important in-person human connections online. In an age where financial professionals have to meet customers where they are, they can stay in close touch and communicate on multiple channels. All of those interactions work together to build trust and showcase authenticity. It all adds up, too: for instance, half of investors say that social media plays a vital role in who they choose as an advisor. The more that intermediaries get comfortable with social media, the more community they will be able to grow. The opportunity is there, too: 80% of young adults get financial advice from social media.
- Social selling puts a focus on sales. At the end of the day, closing business is the top priority for professionals. It’s called social selling for a reason: intermediaries can engage with prospects at various touch points to move them along the customer journey from start to sale. Social media can be a powerful catalyst for that next step. Over time, institutions can clearly see how much revenue and business social media can bring in based on social growth. Don’t believe it? See how this bank drove a 230% increase in its audience in just a few months of activating a social selling program. The more successful an institution’s agents, advisors, or loan officers are, the stronger it will be as a whole. Social selling is truly a win-win for intermediaries, their institutions, and the customers that will feel valued and heard as a result.
While employee advocacy can be an important first step in getting employees excited about and comfortable with social media, it’s just one part of the puzzle. To truly unlock the power of social media and build relationships that matter online, institutions should look to social selling as a more robust option. Though it can seem overwhelming to take on, building a social selling program can be done with the right tools and resources. See how it works with our Social Selling Playbook for Financial Institutions.

Every social circle contains a few people whose ideas seem to carry more weight and gravitas. These people are influencers. They just seem to know what they’re talking about, and others actively seek their thoughts and opinions.
The same goes for digital social circles. If loan officers from your institution can establish themselves as thought leaders—specifically in loan origination—they can become sought-after sources for financial advice. Thought leadership demonstrates to readers that the person is knowledgeable and trustworthy, which will influence current and prospective clients.
When done right, a thought leadership strategy can be incredibly impactful. In a 2021 LinkedIn-Edelman survey, 65 percent of respondents said a piece of thought leadership content changed their perception of a company for the better, and 64 percent said thought leadership is a more trustworthy basis for gauging capabilities and competencies than marketing materials and product sheets. For banks especially, financial services thought leadership is a powerful way to foster trust and rapport with prospective clients.
The combination of thought leadership and social media augments these effects considerably. Unfortunately, banks tend to use social channels solely for marketing purposes and basic customer service.
Social selling is the use of social media to sell a product or service. It leverages social channels to build personal relationships, showcase thought leadership, engage with prospects, interact with existing customers and ultimately build sales-encouraging trust and rapport. It’s not enough to just “be online;” social selling empowers loan officers to become thought leaders, share with their networks and add humanity and authenticity to branded content.

Why should social selling techniques matter to your bank?
There’s a lot of bad financial advice online. Building thought leadership (especially in finance) allows loan officers to demonstrate that they are trusted, credible experts with clients’ best interests at heart. Prospective clients want to know they can trust your loan reps as human beings. Providing helpful, educational content is a great way to show them your business cares about delivering real value and connection. As a marketer for your brand, it’s your job to empower loan officers to start building those relationships through social selling.
Here are three tips for how to leverage social selling in your bank’s thought leadership strategy:
1. Build trust with prospects
Finance is a deeply personal business, and prospects want to know they can trust loan officers before feeling comfortable talking financial situations and goals. Social selling allows the brand’s loan officers to build direct, personal relationships with customers and prospects.
In times of market volatility or transition within a client’s life, the right thought leadership strategy can really connect. For instance, a blog post or LinkedIn video about debt consolidation loans could resonate with prospective clients who need help organizing their expenses. Or a reassuring Instagram reel about taking out a mortgage in a time of rising interest rates could be just what a first-time homebuyer needs to hear. Empowering your officers to start building these relationships via social selling content is one of your most important jobs in marketing for a banking brand.
2. Stay top of mind with clients
Financial services thought leadership helps your bank stay top of mind and engaged with existing clients. While there aren’t enough hours in the day for your brand’s loan officers to check in with every single client, social selling techniques can help them stay connected and deepen relationships without overworking. Social selling content can provide value to customers while loan officers are doing other vital work to close more loans.
Plus, when marketers help loan officers continually demonstrate their expertise online, the chances of gaining client referrals just increases. For example, offering services for business owners might encourage a social seller to post a guidebook about business loans and prompt an existing client to consider a loan to cover expansion. This guidebook can then serve as a handy piece of content for referrals.
3. Help intermediaries build expertise
While it’s not easy to confront, there is significant personnel movement in every industry today. Loan officers are concerned about their long-term career plans, and thought leadership is a great way to build your team’s reputation—regardless of where they work. Thought leadership content retains its value, even if employees move to another bank or financial institution. You might not be able to allow them to take their book of business, but their expertise and social media networks are intangible.
For these reasons (and more), thought leadership is essential to remaining competitive in today’s marketplace and building trust with clients. By leveraging social selling for loan officers, you’ll amplify your brand-building efforts with prospective clients, other industry experts and even potential employees. A solid thought leadership strategy through social selling will help build brand recognition, support lending teams, and establish lending officers as industry experts. Don’t wait to get started.
This article was originally published in ABA Banking Journal.
It’s not easy out there this spring – for lenders or for buyers. As you consider your marketing strategy, don’t underestimate the potential in social media.
Between market volatility, ever-changing rates and low inventory, there’s plenty of uncertainty. But one thing is certain; market conditions are making it that much more competitive. That means investing in relationships matters more than ever. And today, that means loan officers need to be proactive and stay in touch via social media.
Considering 77% of borrowers move forward with the first lender they speak to when they’re looking for a loan, showing up in a prospect or existing clients’ social media feed can not only build trust, it can help you close more deals.
After months of economic headlines and the break-neck pace of rate change, loan applicants are discouraged. This is a critical time for loan officers to educate prospects about loan options and the realities of today’s market. By doing so, you can strengthen relationships, build trust and communicate your expertise, all of which can create short and long term ROI.
Social media is an essential channel to create connectivity and trust with prospects. Whether you’re just getting started with social selling or are a well-oiled social selling team, it’s important to be aware of present market conditions and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Here are a few tips to stand out on social this spring buying season:
Be an empathetic person, not a brand
This is not an easy market for buyers or sellers. Homebuying is inevitably emotional and as many buyers navigate complexity and uncertainty, they may be understandably frustrated. This is why it’s so important that loan officers show up as humans on social media, not just logos.
Relationships are the heart of the business – people buy from people, after all. You should be a friendly face and trusted confidante on social media.
It’s about more than having a social media profile. Loan officers need to be their authentic selves when posting too. It’s not enough to share brand content, you need to post personalized content. In other words: be a real human on social.
You should extend the same humanity and empathy on social media as you would to applicants in real life. Acknowledging their frustrations is a great place to start. Ask about their concerns. Provide reassurance.
Educate applicants
Use social media content as an opportunity to educate applicants. While you might hang on every rate update, everyday applicants are likely confused and overwhelmed by changing mortgage news. Social selling can help establish loan officers as thought leaders.
You should be on social talking about what’s happening in the market this spring, but remember to use plain, conversational language with the aim to educate followers. In doing so, you’re not only providing value to followers, but also showing off your expertise.
In practical terms, this could mean posting a current news article on Facebook with a “what it means” POV in the caption. Alternatively, you could share a commentary on a rate change in a quick Instagram video. Regardless of the format, loan officers will have success on social media when you personalize the content and simplify complex concepts for followers.
Consistently be part of the conversation
If the past few years in the housing market have taught us anything, it’s that things change fast. The same holds true this spring and that means you need to be there for all the ups and downs on social media too. Consistency has always been key for social media success, but when navigating changing market news, it’s more important than ever.
Social media algorithms favor those who post often and with consistency. That doesn’t mean you have to post every day or try to time the algorithms, but does mean you should stay active and in the conversation. It’s not a set it and forget it kind of thing.
Don’t be afraid to try something new
The marketplace is unpredictable and social media can be too. When it comes to your social selling strategy, don’t be afraid to try something new. This season may be the perfect time for loan officers to adopt a new social media network, like Instagram for example, or try out new post formats. If you’re not seeing the desired results, try mixing it up.
Social selling is a critical strategy to keep loan officers competitive in a tight lending environment. Not sure where to start with social selling? Check out our Denim Social guidebook, How to Launch a Social Selling Program for a Financial Institution.
This article was originally published in MBA Newslink.
Our team recently attended the Global Insurance Symposium in Des Moines, Iowa, which is an educational and networking opportunity that brings together over 500 insurance and financial professionals, along with technology solutions. It was clear that tech-enablement is top of mind for insurance leaders and providers, as the demand for tools and resources that enhance digital customer communications increase.
As a compliant platform that empowers insurance intermediaries on social media, Denim Social is a perfect solution for carriers and agencies that are ready to take the next step toward a modern marketing strategy. As their expectations shift to digital, so should the industry .
Coming out of the GIS conference, our team saw three big trends at the intersection of insurance and technology.
- Uncertain economic conditions are creating new challenges for the industry at large. Now more than ever, agents need to be equipped to be resilient and available to their clients across multiple communications channels.
- Client education is vital. With more and more prospects looking to social media for financial and planning advice, agents have a unique opportunity to educate their communities on basic financial literacy.
- As online insurance transactions grow in popularity, agents must double-down on relationships to avoid losing out.
Despite these changes, insurance agents and agencies that make the client experience their top concern will thrive. No technology can replace the human interaction and care between an agent and their client. To counteract an impersonal approach, agents can find a solution in meeting clients and prospects where they are, when they need it. Social media is essential for doing this in an ever-connected world. By creating personal (and helpful) networks, agents can find that their relationships are stronger than ever.
See how to give agents a voice on social media with this practical guide on Social Selling for Insurance. It’s a non-negotiable for any modern marketing strategy.

Insurance leaders know the value of agents when it comes to product distribution, but smart marketers should be making the case to invest in digital enablement at the agent level. This means extending social media efforts beyond the brand and to the intermediaries building relationships at the local level.
Helping agents feel comfortable on social media and weaving it into their everyday sales mix is much different than managing a social presence at the brand or company level. But when your business goes to market through intermediaries, empowering them on social media is crucial.
Unsure where to start with a social selling program? It can feel daunting, but Denim Social can help. Learn how to set the right tone, train, create content and more in the latest guide from Denim Social: Guide To Social Selling for Insurance.

Connect & Convert on Social