Smart about money; serious about social media engagement

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The Talk2Sam account was then created not as a run-of-the-mill, boring social media presence, but as a platform to co-create with young South African consumers by opening it up to blogs and the sharing of personal money stories.

SAM interacts with users by sharing relevant content about financial behaviour and money management, insights and money tips. SAM asks Facebook users questions, posts interesting money-related quotes and riddles to get the youth thinking and participating. Users in turn ask SAM for help in getting in touch with the people like personal loan agents, for instance.

"Relevancy to the target market gets a huge boost through advice like this and the inclusion of the blogs from peers and even videos from campus," explains Blue Apple's Gerry Greyling. "Nedbank is therefore seen as being serious about social media engagement and authentic about educating the youth about money."

He adds that they also created an app for the site called 'I AM SAM' whereby users could go online and plot their future career paths by pulling photographs from their own Facebook profiles. "This allowed them to visualise the life they could have if they continued to be smart about money," says Gerry. "This app added value and fun to the Facebook page, as well as to the user experience."