Marketing Director Amy McGraw of Public Service Credit Union isfirmly entrenched in the camp of marketers who have found successusing social media and traditional marketing strategies.

Serving members in Detroit, which has been one of the citieshardest hit by the economic downturn, the $124 million credit unionhas experienced double-digit growth within the past year.

“We were under $100 million when I started getting serious aboutsocial media, and we've grown a lot this year not only in asset butmembership size,” said McGraw. “The key is not throwing awaytraditional marketing or you might as well shoot yourself in thefoot. Social media is just a piece, not the end-all solution.”

McGraw dubbed her foray into the Twitter and YouTube arena as away of being social and staying local.

“I thought this is a neat way to get to know our members, so Ideveloped relationships with people in Detroit credit unionland.”

Given the green light by her CEO to move forward, McGraw startedthe @pscuamy Twitter account with an eye on being personable.

“I wanted people to know that pscu_amy was an actual human beingwith likes, dislikes, who loves the city of Detroit and would doanything for locals and PSCU members,” said McGraw.

To build up her following, McGraw held a “Tweet the Love”contest in February 2010. For five days, members who'd never had aTwitter account opened one to tweet what they liked about PSCU fora chance to win $100, and McGraw had some 200 followers. Since thenshe's held other contests for fun, and her following has swelled toover 600.

“I started to realize just how much credit union love was outthere so I met with Todd Gilleland at Cola Creative to help PSCUbreak into YouTube,” said McGraw. “We wanted to make a big impactand create something that would go viral and as a joke we said howabout a banker in a bathtub full of money.”

It worked. PSCU's Cashtub video has had 5,760 views and waspicked up by local news stations. Its latest video thatdemonstrates how credit union members can make a big differenceprevent big banks from taking advantage of the little guy using avisual of bunches of grapes making quick work of a watermelon. Ithas so far garnered more than 1,400 views in just two months.

“Honestly it's helped align our branding strategy. In 2008 weworked with CU Growth Solutions and learned that what we thoughtwas happening in the branches as far as cross selling and promotionsimply wasn't,” said McGraw. “We focused on internal staff trainingand instead of saying how can I help you the branch staff now askswhat do you want out of life and they find ways to help them getthere.”

McGraw added that the shift from pitching a product to more of acounseling has made a difference and allowed the branch staff tofocus on doing right by the member rather than meeting a productgoal.

Another unexpected door PSCU's social media efforts opened wasto longtime local television station WXYZ News Anchor Stephen Clarkwho tweeted that he was sick of hearing all the bad news in Detroitand wanted locals to make videos that show the good going on in thearea.

“If it was good enough, he would cover the story. So we made avideo of our donation to a local organization that was working oncreating urban gardens and sent it to Stephen,” said McGraw.

Within minutes of uploading the video, Clark blogged about itand set up an interview with Quality Solutions CommunityDevelopment Corp. and credited pscu_amy and provided a link to thecredit union's YouTube page. Since then, McGraw has submitted fivemore videos.