Over the last three years, Affinity Federal Credit Union (Affinity) and Stern Strategy Group (Stern) have worked in partnership to execute external communications strategies designed to reach and positively impact members and prospects, as well as directly support various lines of business. On social media, Stern supports these organizational goals in the awareness and consideration stages of the marketing funnel. Through a custom, targeted approach, Stern invites followers to engage more deeply in Affinity’s community.

Industry: Financial Services
Service: Social Media

The Challenge

Affinity’s social media community is small but mighty. Across platforms, its fans demonstrate higher levels of engagement compared to competitors with more followers. But in order to tap into this engaged network, Stern needed to first understand the value that Affinity’s community finds when connecting with the brand on social media. In addition to deeper audience insights, we also needed to create processes to ensure a steadier stream of “behind the scenes” content from Affinity’s brick-and-mortar branches.


  • Define goals to leverage unique strengths of each social platform
  • Create user journeys to increase brand awareness and consideration of Affinity’s products and services
  • Communicate Affinity’s differentiators and mission, including focus on financial well-being and social purpose
  • Increase engagement across all social platforms
Our Approach

Stern’s approach began with a comprehensive social media audit to identify strengths and challenges inherent in Affinity’s social media presence. Among other key findings, the audit revealed a mismatch between effort and impact across social platforms. To address this, Stern created a content strategy to define the purpose and strategy for each social media platform and establish a structure to measure Affinity’s return on investment. In addition, Stern created two key internal plans, a creative brief and guide to social submissions, to inspire teams across lines of business to create and submit impactful content for Affinity’s social media networks.


Stern worked with Affinity to establish submission guidelines and increase business-wide investment in social media. To further streamline Affinity’s social media presence, Stern created a strategy to integrate content from Affinity’s charitable arm to increase awareness of scholarships, grants and other cause-based programs. These strategies increased awareness of Affinity’s differentiators, including a community-centered focus on social purpose and financial well-being. In just one year, Stern’s social media strategy led to a 338% increase in average link clicks per Facebook post and a 154% increase in organic impressions per tweet.